My current desktop is about 10 years old and well overdue for replacing. I want a laptop for convenience but don't want it to be useless in a couple years or easily broken. I'm not doing anything to taxing of it I think, mostly photo editing, some web surfing and writing, and some occasional streaming. What should I buy?
Your needs are pretty low. For the photo stuff, are you talking full on photoshop? If not, then as long as it isn't a chromebook, I think you'll be fine with just about anything out there.
In terms of future proofing, do you want to get into anything a little more heavy? 3D printing and designing models? CAD kind of stuff?
Lenovo or Asus seem to be the hot picks right now. I avoid the bigger names like HP or Dell. They seem to simply be platforms where they can accept big money for including bloatware and junk that you don't need.
I went Asus. I got a Republic of Gamers. I don't game, but I do a fair amount of 4K video editing, audio recording/mastering, etc. It is 2 years old right now and rock solid.
At this point in the game, I would strongly consider a dual-drive unit; a large HDD and a small SSD. On my Asus with an SSD for the system stuff, from the time I hit the power button to the login screen is 6 seconds. Wicked fast. I will leave it to the more knowledgeable folks on processor choices, but mine is an 8th gen core i7 that can overclock to 4.2g. Six cores at that speed is amazing. AMD has some great stuff with their latest Ryzen processors as well.
You don't need a ton of expensive stuff, but I would focus on a good video card and plenty of memory. Newer Windows stuff occupies lots of memory. Mine is 16gb with room for 16 more. Overkill for you, but I would say 8gb is a minimum for the photo editing/streaming
My current one is a dell that was $289 best buy clearance, touchscreen, and it's perfect for doing basically the same stuff you need plus older games via steam. They almost always have clearance ones sub $300 with solid features
My current Lenovo has been dependable. It works perfectly for general duties, ecu tuning and internet surfing. It bogs down pretty good with 3d rendering and video editing. I ended up buying a desktop to handle the heavy loads.
Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I think it was a Staples $400 deal.
I had a massive amount of bloatware and factory installed trojan with my last Lenovo purchased at Best Buy.
So. Here's my unscientific way of picking a laptop.
I go to slickdeals.net. Find what people say is a good deal and buy it. Worked out well so far
i did this with a Costco computer once. She is a pig with a breaking mouse button now.
Wally
What is you budget?
In reply to Mr_Asa :
I'm not looking at photoshop, mostly just taking them off my camera, maybe cropping them and putting them on a hard drive.
In reply to dean1484
I hadn't really decided on a budget. It's been a while since I bought a computer and don't know what to expect.
Good luck finding a Chromebook, schools are facing massive shortages right now. I have one for my son, I hear it can do anything that a PC can do but I am highly skeptical.
For a basic, do-it-all Laptop it is hard to beat an Apple Macbook Air, especially if you are an iPhone user. I hear the haters, but mine has been rock-solid for many years without a single issue. I just replaced the battery for less than $50 and it took 5 minutes. The one downside is that MS Office on the Mac is like 80% of what you get on a PC.
Work forces me to use a PC, and I have a Dell Lattitude 7400. I am on my second one in 6 months, the first one lasted a few months before it refused to connect to the internet. The company replaced it because they could not diagnose the issue...scary considering I work for a Fortune 500 IT company! Other than that, Windows is just fine these days, I transitioned from a Mac pretty easily. Acer, Lenovo, HP...they all make solid products. I would get one designed for a business user to avoid all the bloatware.
My wife has a MS Surface and it is in the shop more than a Fiat, no thanks!
Check out Tigerdirect.com, my company owns it and from what I hear their prices are pretty killer. (No, I don't get anything if you shop there LOL)
My previous laptop was an HP that was about $350. I bought it because it had all the right stuff. At the time, I mostly surfed and shopped with modest photo/video editing. It was so slow that I gave it to my friend who works in IT for a big company for some TLC and he was shocked at all the crap on it. He saved my personal stuff to an external, wiped it, and did a fresh install of win10 pro and it was so much better. I used it about two years and then donated it to the theater where I use it as a library of sound effects, music, and as a client for the lighting console.
