Opinions on Laptop?

My old laptop went bust, so I repaired an even older laptop and have been using it happily ever since. Now that I have enough moolah to invest on a new one, I'd like to know which laptop would be the best bang for buck.


My budget (stretching it to the limit): US $900-$950 [₤567-₤598]. I can manage more than that, but I'm buying a One Plus One with the rest.

My requirements: I use my laptop mainly for writing stuff and surfing blogs/videos/porn, but a heavy-duty game makes its occasional appearance too. I just want a laptop that can handle anything without stuttering, especially the heavy duty games.

Brands: Some say Toshibas are hardy, but I'm willing to look into other brands. Anything that's good, please feel free to point it out.


Do you have any laptop in mind that'll fit my bill? I just want performance for my price. That's it.


ETA: I bought a HP with 15.6" screen, 1Tb HDD, 8gb RAM, 2 gb graphics (AMD Radeon), Win 8.1 (yuck) and an AMD processor with 2.2ghz speed. The original price was like 717 USD, but I got it at a steal price of 515 USD from the dealer.

So far, so good. It can run games pretty fine, except for the ones that use an emulator. Ta muchly to everyone who contributed and advised me (BTW, that external graphics thingy was very cool, Lee). This discussion has been concluded.

For the love of God, don't bump this thread.

I have two Dells that I like very much. If you buy online from Dell there is no preloaded bloatware. For around $900 US, you can get a 15.6" screen (or maybe a 17"), Core I-7 5th gen chip, 16 MB RAM and a 1TB SATA drive. For a little more you can get a solid state drive, but they have lower capacity. They also sell AlienWare laptops, made for gaming. But they run around $1250 & up.

Of course, computers are like cars...You will always find some who swear BY a certain brand, and others who swear AT the same brand.

SexyLitForAll said:

I have two Dells that I like very much. If you buy online from Dell there is no preloaded bloatware. For around $900 US, you can get a 15.6" screen (or maybe a 17"), Core I-7 5th gen chip, 16 MB RAM and a 1TB SATA drive. For a little more you can get a solid state drive, but they have lower capacity. They also sell AlienWare laptops, made for gaming. But they run around $1250 & up.

Of course, computers are like cars...You will always find some who swear BY a certain brand, and others who swear AT the same brand.

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That's sweet! I'll definitely check out Dell and see if I find something to my level.

My concerns with 1TB hard-disks: I read quite a few reviews, and they said it has a tendency to crash. All of my writings and art would be down the drain if that happens.

I was wondering if someone has had a bad experience with it, or is it just a negative hype floating around?


I'm not looking forward to an Alienware. They heat up like frying pans and stutter sometimes during heavy games, which is totally unacceptable at that price. I tested a brand new model recently, and I wasn't exactly satisfied with the experience. Although the hardware is unmatched, I feel the price is somewhat bloated.

I'm on the phone at the moment but here's my recommendation. Leave the visual-demanding video games to consoles and desktops. Buy an i5 with 8GB RAM and NO TOUCH SCREEN. You can use the rest of the money on programs like Microsoft Office and a decent antivirus if you don't get the free ones.

You're not doing yourself any favors going Alienware. I guarantee you that it will be outdated within a few months. Graphic cards these days are the size of laptops. And there's a ton of heat coming from that which will kill your machine.

You might look at Acer or Asus computers, both fairly inexpensive and hearty. I have been using my Acer (branded a Gateway) for about 10 years, without problem.

Try this one.

A little lite on the disk space, only 500 GB, but quite a good machine and at least $100 under your budget.

ETA: I too would leave gaming to desktops and consoles...although there are laptops that can handle heavy duty gaming, they are more like a desktop than a portable laptop. Plus, they aren't up-gradable as the games become more and more dependent on high end graphics cards.

I've had good luck with Toshiba laptops for many years. For what that's worth.

Also, regarding hard drives of any size, just ASSUME they are going to crash one fine day. You'll probably be right. Make a point of backing up somehow or other - external drive, cloud backup, big USB flash drive, whatever. The backup doesn't have to be particularly reliable. It just has to have a separate copy of all your work, ideally every day (if you automate it) or at least once a month (if you do it by hand).

