Laptop

[rulefan]

Anything with an Intel I3 or I5 7xxx or 8xxx cpu, 4 or 8 Gb of Ram will do, but the main thing is getting a SSD hard drive.

Do not go below 256 Gb of space

Enjoy

As it appears you are the man, what do you think of this for my wife who wants to move from a 5+ year old Galaxy Note10 to a Windows 10 laptop which makes it easier to understand my PC.
She only uses email, booking tee times, storing photos, some letter writing and primarily internet shop browsing (and buying of course).
https://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-id...28gb-ssd-15-6-inch-full-hd-grey-dark/p4255670

or either of these?

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/s_action/compare/10180938-10180961.html

 

[PhilTheFragger]

As it appears you are the man, what do you think of this for my wife who wants to move from a 5+ year old Galaxy Note10 to a Windows 10 laptop which makes it easier to understand my PC.
She only uses email, booking tee times, storing photos, some letter writing and primarily internet shop browsing (and buying of course).
https://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-id...28gb-ssd-15-6-inch-full-hd-grey-dark/p4255670

or either of these?

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/s_action/compare/10180938-10180961.html

Well the John Lewis one has the SSD drive, so it will easily out perform the Currys one, however at 128Gb, it is a tad small,
Windows major updates can be 10Gb in size and im concerned that the hard drive could fill up

Have a look at this https://www.ebuyer.com/885238-hp-255-g7-ryzen-3-8gb-256gb-hd-15-6in-win10-pro-laptop-7de72ea-abu

Its a HP 15 inch laptop with a 256 SSD 8Gb of RAM and is about £6 more expensive than the John Lewis one

 

[nickjdavis]

Well the John Lewis one has the SSD drive, so it will easily out perform the Currys one, however at 128Gb, it is a tad small,
Windows major updates can be 10Gb in size and im concerned that the hard drive could fill up

Have a look at this https://www.ebuyer.com/885238-hp-255-g7-ryzen-3-8gb-256gb-hd-15-6in-win10-pro-laptop-7de72ea-abu

Its a HP 15 inch laptop with a 256 SSD 8Gb of RAM and is about £6 more expensive than the John Lewis one

That HP is pretty much what I bought the wife for Xmas except her one had a Ryzen 5 processor....she seems very happy with it.

 

[rulefan]

Well the John Lewis one has the SSD drive, so it will easily out perform the Currys one, however at 128Gb, it is a tad small,
Windows major updates can be 10Gb in size and im concerned that the hard drive could fill up

Have a look at this https://www.ebuyer.com/885238-hp-255-g7-ryzen-3-8gb-256gb-hd-15-6in-win10-pro-laptop-7de72ea-abu

Its a HP 15 inch laptop with a 256 SSD 8Gb of RAM and is about £6 more expensive than the John Lewis one

That one seems to have the advantage in that it has a CD slot.
I have a 'gold' MS Office 2000 Premium and Lotus SmartSuite Millennium, both working beautifully on my PC, which I would like to install on the laptop.

 

[spongebob59]

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp...tb-cloud-storage-369-using-code-at-ao-3378356

 

[rulefan]

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp...tb-cloud-storage-369-using-code-at-ao-3378356

Only 14" and no CD I'm afraid

 

[spongebob59]

Finally looking to get one myself, seen this deal

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp...gb-ram-32-gb-intel-optane-ips-full-hd-3399734

Budget is £500 so any other suggestions ?

 

[GreiginFife]

Finally looking to get one myself, seen this deal

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp...gb-ram-32-gb-intel-optane-ips-full-hd-3399734

Budget is £500 so any other suggestions ?

That deal doesn't seem to exist any longer. Personally, if you can hold off I would wait to see what the AMD Ryzen 4000 series come in at first as the performance is expected to be insane.

Laptop market is saturated, so much crap out there that, at £500 you are right in the middle of the range, so it becomes a bit hit or miss. Easy to find a decent machine but just as easy to find a total paper weight.

