I have never seen these for such a less price before. the cheapest price in staticice shows $1799 from binglee.
I was in store today and the guy told me he can give it for $1455 with 2 years warranty.
It has latest i7 processor with 256gb ssd and 8gb of ram. Also comes with Windows 8.1 pro and can be freely upgraded to Windows 10 when it is released.
wow… you are very lucky…
Now that is a bargain.
any chance to pay as what you paid?
How's the battery life on the kira?
I've found it pretty good for my usage. 5-6 hours on a full charge.
Will they price match your receipt? If so can we get a copy?
Not sure about the price match. It was during a 15% off sale plus there was another cross promotion at the time.
Sleek, but I would rather get MacBook Air or new MacBook.
No touchscreen (no mention in website) to differentiate this guy from those machines at that price point.
FYI - I went for the Alienware 13 from previous eBay 20% deal. Cheaper than this kira book, but the compromises are there weight/thinness. Everything else, the Alienware I got is superior less the CPU (i5 5200u vs i7 5500u).
Why the heck would you want a touch screen? Shiny screen touch screen laptops are just plain terrible. Oily finger prints streaking your screen.
You never heard of screen protector?
I agree touch screen on a laptop is close to pointless, I never have a oily fingerprints issue with my Sony pro 13.
Touch screen is nice for lazy web browser scrolling.
The Toshiba looks far better (read: normal) than any Alienware and is far more portable.
It has a 3 year warranty on parts & labour as opposed to the Alienware's 1 year.
Better battery life.
Doesn't come with as much bloatware.
Looks = extremely subjective. Kira book definitely more portable.
You have the option of extending warranty to 3 years or more on the Alienware but that brings it to around ~$1600.
My Alienware averages 8 hrs for light-mid non-gaming use.
My Alienware had 5 "bloat ware programs. 3 useful programs from dell and the other 2 programs were not very hard to uninstall.
Doesn't come with as much bloatware.
An incomplete list from the Toshiba website of the "[not] as much bloatware" on this machine:
Special Offers and Trial Software
* 1 month trial for new Microsoft® Office 365 customers
* Norton™ Internet Security (30-day trial subscription)
* Norton™ Online Backup (30-day Trial)
* Norton™ Anti-Theft (30-day Trial)
Third-party Software
* Adobe® Premiere® Elements 11 (Full licence)
* Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 11 (Full licence)
* Internet Explorer® 10 [why is this even mentioned????]
* Intel® Wireless Display 3.5
* Intel® Rapid Start Technology
* Intel® IPT Middleware
* Adobe® Reader
* DTS Studio Sound™
Metro Apps
* Shark Dash
* Pac-Man
* Fresh Paint
* Evernote
* Rara music
* AccuWeather
* sMedio True Link+
Toshiba Software and Utilities
* TOSHIBA Desktop Assist
* TOSHIBA eco Utility™
* TOSHIBA Media Player by sMedio Truelink+
* TOSHIBA Recovery Media Creator
* TOSHIBA Service Station
* TOSHIBA Resolution+ Upconvert Technology for Media Player
* TOSHIBA Video Player
* Toshiba Peak Shift
I know this list is incomplete because they include, of all things, a trial of WinZip (yes, hello, 1999? You want your archiving program back? Sure no worries!). Some of it is useful - the full licenses of Adobe Elements are nice but I don't know why you'd want to edit video on an ultrabook, and the Office thing is handy if you buy a license\have a login - but most of it is useless junk and it's been steadily growing in quantity on Toshiba notebooks over the years.
Fair enough.
My past experience with the Portege Z-30A (from last year), the Satellite A300 and the much older Tecra series was completely the opposite. Very light on bloatware compared to the usual truckload of sh*t that equivalent Acers, Dells or Lenovos come with.
Standalone licenses of Premiere Elements 13 and Photoshop Elements 13 are about $70 on their own, so that's nothing to scoff at.
@Amar89: Yes, the older Toshibas were much better off (although I do not think anyone, Toshiba themselves, could explain to me what on earth Toshiba ReelTime did).
Dells have arguably been the best of late, having set up a few over the past couple of years they've had a McAfee trial, two Dell apps, the Office stub and occasionally a link on the desktop to get Dropbox.
@douglasac10: Also, you included a few hardware drivers in that list that aren't bloatware.
Intel RST, DTS Studio, and Intel Wireless Display are necessary, and a couple of the Toshiba utilities are actually useful/necessary for enhanced functionality from my experience with the Portege, which is internally very similar to the Kira (Recovery Media Creator, Service Station and Peak Shift).
@Amar89: Widi isn't necessary unless you use Widi, I have a Widi compatible chipset in my Thinkpad but I didn't install the utility because I don't have a Widi box.
Recovery Media Creator can be nuked once you've made recovery media (alternately, press and hold the 0 key as you turn it on and you're in the recovery partition).
Service Station merely provides updates so if you're not into that kind of thing you can nuke it (to be honest I have never seen it do anything).
I had to Google what Peak Shift did, and to be honest I would hardly consider it useful or necessary seeing how a) assuming Origin Energy's SA standard rate, if used for eight hours per day it would cost $65\year to power this laptop and 2) not every premises (e.g. almost all of them in SA) has peak\off peak power tariffs.
RST, okay, probably necessary. DTS Audio, makes the audio sound better so probably necessary if you like sound given the size of the machine and therefore size of the speakers.
@douglasac10: Intel's AHCI driver (as part of RST) is typically a little faster on single-drive systems than Window's generic AHCI driver and the DTS Studio is the audio driver for the Kira (it includes both the audio chipset driver and the DTS Audio panel with Equalizer/Effects like Realtek's HD Audio driver).
I'm just saying, aside from the silly Metro Apps, everything else on there is fairly benign and you're going to find Norton/365 offers on competing OEMs' laptops as well, along with their own bundle of OEM drivers.
oh, just found out why they are cheap, this is Full HD version instead of UHD
I tested this and found the high res makes websites look bad due to lack of good scaling in windows
Yeah probs better getting the Full HD version over the UHD version. Will mean better battery life too
this is Full HD version instead of UHD
Which is what you want. 3200 x 1800 on 13.3" screen looks ridiculous. Things like Command Prompt look like they're on a 35mm film negative or something. Most applications scale poorly, even with DPI adjustment.
and that's why 1500 for UHD worth the pay, Full HD does not worth that money
matte screen and not touch screen too
Speak for yourself, those are both pluses in my book.
then spending 1500 for a refurbished Alienware is much better for you :)
Where are these refurbished Alienwares you speak of?
Those are both fantastic. I cannot -wait- for this stupid trend of adding touchscreens to laptops with a conventional hinge to die already.
No touch screen …would be a deal in case of touch screen
this or the Dell XPS…..or Asus UX305??
Good deal but it was way cheaper before, I wouldn't pay $1500 for a dual core machine, not for me, but thanks anyway.
I'm not voting in this deal but from living with a 13" FHD touch screen laptop I don't think I will choose anything else. Higher res will kill your battery and won't scale well and touch with Windows 8 is fantastic. Just my 2c.
I think its the first time I have seen "Windows 8" & "fantastic" in the same sentence! hehehe!
Got this a couple of weeks back when they had the sale for $1188. Very nice laptop!