dell
I spent nearly one full day on the decision which notebook to buy. My requirements were very simple: it should be powerful yet ultra-mobile (and – yes – it should run Windows 7, not OSX).
“Of course”, one might might say. But if you take these two things seriously, there is not much left to chose from:
  • I will only accept notebooks with a reasonable sized SSD (i.e. at least 240GB) – many many notebooks fail that.
  • 15 inch is too unhandy for me, and 2 kg is too heavy.
  • Last but not least, I want a non-glare display and a solid case (I need it for working, not playing) – goodbye, consumer line!
Very soon, I was left with only three options:
The HP Elitebook Folio 9470m is not cheap (about 1800 Euro), but the configuration is exactly what I needed. It has only one flaw: Its screen resolution is only 1366*768 – so if you are working with an IDE most of the time (like I do), you are always bound to an external monitor. That’s why I finally discarded this one.
The Lenovo X1 Carbon is like an Apple product on the PC sector: It looks very sexy, fulfills all my requirements, but lacks of external interfaces (only two USBs; RJ45 and display only with an external adapter) and is heavily overprized (almost 2000 Euro for the configuration that I needed).
So I am – once again – down to Dell: the Dell Latitude 6430u. This one again has one flaw – it only comes with an Intel Core i5, but my requirements suggest an i7 (like the other two notebooks have). But on the other hand, it is very reasonable priced (less than 1500 Euro), so I will accept the slower CPU.