17″ touch screen laptop computers

Brent — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:00:54 +0000

Now, let me just preface this post by saying that there are not a whole lot of 17″ touch screen laptop computers around right now. Any type of non-tablet style touch screen laptop is a relatively new arrival to the scene, so our reviews are going to be a little bit lacking on the subject until there are more of them to review. However, a few companies have put out these laptop types recently that have really started to knock the socks off the mobile computer world. Dell specifically has put out a very impressive 17″ touch screen model that should be really impressive.

If the Dell Studio 17 laptops weren’t impressive already, they sure as heck are now. Dell has recently (like, not even a month ago) put out the new Dell Studio 17 Multi-Touch Edition laptop. This new Studio is just as impressive as their earlier Studio offerings, but it has one twist that you’ll love: The screen is a touch screen. This is a new direction for laptops period; this thing doesn’t look like your average tablet. It has a full keyboard and even looks like every other laptop you’ve ever known or used. The only difference is that instead of having to deal with a mouse to drag and drop items around, you can do it with your finger. Personally I think that’s a really neat feature; people are going to see a large increase in productivity when using these computers versus the previous versions. The Studio 17 specifically has always been known as a solid platform to do graphic arts and video editing, and now with this touch screen technology it’ll be almost the perfect laptop. Now, if Apple put out a wide-screen touch laptop I think we’d be all set.

This new Studio 17 Multi-Touch comes with a very powerful Core 2 Duo processor like its predecessors, and even comes with the usual 4GB of RAM (pretty nice for a <$1000 laptop) and up to 1TB of total hard drive capacity.

This laptop doesn’t have one 1TB hard drive, however. It actually has two 500GB hard drives shoehorned into its casing. I’m not exactly sure why they did it that way instead of putting in a readily-available 1TB drive, but Dell might have an ace up their sleeve as far as utilizing the second hard drive for backing up your data. Of course this wouldn’t quite be as good as say, a RAID array, but it’d be a good bit of redundancy. This Multi-Touch starts at $899. Pretty slick for what you get.

Shopping:

Techno Earth® 90W Laptop/Notebook AC Adapter/Charger/Power Supply Cord for Dell Studio 17 1737 1745 1747 -

Replacement Laptop Battery for Dell Studio 17 Series , 7200mAh 9-Cell

NEW Laptop/Notebook AC Adapter/Power Supply Charger+Cord for Dell Studio 15 1535 1536 1537 17 1735 1737 XPS 13 XPS 16 pp31l

Hercules "Super Strong" LP-1700BK 17-Inch Laptop Messenger Bag (Black)

Ematic 1.8 Inches Touch Screen Color MP3 Video Player With Built-in 5MP Digital Camera with Video Recording, FM Radio & Speaker 8 GB BLACK

The 17″ Laptop

Brent — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:31:03 +0000

Ahh, the 17″ laptop, our old friend! If you’re in the market for one of these beasts, you’re pretty much showing yourself as a person with good taste, if not someone who just has huge biceps from lifting the thing all day! In this post I’ll talk about which laptop brands are offered in the 17″ variety, and where I think you can find good deals on them.

First thing’s first. I don’t care if you’re a Mac person at all, but one can’t do a post about 17″ laptops without talking about the MacBook Pro. This is the flagship of the wide-screen line of notebooks, and for good reason. This computer can be configured with up to a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (Apple with Intel?), and an armada of RAM and hard drive space. It’s got the usual DVD-R/W drive attached as well, and comes standard with the Mac OSX operating system. Pretty standard for a Mac. Of course, all this performance comes with a pricetag: It starts at $2499 and goes up briskly from there. You can easily spend $3000-$4000 on this system, but if you’re into graphic arts, the large screen and system speed can’t be touched.

The next best 17″ laptop on the market as far as I’m concerned is the Dell Studio 17. This competes with the Mac fairly well, and even includes a lower price tag. This computer comes with a quad-core Intel i7 processor rated up to 2.8 GHz, and up to 8 gigabytes of RAM. At that point, you might as well not even have a hard drive! It also comes offered with 1 gigabyte of video RAM, which makes it a great platform for graphic design, movie production, or any other video-intensive project you might have. Better yet, if you’re a gamer this is the laptop for you. Windows comes standard, which makes it compatible with just about every A-List game that comes onto the market. Unless you were to go with a high-end desktop, you’re not going to get better performance from a gaming laptop. Best yet, prices start at $1099, which blows the Mac out of the water.

So, there’s my unbiased opinion on the matter. I’ve heard wonderful things about the MacBook Pro, but if you’re looking for the best compromise between price and performance in a 17″ laptop, you can’t beat the Dell.

Shopping:

Apple MacBook Pro MC374LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop

Zotac ZBOX Intel Atom D510 1.66 GHz Dual Core All-in-One Mini-PC with No Memory, No Hard Drive and No OS

Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325 TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Laptop (Black)

Apple MacBook Pro MC118LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop

Apple MacBook MC207LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop

The Refurbished Laptops Guide » dell studio 17

17″ touch screen laptop computers

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The 17″ Laptop

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