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I work in the assistive technology department for a state agency for the blind. We recommend probably as many as 50 to 60 laptops a year that are Windows based. Probably 10 to 15 Apples and growing.

In the past year at least 70 percent have been Lenovo Thinkpads. The most often recommended are the Thinkpad T530 and the Thinkpad X230. Both are great machines, and we have not found any company with better tech support than Lenovo. Definitely stay away from HP laptops. We were recommending a number of them last spring and early summer, but we had an unbelieveable amount of problems with them not recognizing USB ports, not finding flash drives attached to the USB ports, and worse was that several would not find an external USB device such as a Braille display or notetaker. We have also dropped recommending Toshiba due to lots of wireless issues, some display issues, and a number of other problems.

The Lenovo Thinkpad has a choice of I5 or I7 processors, can be expanded to 8GB of RAM memory, and has a choice of regular hard drives or SSD solid state drive. The new Thinkpad T540, which is replacing the T530 that we have been recommending can have a 15.6 inch display, up to a 256GB SSD solid state drive, and I5 or I7 processor. It only weighs 5.5 pounds for the 15.6 inch model and the 14 inch is about 4.7 pounds.

If a person wants light weight, small size and plenty of power look at the X230 Thinkpad. The model we have found to be really nice is the X230 with a 12.5 inch display and up to a 500GB hard drive, I believe SSD is also available now. The weight is about 3 pounds. It comes with a detachable dock that has the DVD drive in it so that you don’t have to carry around the extra weight of the DVD drive if you don’t need it, and that saves a pound or more of weight right there. The system comes with I5 or I7 processor, up to 8GB of RAM memory.

These two systems are very nice, and are considered business level systems so they are a bit more expensive, but they are also much better made, and more likely to do the job you want for a monger time with good technical support, if needed.

From: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lisa McManus
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 8:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [VICUG-L] advice needed on some specifics of buying a laptop

Hi all,

I know I have mentioned on the list before that I was going to buy a laptop at some point. Well, I decided now is the time.

I am driving myself crazy looking through store ad after store ad and websites to try to get all the specifications that I want.

I am looking for a laptop both for myself and for my sister. We both have a little bit different needs so they will be different.

One thing is that I have a question about the processor. If I asked this on here in the past please forgive me, but I forget. My husband's nephew is a programmer and he says for my purposes I should stick with looking for an intel i core 5 or 7.

I see a ton of ads for intel pentium processors. I thought that intel pentium was a pretty old processor or is this a new version of intel pentium?

So is the i cores 3, 5, and 7 faster than the intel pentium?

He said that i core 3 is at the low end of the spectrum, with i core 5 being mainstream, and i core 7 being really fast.

Also, one last question he had told me that dell, asus, and hp were good to look at, but I was wondering if anyone knew anything about linova.

If someone could give me some info to help clear this confusion up for me I would really appreciate it. I have grown really tired of this looking and searching for a good deal. Thanks very much.

Lisa

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