Talk to me about laptops

Toshiba here, four of them, never a problem. No need for any addons except maybe ram. Avoid anything feather light. Laptops seemed to peak, and be almost perfected, a decade or so ago, so... I dunno, these all all second-hand and all run fine. I use one every day, then take it home and offload any large files. I dropped this one oncet - it cracked the shell - no problem! I suppose newer ones have the newer HDMI or whatever, but hardly neccessary with thumbdrives and removable HDs. It's very easy to swap a HD, DVD burner or RAM in a laptop, but anything else gets into some serious dissasembly.
 
Actually some 12 year old laptops have better screens.
Go for one that the screen isn't shiny and 1080 pixels MINIMUM height. The shiny and up to 768 high or 1024 high screened laptops are built down to a price junk.
Make sure vents are not on bottom. Many can't be set on a soft surface.

Generally under £600 they are FAR poorer than 10 years ago. I'd need to spend over £800 to replace my main laptop. Apple ones are about 30% premium for same quality.

Linux or OS X is far better than Windows 10. Really the only currently supported windows worth having is Windows 7.

If you only want to write, email, casually web browse, then a £50 to £200 Android Tablet with keyboard cover is a better idea.
 
I would lean towards avoiding very or extremely high end laptops, as there are laptop versions of some parts which have basically the same name but are straight inferior versions of what you would get in a desktop. There's a big difference between what you can fit in a laptop and a desktop computer, but they don't make that difference clear at all, -usually it's some tiny flourish in its name.

That's the main thing I recall from the last time I was looking up laptops.
 
Lenovo for me! Just over three years ago I had never even heard of them and thought they were one of these discount brands that sell laptops at slashed prices to compensate for the fact you'd have to buy a new machine every year.

Their keyboards are ideal for writing, and praised as such by many writers: Sturdy, they stay clean without the need for regular maintenance and are pleasant to the touch and ears. Their laptops are affordable and I have zero issue to report on mine so far. More importantly, isn't coffee spill the leading cause of death amongst writers' laptops? ThinkPads have spill-resistant keyboards and there are numerous videos online of people pouring bottles of water or teas and coffees on them and the laptops just shrug it off and keep on going as if nothing had happened - I will not try this on mine but hey, you never know when that accident might happen.

Oh and NASA swear by them. There are hundreds of Lenovo laptops currently in orbit around Earth. If that doesn't tell you that they are trustworthy, I don't know what will.
 
The Bluestocking said:
ASUS is a bit of a gamble - I've had two laptops from them before and both ended "flaming out" due to motherboard issues. There was no warning - one moment you're typing away, the next moment BLACKOUT GOODBYE POOF GONE! (Thank goodness I'd backed up my things).

And for the love of gawd do NOT get Acer, not matter how attractive the price. Every single person I know who got Acer had to replace the laptop within a year of getting it due to having so many issues.
Click to expand...

I will object to that as I have had Acers in my extended family, ones a doddery refurb refurb.

The other 9 years old this year from new 5920, intel core 2 duo, 2ghz processor and 3gb Ram, still functioning to this day on a daily basis and tackles all things, streaming, music, with it's home theatre. Not good for anything but browser games, but ideal for day to day things. Just needs updating from Vista now as Chrome won't support it. (cold sweats as looking at Windows 7 and the repercussions on current software.)

I'm enjoying this thread, learning loads and need an upgrade myself.
 
J Riff said:
Toshiba here, four of them, never a problem. No need for any addons except maybe ram. Avoid anything feather light. Laptops seemed to peak, and be almost perfected, a decade or so ago, so... I dunno, these all all second-hand and all run fine. I use one every day, then take it home and offload any large files. I dropped this one oncet - it cracked the shell - no problem! I suppose newer ones have the newer HDMI or whatever, but hardly neccessary with thumbdrives and removable HDs. It's very easy to swap a HD, DVD burner or RAM in a laptop, but anything else gets into some serious dissasembly.
Click to expand...

Speaking of Toshiba - the latest news is that they may be consolidating with Sony Vaio and Fujitsu (as part of staving off the shutdown of their PC division):

VAIO, Toshiba, and Fujitsu to unite into a new PC giant
 
I'll second the buy cheap buy twice thing. You're looking at £600 minimum for a decent laptop. Lenovo really are great (my workhorse tablet is Lenovo) Vaio are good if you know how to put one together with all the right bits (and have a handy discount lol!), Dell is also good, but need to go a bit more towards their higher end.

Chatting to the OH about upgrading "craptop" (must be going on 11 years old now - vista bugs out on it so software problem as opposed to vaio hardware) but putting new hardware in is such a faff - doable, but getting it all to fit in and the back to fit is a nightmare, so he is just seeing how much space he can get with in partitions etc (is a play with stuff laptop now - uses it for testing out various linux bits and bobs!), even more faffy than the small computer my father insisted upon - so all the normal bits but in a half size case! Nightmare to fit it all in haha.