 

[GreiginFife]

Finally looking to get one myself, seen this deal

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp...gb-ram-32-gb-intel-optane-ips-full-hd-3399734

Budget is £500 so any other suggestions ?

On reflection, I would only recommend a laptop these days if portability is THE ONLY driver. I now only have one laptop or work as it's essential to be portable.

If it's just a handiness thing then I would recommend looking towards small form factor (not NUC) PCs that fit in cases not dissimilar in size to a PS4, but use full size components where future proofing is greter through easier and more flexible upgrading. For your £500 budget I could build a very capable machine based on a Ryzen APU which has far superior graphics capability to ANY Intel based iGPU chip and 16gb of 3200MHz RAM.
Compare that to a laptop with, say an i5-8265u based laptop with 8GB of 2400MHz RAM which would cost roughly the same and the Ryzen based system would have min 20% more performance for the same price.

Only thing you lose is portability. So this is why I say that, for me, is the only differentiator. I find that in the last year, I have been asked to build more SFF PCs (that are connected directly to big screen TVs) than I have for full desktops or recommended laptops.

NUCs are another matter, but suffer temperature issues quite a lot.

 

[ScienceBoy]

Under £500 for an all rounder really means going second hand as you will struggle to have the graphical power for any games at that price point. I would guess £600-700 for all rounder is better.

If it’s just for office work then that’s more realistic to go under £500.

 

[spongebob59]

Dont' really game anymore and we're having a rejig in the study (box room) so just see it as an easier way to tidy up all the cable, its like spaghetti junction at the back of the desktop.

 

[GreiginFife]

Dont' really game anymore and we're having a rejig in the study (box room) so just see it as an easier way to tidy up all the cable, its like spaghetti junction at the back of the desktop.

These days the only cables you really need from a desktop/SFF/NUC are power and HDMI/Dispalyport. Wireless keyboard & mouse or wireless all in one and wifi network card mean its as tidy as any other device.

I wasn't recommending a small form factor for gaming though but they are brilliant for HTPC as a "home hub" for entertainment. Better the graphics capability the better the resolutions it can support rather than meaning better graphics for gaming (although the Ryzen 3400G that I use a lot is very capable at playing eSports titles.).

 

[ScienceBoy]

wasn't recommending a small form factor for gaming though but they are brilliant for HTPC as a "home hub" for entertainment.

There is a whole subreddit who would jump at the chance to show what SFF gaming can be. The Corsair One is a prime example of what can be done by the companies, the hobbyists do amazing things too!

I personally have an ITX gaming rig that breezes through 1080p and will do 1440p 144hz at the next upgrade.

Size is not an indication of power!

 

[GreiginFife]

There is a whole subreddit who would jump at the chance to show what SFF gaming can be. The Corsair One is a prime example of what can be done by the companies, the hobbyists do amazing things too!

I personally have an ITX gaming rig that breezes through 1080p and will do 1440p 144hz at the next upgrade.

Size is not an indication of power!

And nor did I state it was or wasn't. What i did suggest is that it's harder to keep a SFF cool when under load. It takes a dedication to thoroughly plan an ITX build with sufficient power and cooling.
As TDPs come down it will become less of a burden but for now it does still present a challenge to all but people like yourself that have the knowledge to build.
As a "normalised" SFF then HTPC is an ideal use case IMO.

Personally, I used to have an iTX build for gaming but as more space opened up it was pointless to choose that over a full ATX with a large cooling solution.
As I am also running a RX5700XT card (not a brilliant choice, I admit) a SFF case would probably melt with the temps that thing throws out.

 

[ScienceBoy]

And nor did I state it was or wasn't.

And nor did I state you suggested that, I purposely did not use any language that was to prove you wrong or right.

I have limited space on a small desk in a corner of a small room and the ITX allows me two monitors and room to go to a 27" for main monitor.