My Right Arm

For my new adventure, I naturally needed a new laptop.  Now really, I could've gotten by with my old desktop, custom built by me in 2009 and still running strong, but that would've meant I was doing most of my studying either in the basement or on my iPad (which wouldn't work for practical IT courses).  My husband has a laptop, but I didn't want to encroach on his tech, and I have a work laptop, but ethics and all, no personal stuff on work device, etc.

I began a search for the perfect laptop for me.  I personally have never had a laptop all to myself, it usually been my husband's laptop that I borrowed occasionally.  After all, I have my huge beast of a PC in the basement to use, and with the advent of the iPad and iPhone, there really are very few day to day things I can't do from my mobile devices.  This was going to be my very own laptop.

I knew that the following attributes were non-negotiable:

• SSD at least 512GB
• 7th or 8th generation i7 processor
• At least 8 GB RAM
• Dedicated graphics card
• 14-15"
• Full keyboard with number pad
• Not too bulky/heavy
• Windows 10 Pro
• Under budget

Wishlist items included:

• Touchscreen
• 4K
• 16 GB RAM
• Secondary hard drive
• Backlit keyboard
• Fingerprint reader
• Many USB ports
• Not look like a gaming machine (bulky, black and red, etc)

I looked at Dell, HP, ASUS and Lenovo and generally liked the look and feel of the slim laptops.  XPS, Studio, Zenbook, etc.  I knew I couldn't get what I wanted in a Mac, #1 because of OS and #2, you just can't get comparable specs in a Mac for a reasonable price.  I considered the gaming PCs, as they generally had all the power I wanted in a reasonably priced package, but the size and design just screamed "here comes a gamer", it's not what I wanted my laptop to say about me.

I finally landed on the Lenovo IdeaPad 720s 15" touchscreen laptop, and I bought it from Costco.com.  My work laptops the last 5 years have been Lenovo touchscreens and I've loved them in general.  This model meets all of my requirements and most of my wishlist items.  Sadly, it only has 1 conventional USB 3.0, the other 2 peripheral ports are USB-C, though one is thunderbolt.  It also doesn't have a secondary hard drive.  I decided I could live without these things.

There are a few small things I don't like about it, the battery isn't made to be customer replaceable, the edges are all sharp when you run your fingers along them or rest your wrists on the edges, the whole thing shows fingerprints something terrible and the power brick gets pretty toasty.

Those little things aside, I love it.  It's light.  From the time I hit the power button to when I've got a desktop is less than 30 seconds.  Launching programs, playing games, installing updates, running utilities and scans, it's FAST.  The screen is beautiful and overall the thing looks classy!  This is an awesome little machine and I look forward to seeing what it can do.  I also got a wireless mouse, lapdesk, backpack, and USB-C adapters for standard USB and HDMI.  Now I just need to come up with a pet name for it.  Any suggestions?