Last week in Got a New Laptop? You May Need External DVD Drive, I told you that I was helping a friend shop for a new laptop. In order to find the right answer for someone, it is important to understand exactly what they plan to do with the laptop.

In this case, the new laptop was replacing a seven year old Macbook Pro. Just so you know, the user made it very clear they no longer wanted a Mac. Therefore I wanted to find a laptop that would provide at least five years of quality usage. Portability was not something of great importance to the user so we weren’t trying to find the thinnest and lightest machine available.

As I explained last week, many new laptops do not include a CD/DVD drive as a way to make the machine smaller. For this user, having an internal drive was important so that it wouldn’t be necessary to carry around the external drive. We also liked the fact it had a good Webcam built-in so that the user could place video calls with family and friends easily.

After searching a few stores and online options, the choice was the ASUS N550JK-DS71T shown below.

Part of the reason for going to stores was to try out the various keyboards offered to make sure the user would be comfortable typing on the new machine. While there was no real need for a touch screen (I’m not a fan of them), the user liked being able to sometimes click directly on the screen. The processor is pretty darned good for a laptop and should be powerful enough to last for many years.

The hard drive is much bigger than what is truly needed, but it simply provides room to collect more music, photos and other large media. 8GB of RAM may be light for a graphics user, but it is fine for this user who won’t be using a lot of powerful software.

For those of you who detest the new Windows interface shown in the photo, remember that you can install a utility to get back the familiar Windows desktop and Start menu. Plus we’ll be installing Windows 10 on this machine soon after it becomes available. Remember, that upgrade will be free!

There were less expensive choices available, but each of them cut a corner on something we felt was important. And given that part of our criteria was something that would be usable for at least five years, a little extra cost up front was acceptable. It is scheduled to arrive today and I’m excited to help the user get it configured so it is just perfect.