Laptop Experts

[cookelad]

If you were buying a laptop in the near future what would you buy?

I think my iPhone and iPad are great bits of kit, this is leading me to think I should splash out and get a Mac, everyone I know with a Mac says they're great but expensive, so is it worth the extra money?

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

If you were buying a laptop in the near future what would you buy?

I think my iPhone and iPad are great bits of kit, this is leading me to think I should splash out and get a Mac, everyone I know with a Mac says they're great but expensive, so is it worth the extra money?

Obvious questions are 'what are your requirements and what is your budget?'

 

[Rooter]

Obvious questions are 'what are your requirements and what is your budget?'

yup, is it a sit at home laptop, or one you are gonna lug round London etc, that had a huge impact on my decision making. budget is key here!

In my humble opinion having used windows since windows 95 and every version since, windows 8 is fantastic. I had a mac bookpro for about a year and i really didnt get on with it. Snow leopard or whatever OS it was i did not like and i personally felt it was slow. One thing i will say, if you go for a windows 8 laptop (you probably dont have much choice these days!) there is a plugin called "classic shell" and in my opinion is a must, it gives you a windows XP/7 look and feel. I am not one for all the "app" type look and feel.

As for actual equipment, i have a toshiba Satellite Z930 which is a 13" ultrabook and is the best laptop i have ever had.

 

[cookelad]

Obvious questions are 'what are your requirements and what is your budget?'

Budget isn't really an issue (without going silly), I need something that'll operate as a home computer (so t'inters and games etc), a remote desktop for working from home (I know I can run programs like office through a Mac (and obviously a Windows Laptop)) and also for potentially doing a bit of part-time studying in the not too distant.

I'll be honest (as if you couldn't already tell) I am leaning towards the Mac, so I'm just trying to gage opinion as it's a lot of cash to part with when a Windows laptop is half the price !

 

[guest100718]

Budget isn't really an issue (without going silly), I need something that'll operate as a home computer (so t'inters and games etc), a remote desktop for working from home (I know I can run programs like office through a Mac (and obviously a Windows Laptop)) and also for potentially doing a bit of part-time studying in the not too distant.

I'll be honest (as if you couldn't already tell) I am leaning towards the Mac, so I'm just trying to gage opinion as it's a lot of cash to part with when a Windows laptop is half the price !

if you dont care about money then get a mac. If you juts want a cheap workhorse then something like the tek69 from packard bell fits the bill. 8gig ram , quad care AMD and 1tb drive all for £270. you can evemn easily upgrade to a SSD for about 50 quid.

 

[IanG]

My new Macbook pro (13" Retina display, 16GB RAM 256GB SSD) has just been delivered to home this very day for my amusement tonight

So I guess that is what I would recommend for me.

Now how alike are we....

 

[cookelad]

if you dont care about money then get a mac.

Haha I'd love to not care about money, unfortunately it's not the case though!

My missus has a Toshiba which she loves might be worth a look to see what up to date stuff they've got on the market!

 

[PhilTheFragger]

SSD drives are the way forward, and you can pick up a 240 GB one for about £120 ish

240 Gb is about the smallest i would want to put in a laptop unless it was holding a very small amount of data. however over the next 2 years the price will fall and capacities will go up so they will be seen in more mainstream computers.

there is a reason why an AMD quad core laptop costs only £270, because whilst it might seem OK now, 18 months down the line it will be on a go slow, Intel are streets ahead of AMD so do yourself a favour and look at a 3rd generation I5 or I3 if you have to

 

[Rooter]

SSD drives are the way forward, and you can pick up a 240 GB one for about £120 ish

240 Gb is about the smallest i would want to put in a laptop unless it was holding a very small amount of data. however over the next 2 years the price will fall and capacities will go up so they will be seen in more mainstream computers.

there is a reason why an AMD quad core laptop costs only £270, because whilst it might seem OK now, 18 months down the line it will be on a go slow, Intel are streets ahead of AMD so do yourself a favour and look at a 3rd generation I5 or I3 if you have to

Just a note, my laptop is SSD, i only have 120GB. after 1 year of business use, i have 50GB free, I utilise cloud and NAS backups and store anything of importance (family picture etc) elsewhere.

The sooner people realise that the laptop is not the ideal place to permanently store your family photos and critical files the better. NAS and cloud storage should be used!!

And to back up Phil, if you go windows, get Intel!!

 

[guest100718]

SSD drives are the way forward, and you can pick up a 240 GB one for about £120 ish

240 Gb is about the smallest i would want to put in a laptop unless it was holding a very small amount of data. however over the next 2 years the price will fall and capacities will go up so they will be seen in more mainstream computers.

there is a reason why an AMD quad core laptop costs only £270, because whilst it might seem OK now, 18 months down the line it will be on a go slow, Intel are streets ahead of AMD so do yourself a favour and look at a 3rd generation I5 or I3 if you have to

As ever it all depends on what you intend to do and your budget. To suggest that you should always go Intel over AMD is poor advice.

 

[CMAC]

As ever it all depends on what you intend to do and your budget. To suggest that you should always go Intel over AMD is poor advice.

agreed- wasn't that long ago AMD was the flavour to get especially for gaming and reliability of drivers.