Acer has really gone downhill as have Asus. Stick with Lenovo/Dell etc and you'll be fine :)

PS the reason no-one had ever really heard of Lenovo until a couple of years ago is that they focussed on business use - really well known for excellent product in business sphere, not so much in commercial as they never really bothered with it. They recently have been pushing commercial so more people are hearing about them - I got on board with their first wave of business tablets and still going strong - nothing really out there to improve it other than speed, but once in the apps (like polaris etc) no problem at all. Also got a very old business Lenovo laptop that is, like the "craptop" still going sort of strong, again software problems, but as it is only really used with a sandbox VM and to watch films on it's fine - about 18 years old I think!

One thing you do want to do though is kill off all the bloatware and free up space and CPU power. Plenty of tips online about doing that depending on model and brand etc. :) and if you want to do lots of film watching then either get a decent sound (as decent as laptop can do) or some fabby headphones (psst Roccat :) ) as sound is what will be your limiting factor really.
 
Lenovo bought IBMs PC, thinkpad and x86 Server business at various times.
Dell often has three or four classes of machine; cheap consumer, business, gamer and workstation class.

Vaio was an attempt of Sony to do Apple like PCs. They were mostly OK but over priced. Sony is out of that a while ago, I forget who owns the Vaio brand now.
 
Sony still own some of vaio and have focused more onto their high end mobile and tablets.
I believe JIP have the majority of vaio now. So should remain good quality hopefully!
 
Geeex there are hundreds of 200$ or less laptops around here. The flea market has millions... they will bend over backward to sell you a laptop, refurbished or otherwise. If I take my laptops there I get offered 50 bux for perfectly working machines, Don't go overboard.
 
There's a place called Kevin's Used Computers in Coquitlam. It's where I bought the Lenovo. It's a hole-in-the-wall, packed floor to ceiling with used computers and parts. Geek heaven!
Yeah, don't overlook the used-computer option.
 
There's a place in Boronto too, stuff back to the war, heaps and mounds and boxes of every component and weird outmoded electronic gizmo ever.
 
If you've got one you love and want to buy yourself more shopping time, see if you can upgrade the memory.

Usually a case of unscrewing a plate on the back (WHILE IT'S OFF! oops, don't forget that part. I also unplug and slip the battery off as well, but I'm paranoid.) and seeing if there is an empty slot or two. And if not, what's in the slots, and then Google the sticks or laptop model for upgrades.

Can be a low cost way to extend the life of a valued friend (yeah I mean the laptop, not a living being)
 
Kylara said:
OH also says at LEAST intel 5 chip and at LEAST 8GB as that is what you need to run stuff decently without it slowing to a crawl - no matter what the shop drones tell you. Do not get anything with less than 8GB.
Click to expand...

There are still laptops that run on 8GB? :eek:
 
Yes there are. The one my friend got conned into buying had 4GB - enough to run the OS and that was pretty much it!
 
Kylara said:
Yes there are. The one my friend got conned into buying had 4GB
Click to expand...
Twice what is needed for any DECENT 32bit OS. Consumer 32bit windows can ONLY use up to 4G total (max of 2.5G per application), though MS Windows Enterprise /Server 32bit versions of Windows since 1996 could use 32Gbyte.

4G is more than fine for 64bit OS
8G is ample.

There maybe a few insane Windows games that need more than 8G RAM. Likely they need a Graphics card more expensive than a decent laptop.
 
4 GB? That means 2x2 GB and not many laptops came with that from the factory. Often they had 1, or 1.5 - and run fine like Ray says. I scout for RAM but of course it's: DDR, DDR1, DDR2,DDR3, and they don't mix and match. 4 was the max and I read that it can only use 3.* of that. Newer 64-bit I dunno much from, maybe they need 8GB to do the same thing.
 
One thing that might be worth considering is a Windows tablet with a keyboard as part of the package. Microsoft themselves, Acer and Asus all do them; probably other companies as well. They are cheap and probably quite fast (solid state memory) but don't have much storage or particularly good graphics. On the gripping hand, battery life is great and they are all very light.
 
J Riff said:
4 GB? That means 2x2 GB and not many laptops came with that from the factory.
Click to expand...

Remember the zillions of people who refused to upgrade from XP until they had no choice? XP's physical memory limit was 4 GB, which meant buying more than that really wasn't helping. And given that Dell, Lenovo and other OEMs kept selling XP machines until 2010 (even though Microsoft discontinued support in 2008, OEMs were allowed to continue selling machines as long at the O/S distribution preceded June 30, 2008), you can see from the age of some of the other devices mentioned here that 4GB really hasn't been ludicrous for very long.
 
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