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Ask Slashdot: Buying a Laptop That Doesn't Have Windows 8
First time accepted submitter Sagan's Pie writes "I'm starting to look for a laptop for college, and the only thing I seem to find are laptops or tablets that have Windows 8. I have used Windows 7 for a long time now, and would not have a problem giving it up, but not for Windows 8. After visiting many major online retail sites, I've found that finding either a Windows 7 laptop, or even a laptop without an operating system is nearly impossible. So where should I go if looking for laptops sans os, or at the very least sans Windows 8?"
NewEgg still sells Windows 7 laptops. Go into the laptops/notebooks section and enter Windows 7 as a keyword. Some of the units that come back are refurbs, but some are brand new.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
https://www.system76.com/
Order it an you can choose 7 instead of 8
The big PC maker's online storefronts have a consumer and business section. Your milage may vary but the business section of say, Dell or Lenovo, tilts towards good build quality, OS flexibility, and less crapware. Finding a Win7 machine is no problem at all.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x230
Clevo based laptops typically come configured however you want and lacking whatever you don't want. No OS? no problem. You can also get em without hard drive, memory, chip, video card, whatever. They can be bought bare bones or with as much as you want in em. Also, the screen selection on them is usually much better. You can opt for much higher resolution than youll get in a dell etc...
Actually, please don't do this. M$ needs to know what a hunk of crap they've released reflected by low sales.
Get a Thinkpad. I just got a W530 with a 1920x1080 screen, one of the few you can find outside Apple. It has great Linux support, even down to the silly fingerprint reader. I can easily get 7 hours or so on the battery with the recommended tweaks. There's a whole wiki just for Thinkpad stuff.
It ships with Windows 7, but you never have to boot into Windows. You can blow away the whole drive, "recovery" and "boot" partitions, and never look back. It has a conventional BIOS in addition to UEFI (disabled by default; leave it that way), so you shouldn't have any issues there.
It's a tank, it's not terribly sexy like an ultrabook, but it's great if you want a desktop-fast Linux-friendly workstation laptop.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Get out of the stores with 3 choices, perhaps?
here
http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-14-G4-2149se-Butterfly-Blossom-Design-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-A6-4400M-Processor-and-Windows-7-Home-Premium-with-Windows-8-Upgrade-Option-bundled-with/21191020
Newegg had 144 hits (lots of refurb, but better than craigslist suggested below!) on win 7 home premium alone.
Dell, Tigerdirect, even Walmart all had them.
I think this was meant to be posted next year...... ...and all those refurbs will still be there, even if new isn't....
I've been using windows 8 for a while (got it for free) and I'd have to say it is far from a "hunk of crap". Yes, metro sucks, but you don't have to use it, which is what GP suggests.
Some things I like about 8 are this: reduced memory/disk footprint, easier access to commonly used functions (mouse to the far bottom left, right click; works with start8 too, though some start menu replacements disable this useful feature) more efficient copy dialog that even shows instantaneous rather than average transfer rates (pretty nice feature to have, yet shockingly windows 8 is the only OS that does it) better explorer functions like e.g. "admin console here", and built in support for mounting iso's. With windows 7 you have to add these in on your own, with windows 8 they are already there.
If you want to show your distaste with metro, enable the customer experience reporting setting and just don't use it. They actually do make design decisions based on that.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
http://www.classicshell.net/
Windows 8 is fine, its pretty fast, and with one simple third party UI extension is actually usable.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.