@OP, I am scunnered with 4 weeks of Windows major issues- thats over the weekly minor windows issues you get. I am also getting a mac and will run Windows for 2 applications and MAC for everything else

 

[Rooter]

As ever it all depends on what you intend to do and your budget. To suggest that you should always go Intel over AMD is poor advice.

but a middle of the road AMD is not as good as a middle of the road Intel. IMHO if the budget allowed I would always chose intel over AMD unless for some specific reason (say a gaming rig) i would always go intel.

 

[guest100718]

but a middle of the road AMD is not as good as a middle of the road Intel. IMHO if the budget allowed I would always chose intel over AMD unless for some specific reason (say a gaming rig) i would always go intel.

No problem, and if he has cash to burn then sure go i7 and 16 gig RAM with a decent SSD.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Haha I'd love to not care about money, unfortunately it's not the case though!

My missus has a Toshiba which she loves might be worth a look to see what up to date stuff they've got on the market!

Snap-pish - my daughter has a basic Toshiba laptop (a C50-A-157) - but plenty of memory and well good enough processor. No touch screen which I think she rather wishes she had but no big deal. But It's her uni laptop. She seems to be angling for an iPad at some point - though if she is she can buy it herself.

 

[jp5]

Nothing wrong with a decent mid-range Windows laptop and at less than half the price of a MacBook it's a no-brainer in my eyes.

Lenovo w/ AMD processor has served me very well and saved me £600+ compared to a MacBook.

 

[Foxholer]

If budget is a concern, don't even think about a Mac!

Go for a middle to upper quartile spec PC that will be outdated but pretty much upgradeable, piecemal if required in a year or 2.

The laptop I am using to type this is 8 years old - with only memory upgrade (XP too). It'll become the spare again when I can be bothered to get the significantly faster 5 year old one sorted out - the 20p bit that has 'failed' will cost £100 to get at and fix!

Macs are rather good, but a really hefty wad of cash whenever you upgrade!

 

[PhilTheFragger]

As ever it all depends on what you intend to do and your budget. To suggest that you should always go Intel over AMD is poor advice.

So good advice is to buy a really cheap one with a very mediocre processor which will be as slow as a dead sea slug 2 years down the line. Im a PC engineer with 15 years experience and I deal with 2 year old slow AMD units all the time and trust me, people are really not happy when you tell them that there is not much you can do to fix it and if they had spend another £50 at time of purchase, they could have got an I3 and not have the problem.

buy cheap, buy twice is ever true

All I am saying is that if you can stretch your budget to an Intel CPU you will be doing yourself a favour, if the budget wont reach, then you just have to accept that the laptop wont last as long, how is that poor advice?

 

[Foxholer]

So good advice is to buy a really cheap one with a very mediocre processor which will be as slow as a dead sea slug 2 years down the line. Im a PC engineer with 15 years experience and I deal with 2 year old slow AMD units all the time and trust me, people are really not happy when you tell them that there is not much you can do to fix it and if they had spend another £50 at time of purchase, they could have got an I3 and not have the problem.

buy cheap, buy twice is ever true

All I am saying is that if you can stretch your budget to an Intel CPU you will be doing yourself a favour, if the budget wont reach, then you just have to accept that the laptop wont last as long, how is that poor advice?

It used to be that AMD units were significantly faster than Intel ones at the same price point. Has something changed in the last few years? Or were the AMD units only designed for that period, so didn't have the parallelism etc that Intel had built in, but not used by the O/S.

I've always had Intels simply because of the 'fear' of such compromises. It was the same in the early days - I skipped the 286 because it was a kludge whereas the more expensive 386 wasn't. The 286 did get the Apollo guys to the moon (and even back) several times though!

 

[PhilTheFragger]

It used to be that AMD units were significantly faster than Intel ones at the same price point. Has something changed in the last few years? Or were the AMD units only designed for that period, so didn't have the parallelism etc that Intel had built in, but not used by the O/S.

I've always had Intels simply because of the 'fear' of such compromises. It was the same in the early days - I skipped the 286 because it was a kludge whereas the more expensive 386 wasn't. The 286 did get the Apollo guys to the moon (and even back) several times though!

When I was a system builder ( about 15-8 years ago) i used AMD Athlon processors all the time as they were as fast, but cheaper than the Pentium 3 / 4 CPU's at that time.

However for the last 5 years,with the launch of the I series, Intel have been way ahead of AMD . Now on the 4th generation I cpus and they are very good. get an I5 and put in a SSD = I7 performance. no brainer really

 

[Foxholer]

When I was a system builder ( about 15-8 years ago) i used AMD Athlon processors all the time as they were as fast, but cheaper than the Pentium 3 / 4 CPU's at that time.

However for the last 5 years,with the launch of the I series, Intel have been way ahead of AMD . Now on the 4th generation I cpus and they are very good. get an I5 and put in a SSD = I7 performance. no brainer really

That explains it!

I think my Lappy awaiting GOMA to fix power connector is a P4. This one is a 1.5Ghz Centrino in a D600 - with huge 30Gb HDD and running XP Pro! Serves the purpose though!