High-end laptop for dad

http://www.rebeltech.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=59&products_id=8824

asus ux15vz


http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6791&review=asus+zenbook+ux51v <--- review
Battery Life
The UX51VZ turned in a very respectable three hours and 42 minutes in our Powermark battery test; this beats out many of the smaller 14-inch and 13.3-inch Ultrabooks we've reviewed. This time translates to about seven hours of web browsing

Display: 15.6 inch, 16:9, 1920x1080 pixels, glossy: no IPS display not TN

the dual 128GB SSDs; they're configured in a RAID 0 , gives about 650mbs+ speeds in the review

Has 2 fans should be ok in the heat department.

Build quality is awesome on these zenbooks.
 
What line of work is he in, just to get a better idea of what laptop to recommend, does he use it for checking emails and browsing or what?
 
How old is he and how good are his eyes? I have a 15.6" 1080p screen on my laptop and it strains my eyes.
 
I like heretic's idea.

I'm curious though - what on earth is he doing with it that an i5 isn't cutting it? Clearly not email + Excel. AutoCAD perhaps?
 
carderne said:
always been a fan of Dell, and everyone at home uses them (at my recommendation) but I just feel like their latest offerings leave a bit to be desired... Haha and an Alienware as a business laptop for my dad? Few too many kilograms and a few too many lights...
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What don't you like about the latest offerings? I just got my XPS 12 and XPS 15 en - route. Just curious when you say that.

If you are not opposed to second floor hand, I am selling my current XPS 15 for R7k. Full HD, 9 Cell battery.
 
carderne said:
So within the following criteria:
- very long battery life (at least 5 hours)
- 15.6" inch screen (or thereabout) with 1080p (non-gloss)
- high performance, SSD would be great (mostly for noise and heat, see below) as 256GB is enough for him
- his big complaint is his laptop getting boiling hot, any idea how the MBPs are with heat these days?
- very nice build quality, good keyboard etc

Is there anything I should be considering instead of the Macbook Pro? Even if not quite as good, maybe something at a lower price area, like R10k - R15k? I'm going to wait for Haswell to drop of course, but the main concern is just finding a very very nice line, the specifics of the performance aren't too important (but it must be fast... his current i5 M520 and 3GB RAM leave a bit to be desired).
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Nicely conflicting set of requirements you have there - kudos. :erm: Still, but for the 1080 in 15" - and 1600x900 at that - maybe the Samsung Series 9 would do the job?

As Macbook, DO NOT go there in Windows; consider that only if you plan to stay in OS X. I know from the pain of convincing someone to go with one and we had endless trouble with toolbar sizing/app compatibility with that monster bloody screen in Windows. And that's before the retina display ghosting I've now seen for myself on that thing.
 
My vote is wait for WWDC tonight to see what they do with the Macbook line before making a decision. It's totally farcical to suggest that a Macbook Pro isn't a high end laptop (unless the whole glowy alienhead aesthetic does it for your dad), but it's highly priced as well. In general give it a couple of months for Haswell to filter into laptops because from reviews it makes an enormous difference to graphical performance, heat and battery life.

Otherwise the latest Lenovo Thinkpads are fantastic; they rethought a lot of the design elements and those things never die.
 
If you're looking for Outlook to move its backside when opening/searching those messages/switching folders it just comes down to the performance of the SSD. I don't think you're going to see a huge difference with i5/i7 or anything that's half-way decent in terms of clock speed. It depends on your technical knowledge, but if I was doing something like this I'd buy an SSD at least the size of the current drive and just clone the existing drive and put it into the existing laptop (just so that everything keeps working as it used to, don't have to get used to new nonsense, but all a lot faster). And this I say as someone with 80 000 messages in my local mail client and I felt the massive difference going from a hard drive to a SSD, but I'm using Mail.app instead of Outlook.

I'm not sure if a Macbook Pro purely for running Windows is ideal though, I know I've found the trackpad more difficult to use under Windows because I don't think the drivers are as good as in Mac OS. Perhaps Windows laptop trackpads are just bad enough that it's still better than them.

Edit: Ah didn't see the battery bit... Macbooks do have the advantage of having batteries that are still good after 3 years even with heavy use, so if you're unlikely to want to replace the battery but just want it to still be working over the life of it, it may make sense to go Mac.
 
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MSI GT70 with a 4GB nvidia GTX780m, Dual 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD, Blu-Ray, FHD, 32GB Ram, i7 Haswell 4700MQ, about R35k
 
carderne said:
But that one is still 128GB... How's the second-hand SSD market, because I'm sure I could easily replace it with a 256GB drive and sell the 128GB one.
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Danger Will Robinson: be aware that the 'drive' is not a 2.5" unit, but a plug-in card. Also, 'upskirt' :erm: pic here. That said, if does open the door to t3h s3x3h upgrade action. (something not possible in any vaguely new Mac)

Yup plenty of time, I probably have to be quite involved with setting it all up on his new laptop, and I don't have time now for that kind of job, so we'll probably be waiting for the end of the year anyway. So I'll definitely be waiting for something like the Series 9 but with a low-power i5/i7, which should be perfect. Or the updated MBP as I said above.
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If you're waiting that long it effectively makes no sense to even look at product now, it will have significantly changed by then. And again, if you plan to go MBP be VERY aware that Apple have no real interest in optimising the Windows experience so the Boot Camp stuff lags behind, which is significant when it comes to that verkakte retina display. Also, their habit of stealing valuable keys from the 'board gets up my nose but YMMV.
 
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