Current Republic of Gamers laptop was $1400 retail which I got as an open box at Best Buy for $1100. It is stuffed with everything that was best-of-the-best in 2018.
I'm thinking for under $500 you should easily be able to get the processor/memory/SSD you will need, but it has been two years since I really shopped much for laptops.
My worklap top is a Lenovo X1 Carbon. Its lightyears ahead of our 6 year old Sony laptop at home.
You probably need to give some more info on budget and wants to get the best suggestion.
I'm personally rocking a 10 year old MSI laptop with a first gen i5 and have solidworks 2020 running as we speak. Over the years I added a ssd and some extra ram but if your use is light you can get away with something pretty cheap. For replacement I recently started looking at the Dell latitude 74xx stuff on eBay as it seems like good hardware for the price, that's said I'm curious to hear the suggestions of more tech savvy members.
I'm going to buck the trend a little bit, and tell you that laptops under $500 just aren't worth it. I bought one in a pinch when my last gaming laptop died and I regret it every single time I have to use it.
Entry level gaming laptops though, in the $500-700 range, may seem like overkill, but will actually have the grunt to be a bit more future proof should you decide you want to do more than crop some photos and browse the web.
Lenovo, asus, NOT Dell or HP. Avoid Toshiba hard drives.
Keep in mind, SSDs will die, with no warning or chance of recovery.
We bought this one and absolutely love it. Boot time is less than 5 seconds. its quick, does everything we need and even handles our horrific DSL well.
A couple of months ago I bought a updated laptop for running my business. My previous unit was never high spec and at 5 yrs of service was getting glichy and bogged down.
I had a few requirements/goals:
For me, and my wants I bought:
bobzilla said:We bought this one and absolutely love it. Boot time is less than 5 seconds. its quick, does everything we need and even handles our horrific DSL well.
Just to tie Bob's purchase to what I bought and what I wrote. The headline of Bob's computer reads:
As others have noted, without specifics of requirements and budget it's hard to say what will or will not work for you, but I will say that if your needs are met by a Chromebook you will need less hardware capability than you would for Windows, and it will very likely be cheaper. I bought an Acer 15" Chromebook with an i3 processor last year around Black Friday for $200 or so, and it can do pretty much everything you listed, though photo editing would be fairly limited.
I went to MicroCenter's website and they did not have similar to what I bought available at this time.
Via Pinchy's Tiger Direct, I did find what I bought for $412 (I paid $429)
Something powered by Intel will probably get you by.
But AMD's Ryzen processors are really kicking ass in almost every pricepoint.
Bob's new computer seems like a great fit for what you need.
If you're gonna buy one thing, i would say spend a bit more and get a bit bigger laptop with better cooling..
but if you're looking for a laptop to pair with a desktop.. a thin and light like what Bob bought is a great plan
The past 3 years have brought some amazing new stuff to the table for computers, and the computer Bob bought is one of the best ways to take advantage of the new Ryzen CPU's in a laptop.. without spending a bunch of money.
In reply to spacecadet (Forum Supporter) :
we went from a 10yo Dell e6520 to this. It's like the difference between my 78 C10 and a 2020 Silverado.
In reply to bobzilla :
yeah, it's first gen Zen from AMD, their laptop CPU's lag a generation behind the desktop ones.. but even still.. it's a big jump up.
the new 4000 series laptop processors are even better.. but are damn near impossible to get right now.. and are a lot mroe expensive than what you bought.. like basically double the price..
This ASUS ROG Gaming laptop leverages the newest generation of AMD laptop CPU's
working with 8 cores instead of 4, and a dedicated graphics card.
but it's $1k... so you get what you pay for..
8GB of ram is a practical bare minimum these days..
I sent you some email about used business laptops.
Separately, I am putting together an AMD Ryzen based desktop and I couldn't be more excited... https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8HWC3t
My company issued laptop is a Dell Latitude ES5450, it seems pretty rock solid. I think this particular model is discontinued, but refurbished ones are still available online from several sources for around $400.
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