14" 1080P thin and light laptop?

Soldato
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Purely for work use, no games, no photoshop, just hammering Excel, Powerpoint, and Word! (the Office trinity or whatever Johnson from Peep Show called it...)

Looking at something like this for starters, a Dell Inspiron 14 7000 £750
*** Please don't link to competitors *** - Will Gill

No optical drive needed, and the thinner and lighter and quieter with good battery life the better. Home upgradable SSD would be a bonus, or preferably it'd come with one. I know the Dell doesn't but it comes with a 32gig SSD which I presume acts as cache for the main drive, not a standalone drive, have to look into it.
 
MacBook air
Asus zenbook
Samsung ATIV 9 plus

Best ultrabooks out at the moment, although they aren't 14". Any specific reason you want a 14" device? 13.3" is only slightly smaller and is far more common.

All the three above are fast, light and small and will run for at least 7 hours (the ATIV for 9 and the Air for 12). They are a lot more than the computer you mentioned so if that is your budget then maybe they won't be very useful, although having said that the base model air will be pretty close, it's around £850.
 
I'm coming down from a 15.6" Vaio, so want to keep as much screen as I can, hence the 1080p need. I'll look into the models listed thank you, 14" as that's what I assumed was the next size down, will look into the 13.5" models.

Another guy at the office just got something similar to this: not sure if his is the '2' though, might have to wait till I can spec up a more powerful one of these, only showing i3 models currently: *** Please don't link to competitors *** - Will Gill
 
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My girlfriend was going to get that 14 inch Inspiron - which was £679 two days ago... :confused:
Now she's gone for the 15 inch Inspiron 7357 for £679 which has a better spec but battery life could be an issue for you.
 
15 inch Inspiron 7357 for £679 which has a better spec but battery life could be an issue for you.

What's real life expectation for it?

I really like my 15.6" size currently, but it is a bit of a beast to carry at times, and whipping out during a meeting for example :(
 
I've got a Dell Latitude E7440.

14" 1080p Matte Display.
i7 4600
256GB SSD + space for a 2.5" drive as well
8GB Ram

Really solid machine and can be found nicely priced on Dell Outlet.
 
You will probably be able to downgrade as its Win 8 Pro. Mine said Windows 8, but came with Windows 7 installed and a key for 8.
 
You can get a 5% discount off latitudes:
https://twitter.com/DellOutletUK/status/474976270544273408

The business laptops from the Dell Business outlet come with 3 years warrenty too.
The store seems to restock around 2:50-3PM on week days so keep an eye out.

Just got the following for just under £700 (tho it was a scratch and dent one)
e7440
1080p matte display
i7 4600
256GB SSD
8 GB RAM

I did order one a few months ago but it had some sort of coil whine when the power was plugged in. The tech did come out next day to try and fix it but I got a refund in the end. CS during that time was pretty shoddy so you've got to sacrifice something for the cheap price.
 
How bad was the scratch and dent? Presumably perfectly ok?
I only had a quick look before, and is a Sunday, but couldn't see a 256gig+8gig ram one available, you've proved they are out there though.

What size battery watt/hour and charger (wattage) did yours come with guys?
Hopefully the bigger battery and the slimmer, but I don't know what's stock for Dell.
 
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Think mine is a 47wh one. Whatever the highest capacity for that model is.

Scratch and dent are usually fine from past experience. Most of the time it's barely noticeable, and doesn't in anyway affect the performance.

My E7440 wasn't actually bought from the Outlet store. Got it off ebay brand new but paid around the same price as outlet prices.
 
I've just ordered that one yesterday and del is due for 23rd. It had the 47wh battery in the listing.

From what I've read, the Scratch and dent ones are usually pretty. Only having a minor scratch in general but being like 10% cheaper.

There's one a e7440 S&D with i7, 256GB SSD 4GB RAM 1080p screen for £645.17. So 5% off that and then you can just get 8GB of ram for like £60 I think. Very easy to upgrade the HDD and RAM on these machines.
 
Think mine is a 47wh one. Whatever the highest capacity for that model is.

Scratch and dent are usually fine from past experience. Most of the time it's barely noticeable, and doesn't in anyway affect the performance.

My E7440 wasn't actually bought from the Outlet store. Got it off ebay brand new but paid around the same price as outlet prices.

What sort of battery life are you getting mate?
 
The 5% off code doesn't work on Outlet as far as I know.

I get about 5-7 hours depending on usage. Mainly just web browsing at the minute. Not as good as the MacBook Air it replaced, but more than enough for my needs. The dock connector is particularly handy for using it when I'm at my desk.
 
I have had an E7440 for about six months, and I like it very much. I got mine from the Dell Outlet with an i5-4300U, 8GB RAM, 128gb SSD, Full HD display and the 3G WWAN card. Mine was £757, so it looks as though the prices have come down a bit since then. I have to admit that it arrived with a faulty LCD (it had a vertical green line), but thanks the 3 year next business day warranty, Dell sent somebody out to replace it, and since then it's been excellent. I moved the SSD to the MSATA slot and added a 500GB hard drive, and upgraded the memory to 16GB. It's powerful enough to run a few virtual machines in Hyper-V, and the high screen resolution makes it easy to work with more than one of those VMs at a time.

The only thing that's a bit strange about it is the location of the dock connector. It's at the rear of the laptop, whereas the connector on the docking station is about four inches from the back, which means that the laptop sticks out quite a bit. Other than taking up a bit of extra space (and looking somewhat peculiar) it doesn't effect the functionality - I have had it hooked up to a 30" monitor at 2560 x 1600 via the DisplayPort and it all works fine.
 
The 5% off code doesn't work on Outlet as far as I know.

I get about 5-7 hours depending on usage. Mainly just web browsing at the minute. Not as good as the MacBook Air it replaced, but more than enough for my needs. The dock connector is particularly handy for using it when I'm at my desk.

Cheers for the timings. I was tempted by a MacBook Air but was after something with a better screen res for programming.

I've used the 5% off code on the outlet on Sat. The tweet actually links to the outlet store too.
 
That's pretty good saving! Didn't think many codes (other than free delivery) where posted for the Outlet.

I've used 125% text scaling on windows as I found 1080p quite small. Looks more like 1600x900, but very sharp.
 
That's pretty good saving! Didn't think many codes (other than free delivery) where posted for the Outlet.

I've used 125% text scaling on windows as I found 1080p quite small. Looks more like 1600x900, but very sharp.

Yeah, you rarely get any codes for the outlet but the US outlet store always seem to have 20-25% off coupons!

I ended up tweeting the guy in charge of the outlet UK store and he managed to organise a 5% off coupone. Better then nothing!

I'm actually planning to install Ubuntu/mint on it but might give Windows 8 a go first.
 
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