Hi Matt, thanks for the comment and my apologies for the delay in approving/replying. Somehow it slipped through the gaps thanks to the holiday period!

I remember the M200 – in fact I deployed about 20 of them about 6 years ago. They were nice machines, much better than the A100 we deployed before.

Thanks for the Yoga suggestion. There are a few Yoga models available over here but I’m definitely looking in the ultraportable sub-14″ category – the 13″ Air is the ideal form factor and 15.6″ is way too big. This is going to be a travel laptop for me. The Yoga 2 pro looks good, it’s just that compromises have to be made compared to a Mac – specifically touchpad, keyboard and operating system. Also an equivalent spec to the retina pro would cost more while battery life and portability remain about the same, so it doesn’t really stack up for me.

The Lenovo X1 Carbon now looks best on the PC side (I have a soft spot for Thinkpads), despite having a 14″ display it’s basically the same size as the 13″ Air. But it’s yet to be released here in the UK, and the price is likely to be… ouch. I never thought I’d see a Mac as a fiscally responsible option.

So I’ve now come full circle and am basically ready to purchase a 13″ Retina Macbook pro. A colleague of mine purchased the old ivy bridge XPS 13 at a discount and has not been that impressed with it. Battery life is OK but the touchpad leaves something to be desired – Macs are unfortunately very hard to beat in this respect.

On eBay you can get the top-end 2.6ghz 512GB model for £1,275 – only a smidgen more than the mid-range 2.4ghz/256GB model on the apple store. I don’t really need 512GB yet, but more flash space certainly doesn’t hurt.

I’m spending more this round because I’ve been spoiled by the 15″ retina, last time my frame of reference was budget laptops and the Latitude was a nice step up. So this round is costing me twice as much, and it will also be my first ever purchase of an Apple product. Don’t let me down, Apple.

–Alex

I’ve just gone through the process of trying to decide what I want my next laptop to be. Of which, was a horrible mission. I’m in NZ, and found anything sold in retail to be pretty rubbish. Anything business is definitely better quality, but most lack graphics cards. I’m replacing what I’ve found to be the best laptop ever, my 5 year old toshiba satellite M200 (http://www.cnet.com.au/toshiba-satellite-m200-core-2-duo-1-5ghz-1gb-ram-339286324.htm)

What made this laptop awesome, was the keyboard is brilliant to type on (a big thing for me), the touchpad also works great, and at 14.1″ 1280 x 800 the screen is pretty good. I thought all of this was pretty standard until going out and trying new laptops. I find most laptops these days have terrible keyboards, touchpads that suck, and it seems for 15″ screens, 1366×768 is a standard resolution (gross!).

The only thing this laptop really lacks for me these days is the battery is shot, and no graphics card. I’ve been running Linux Mint on it for probably 3 years and it’s been great. Mint was a breath of new life after running Windows 7 on it for a few months.

Anywho to my battle of finding a decent new laptop.

Requirements:
– Portability
– High res screen
– Decent keyboard
– Graphics card
– Under $1500 NZ.

Long story short, I couldn’t find anything I wanted in NZ. Most laptops with those requirements seemed to only be available in the US/UK markets.

I settled with the Lenovo IdeaPad Y410p for $799US

– 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4700MQ
– NVIDIA GeForce GT755M GDDR5 2GB
– 8gb Ram
-1TB 5400 RPM+24GB SSD
– 14.0″ HD+ Glossy LED Backlit with integrated camera 1600×900

For the price + specs, I think it’s a pretty good deal.

I’m currently waiting to get the laptop from the states (used a forward shipping service who also had to pay for it for me as lenovo US don’t accept nonUS CC and won’t post internationally). I’m just hoping the build quality of the laptop is alright though.

All up 799US + post + tax, hopefully should be under $1400NZ once it’s in the country.

Really not too sure how good linux support is on it. But here’s hoping I can get it dual booting with Mint fine.

Lenovo UK doesn’t seem to sell the 14″ Y410p, but does have the 15.6″ y510p – http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y510p/ Not sure how those prices compare to what else you’re looking at, but potentially could be a contender.

Thanks,

Matt