What laptop for me?

by Eugene Young
(Prescott, AZ USA)

What is the fastest computer I can buy in the 1,000 dollar range with a 12 or 13 inch screen as I travel a lot. Will be used mostly for number crunching and some movies.

ANSWER

Even though Intel announced the second generation core i processors in January, other than i7 equipped gaming style and ultra-portable laptops, few models with the new processors have been available. Intel had a problem with the motherboard chipsets they shipped to support the new processors and makers seemed to concentrate on getting the high end laptops on the streets first. Now though, the more moderate core i3 and core i5 are starting to make their appearance.

You say you crunch numbers and watch movies. To be certain that you have enough processing power to run just about any mathematical software you might need, I started looking for a notebook with a current second generation Intel core i5 processor. I couldn't tell whether you stream movies or watch from disk. I looked for a laptop with a bluray player and a discrete graphics card to try to maximize the chances the ultra-portable computer will meet your needs.

The combination of reasonable discrete graphics and a bluray player is a bit hard to find in a laptop under or around $1000.

The Apple in this price slot ($999) does not have a bluray player and still sports a core 2 duo processor.

Dell sells an 11 inch Alienware model but it has no internal optical drive and does not have an external bluray player available.

As I looked for a laptop that fit my mental image of what I would buy to do what I have described above, I found an almost perfect match.

There is a Sony Vaio computer listed on the Best Buy website that is a practically perfect match. It has a core i5 2410 processor and a mid-level AMD Radeon HD 6470M graphic card and a bluray player. The model number is VPSCS1AFM/S and the price at Best But is $979.99. It is back ordered though and there would be a wait to get it. It appears to be a made for Best Buy model, and the equivalent from the Sony website is about $100 more. No one seemed to have equivalent machines right now in the same price range, but I'd look on-line before I bought this. I might have missed something. I have generally thought Sony laptops were over priced, but that might be because of the software package usually included that seems to be missing from this model