UKC

Hello, does anyone know where I can get a good deal on a Laptop online? I'm looking for something similar to the dell inspiron 17 5000. (8gb ram, 17" screen, 1tb hd). Also, which brands are to be avoided?

Cheers

Jon

In reply to JD84: I'd have a look with the search function: this comes up every week or two...
You need to give us a budget!
You could try a Tier1 refurb e.g. http://www.tier1online.com/t1-06436-0000000014/hp-compaq-6830s-intel-core2-... and spend the rest on climbing

b

In reply to JD84:

Need a budget to give any realistic advice.

Avoid Dell, HP, Acer like the plague they are.

Good brands Toshiba, Fujitsu, Asus.

In reply to JD84:

Work gave me an HP EliteBook recently, which seems to be fine. They're quite expensive though. I was relieved to get one, as I'd been shopping around and found the myriad of variations quite overwhelming. I don't envy you. Good luck!

In reply to JD84:

If at all possible, go to a shop and poke them. PC world/currys/staples etc. are barely more expensive than online if you pick the right deal and a lot of the things that make a laptop good (quality of screen, size, touchpad, mouse buttons, weight, quality of chassis) you can see much better in store. You probably wouldn't buy a harness without having seen it so why a laptop?

As for brands, at the end of the day you get what you pay for. A lot of people have anecdotal stories about brand x or brand y being poor but these are isolated data points. If you ask enough people then you will find someone who has a good or bad experience with anything.

In reply to Removed User:



Dell are good price and I've never had any hardware issues.
HP put a lot of crap on the install, but again good hardware
Acer - no experience

In reply to JD84:

You might as well ask "what laptop do you have?" as these "recommend me an X" type of question always simply generate lots of "buy what I 've got, it's brilliant" type of responses.

In reply to Removed User:

I really think that 'what laptop' is an almost random punt.

As for the brands you may endorse or criticise, you can find any number of reviews on the web which will give the exact opposite view. Reviews on reliability and long term performance are almost always one person's particular experience- its almost impossible to get an objective and impartial best buy recommendation.

So get the nicest looking one I think....

In reply to Siward:

It's remarkable how people keep saying this. If someone deals with laptops daily and has done for years they get a personal feel for how specific brands fare when put against each other. The same goes for many things in life. If you look online you surely can find many reviews from people who have no idea, but the people who DO know about laptops know that dell/hp/acer are the brands people who don't know about electronics buy, mainly for kids or people who want cheap stuff for university. Similarly if you want something that will perform well over a long period of time and are easy to repair when they do get faults, they'd go with one of the Asian brands because they simply make better laptops.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Jon

In reply to JD84:
My personal recommendations are:
Get some level of solid state drive (SSD /SSHD - Solid State Hybrid Drive, a big hard drive with a small SSD in addition) - no longer the useless things they used to be, they are now a solid addition to any computer (if you pardon the pun :P). They are faster than your hard drive and store your OS and some of your most used programmes so that they are quicker to load up etc. They can cost a premium compared to HDD space, particularly on a large SSD, but generally an SSHD is only marginally more expensive and worth every penny!.

Bigger isn't always better!! - Do you really want a 17" laptop? My work laptop is a 13" and although I was sceptical at first, I now wouldn't get a big one again, it's so much lighter (1.4kg), I can fit it in just about any bag (which has the added advantages of being able to travel carry-on only and not carrying that obvious laptop bag to advertise to potential thieves) and also the battery life is far greater. You may not necessarily want a 13" because they can actually cost more than a larger one but even a 15" may be better for you.

Not necessarily for you but: Processor, processor, processor - depending on what you want to do with it, get the best processor you can, loads of folk end up having masses of RAM with a shitty processor and it just gets bottlenecked by the processor. However if you're just wanting one for general things like browsing the web and word then you don't really need to worry about it too much.

These are just my personal recommendations and as has been said umpteen times already, an idea of a budget is would be needed to recommend specific laptops.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have as regards what I've said or about computers in general.

In reply to Removed User:

Not sure what qualifies as "dealing with laptops daily", but I've heavily used various Acer, Dell and Apple over the past 15 years and haven't had reliability problems with any of them, except that they all seem to have equally porous keyboards. I had an Asus and it was a bit crap. I think people tend to get a couple more years out of their macs, but this could easily just be because they're so expensive to replace, or because Windows gets very slow over time.

In reply to JD84:

A problem that I have found with laptops is the ridiculous amount of maker's software running in the background. Toshiba are a serious offender but many others are similar. A machine with a clean windows install can be completely different.

Used many Dells, HP, Toshiba and others in recent years for everything from coffee shop lazy days to MRT mapping, offshore mooring calibrations and magnetic test and survey. Nothing wrong with Dell and HP if you have selected the correct tool for your job.

In reply to Jim Fraser:

If you buy from Microsoft direct they do a "Signature Edition" = no crapware at all, just Windows (I appreciate this may be a tautology...)

Usually costs an extra 5 quid or so for the privilege of your data not being whizzed across to anyone who wants (other than MS, of course!).

PC World are utterly shit though. Never take any form of payment in to PC World with you, makes it very easy to walk out again and still be wholesome.

Have just bought the niece a Toshiba Radius 11 Signature Edition which wasn't overpriced and she's very happy with. I'd go mad about the HDD speed and put in an SSD personally, but there you have it.

b

In reply to JD84:

Another vote for recon laptops (but be careful who you buy it from), go small form factor hence light, and replacing the HDD with SSD. I bought a recon Lenovo X201 which appeared pretty well unused, and once connected to 'tinterweb it advised me I was eligible for a brand new replacement battery from Lenovo (they'd had some problems). £220 and much better than what I could have had new for same price. SSD is a Samsung 850 EVO and it really flies.

Paul

In reply to Paul Evans: Agree - my preference would be a recon Lenovo ThinkPad X220 for a song from TierOne, with an SSD and max'ed out RAM, if I had to get a Windows machine. Cheap, fast, robust, light.

b

In reply to ben b:

Cheers for putting me onto tierone. Got a thinkpad from there in the end with 3 year warranty.

In reply to JD84:

No problem; nice little machines. Are you going to put an SSD in?

b

In reply to ben b:

It's got one in... 240gb I think. Will do the job anyway. Was very close to spending silly money on something but thankfully saw sense. You don't need to spend a grand to check your emails it turns out.

In reply to JD84:



Depending on your budget a sensible alternative can be a much smaller screen for portability and SSD instead of a large HHD, use a large desktop monitor, and portable HHD when at home - not too expensive and the HHD gives a good back up route.

I think nowadays you get what you pay for in terms of screen quality (a good 13 inch can be much better to view than a cheap 17inch), keyboard and ruggedness from all the well known brands.

My Dell XPS 13 wasn't cheap but I'm confident it will see me out, my previous mid range HP started to fall apart after 5 years