Thinkpads Forum

Hi friends,

Wishing all of you, and your loved ones, a very Happy Thanksgiving.

I am looking for a ~13 or ~14 inch laptop for home use, and was wondering if there are any good deals for Black Friday/Thanksgiving/the holiday season.

I prefer a Windows based pc, which will be used for internet surfing, basic MS office and general day to day use. No gaming or programming.

Are there any good deals on Thinkpads or Lenovo's? I like the built in track pad and the centered keyboard.

One of the issues I have with the newer styled laptops is the un-centered keyboards, due to the number pad on the right.

I am located in Houston, TX USA and am a member of Costco and Sam's Club. I am open to buying the laptop online or in store.

Any good deal on the Lenovo website?

Thank you,
desidude

The ThinkPad T450s is the best 14" business class notebook right now in my opinion, mainly due to the better stick/keyboard and the ability to due a SSD + HDD setup, but if you're looking for the best value that you can get consistently, that would reside in the Dell Outlet. The Latitudes E5450 and E7450 are both solid notebooks with good support. Both offer 1080p matte IPS screens. The E7450 has a three year NBD warranty standard and is about a half pound lighter than the E5450, though will probably cost more. The E5450 only gets one year, but it's still on-site. The T450s will only have a mail-in warranty.

Look for coupons on the Dell Outlet Twitter account too. They can offer significant savings. 20-30% off already discounted pricing is common. You shouldn't have to wait too long as Dell posts them fairly regularly. I'm thinking $500-600 for the E5450 and $600-700 for the E7450 is very doable, maybe less if you get lucky.

Like I said the T450s is a better notebook, but I guess that depends on how married you are to the improved stick and keyboard, and drive options. The E5450/E7450 keyboards are still pretty good, but the stick is several notches below ThinkPad quality.

The T450s rarely gets discounted, a couple times shortly after it was released, or shows up in the outlet. I guess it doesn't get returned much, so you're likely going to pay more for it. Dell seems to have an endless supply of outlet Latitudes.