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| The music apps your son uses or wants to use will probably define the choice between a Mac or a PC ultrabook, but most professional music apps are now available on both platforms, so it might be less important than it used to be.
I am biased and don't like or know Macs, so I'd personally stick to Dell, Asus or Acer. All are great brands.
Check that they have a CD/DVD drive, probably important for a musician!
If it's a Windows 7 ultrabook, $15 will get you a Windows 8 upgrade, but it's barely usable outside of a tablet.
Most ultrabooks have 14" screens, which might be a pain if the ultrabook is his only computer, although it can be remedied at home by purchasing a larger LCD screen (or even better, a TV with HDMI input, if the ultrabook has HDMI output). If your son is using it outside home a lot, he'll have to compromise between small and light for maximum mobility, and say a regular 17" laptop for usability. Not such a big difference, today's laptops could be called ultrabooks by yesterday's standard.
As for processor, third generation Intel i5 is the best value. The i7 is of course better, but also more expensive and generates more heat, which is never a good thing on a thin ultrabook. The latest generation of Intel processors also includes a graphic chipset that's designed for HD like Blu-ray, so ultrabooks using this integrated graphics are cheaper than the ones that have a separate graphics chipset (Nvidia or AMD) and dedicated memory. The integrated Intel graphics chipset uses part of the standard RAM memory, but most ultrabooks have 8GB of RAM these days, so that's plenty.
To stay cheap, most ultrabooks use traditional hard drives with rotating platters, when even desktop computers are moving to the SSD drives. If possible, try to replace the hard drive with a SSD: It will be much faster, and also not prone to mechanical failures. On the other hand, it's more expensive and capacity is smaller, but that should not be a problem since every laptop need a big external hard drive for extra storage, archiving and backup anyway. I just installed a Samsung 840 Pro SSD, best upgrade to my desktop computer ever! | |
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