Carnevil9 said:

Also, regarding hard drives of any size, just ASSUME they are going to crash one fine day. You'll probably be right. Make a point of backing up somehow or other - external drive, cloud backup, big USB flash drive, whatever. The backup doesn't have to be particularly reliable. It just has to have a separate copy of all your work, ideally every day (if you automate it) or at least once a month (if you do it by hand).

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This. My partner's Toshiba had a HD failure just a month ago, no backups, lost the lot.

There is also a program called cute ftp which is a huge server that you get space from and can upload all your documents to.

The Soulful Bard said:

That's sweet! I'll definitely check out Dell and see if I find something to my level.

My concerns with 1TB hard-disks: I read quite a few reviews, and they said it has a tendency to crash. All of my writings and art would be down the drain if that happens.

Click to expand...

I don't know if it's in your budget, but if you can, buy an external hard drive or USB and save all your work onto that as well as your laptop.

The Soulful Bard said:

My old laptop went bust, so I repaired an even older laptop and have been using it happily ever since. Now that I have enough moolah to invest on a new one, I'd like to know which laptop would be the best bang for buck.


My budget (stretching it to the limit): US $900-$950 [₤567-₤598]. I can manage more than that, but I'm buying a One Plus One with the rest.

My requirements: I use my laptop mainly for writing stuff and surfing blogs/videos/porn, but a heavy-duty game makes its occasional appearance too. I just want a laptop that can handle anything without stuttering, especially the heavy duty games.

Brands: Some say Toshibas are hardy, but I'm willing to look into other brands. Anything that's good, please feel free to point it out.


Do you have any laptop in mind that'll fit my bill? I just want performance for my price. That's it.


All help/opinions are appreciated.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

This thread was recently posted in the HT:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1189975

and may contain some helpful / useful tidbits of information.



Personally, I have always used Dells at work, with little issue or fuss, and currently use a Latitude machine with Windows 7 Pro that runs about as good as can be expected from a MicroSoft operating system, and the loads of software installed.

They can set up a machine for you to handle your gaming and net surfing needs, but you may find these priced out of your budget.

Regardless of hard-drive size, I echo the advice of other posters and suggest an external drive or removable back-up to save your work to.

Just had another disc drive fail. Bought it a year ago. Tuned out the seller sent me a used drive when it was supposed to be new. I had it a year. The SMART data on it showed it had been running for 830 days. Way longer than what it should have been even if I left it running for the full year.

Bought a new drive, it had 0 days on it. The drive before that one crashed but it was 8 years old before it showed signs of going kaboom.

Just goes to show, you don't know when it will fail.


Backup, backup, backup.

i would recommend asus or lenovo. laptops aren't a place to skimp.

my research suggests dell is a manufacturer to avoid.

for backups, how reliably will the machine be online? perhaps a cloud solution (e.g., google drive, skydrive, etc)?

ed

Ugh a few things, what do you consider a heavy duty game?

The newest call of duty? or the witcher 3? Or somthing else on your mind.

Secondly, external hardrives. Cheap compact and reliable.

In general I recommend MSI
http://www.staples.ca/en/Laptop-Computers/MSI/cat_CL200591_2-CA_1_20001?fids=4224937396

there are some candian prices.

But with a laptop you are talking a couple grand for anything closing in on the higher end.

Your money would be better spent on a office desktop (from a gaming perspective) - same power half the price.

In the end though it is up to you.

If you want to do a little gaming, spend a little more and get an i7 chip. As others have said, store backups of your files either to an external drive or the cloud -- like Carbonite. The new Dell laptop I bought for work came with a built in Cloud backup utility.

I do my writing using Google Docs, so it's automatically saved to the cloud.

Windows 8 is a horrible OS for laptops and desktops. I would recommend getting a Windows 7 machine which are still available online from Dell, HP and others. Windows 7 comes with a free upgrade to Windows 10 which is coming out soon.

I have had the best luck with Dell laptops -- I'm typing this post on a Dell XP laptop I originally got for work in 2008, and it still works great, but it is getting a little long in the tooth.

I've been a Systems Administrator for a little over a decade now for a small company with about 50 users. From my experiences here's my take on the brands:

Best:

Dell - they had some QC problems when Michael Dell left the company but that has turned around since he came back. We are still running an EDI server we bought from Dell in 2006 (which is soon to be retired). Downside -- customer service is now in India -- but they probably all are now.

HP - Our marketing guy has two HP laptop that were reliable. Our main ERP server is an HP and we haven't had one incident with it in five years.

Worst:

Toshiba - My last work laptop was a Toshiba. It was quite flimsy, but fairly reliable. I had to replace the monitor\screen cable after about two years. My boss had the same model and had the same problem. He also had two hard drive failures, one of which the machine started smoking.

Lenovo - Since the Chinese bought the company, the quality has gone down. My boss bought a Lenovo laptop in January and has had nothing but problems with it -- finally having to return it for a replacement.

Heavy Duty games for me are the latest Call of Duty or Crysis Series. FPS (First Person Shooter) is what I usually play. Sometimes, it's an open world like GTA 5. That's it, I guess. I don't play a variety of games, just a few series that I like.

I know I should leave heavy duty games to the desktop, but I'm not an ardent gamer in that sense. I play for 15 minutes or a max of half-an-hour when I get the time. A laptop that can handle those 30 minutes of nirvana will be great. I don't have the time and place for a desktop right now, but when I have it, I'll ditch my laptop the first day itself.

I've used Google cloud for a few very important drafts, but nothing more than that. I use pen-drives for backup. Currently, I own a San Disk 64 GB that I use to back up documents and important files. There's still another 45 GB left of it. Portable HDD aren't my thing. I still prefer the nifty pen drives over those. I always try to keep a back-up whenever possible, but I need assurance that the disk drive of my laptop won't blow up on my face one fine morning.

Personally speaking, I've used Toshiba. It survived two coffee spills, a meter fall down to the hard ground and gave me six years of service before its internal fan and battery died. My mechanic says that can be fixed, so technically, it *still* isn't dead. My sis uses Dell, and it's running great too. It gave a visual problem, after a few months, but that got fixed too.

I know not every laptop, even those coming out of the same assembly line, have the same build. There's some inconsistency everywhere. So that'd be luck on my part to get a decent build that'll last long.

I see there are some conflicting views regarding Dell and Toshiba. I'm a bit confused now, because both worked fine as far as I've seen.

You will not find a laptop that will run current gen Call of Duty nor Crysis 3 with $1,000. You can do that on a custom-built desktop PC (for $1,000) but not a store-bought laptop. Besides, what's the point of forking out the extra cash for 15 minutes of a video game like CoD/GTA/Crysis?

I'm pretty sure one session of Call of Duty is a bare minimum of 30 minutes with the lobby wait, loadout selection, game, endgame, etc. And one level is probably averaging around 30 minutes as well.

Pre-built laptops are not meant for gaming unless we're talking Alienware (overpriced crap brand name).

I don't play games for the fun of it. It's a distraction. My thoughts wander all over the place when I play a game. It also gives me ideas for a new draft and the likes. Sort of a therapy for my hyper-imaginative brain.

Well that's disappointing to hear, but we're talking about games and that is one thing I can live without. Well, if a laptop can't run games at that price end, I'd better spend less for something that can at least help me do the other, more important jobs like my writing.

So, any advice for downsized writing laptops that won't be a pain in my arse?

I have an external keyboard for writing purpose, so one problem solved.

dream operator quoth:
lenovo - since the chinese bought the company, the quality has gone down. my boss bought a lenovo laptop in january and has had nothing but problems with it -- finally having to return it for a replacement.

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lenovo has always been a chinese company. the thinkpad brand was originated by IBM but lenovo's acquisition of the thinkpad brand from IBM was a decade ago. the lenovo laptop i use personally is approaching 2 years and the work-issued one was just fine. i am inclined to think that your boss's laptop was atypical, given my own experiences.

soulful bard: yeah, gaming rigs are extremely resource-intensive and are generally the top-end in terms of specs. if you wanna do something to relax, try something else. :>

re: backups, a flash drive is good, but as someone who's actually lost a flash drive with critical material on it, don't rely on a physical medium that fits in a pocket. install google drive and use it to replace your my documents folder. then also backup to the flash drive from it. problem solved.

just how much data do you have to backup realistically? i've only got about a dozen GB of data i actually need backed up and you're talking 1 TB. are you a videographer or something?

for manufacturers: i think insofar as a consensus exists, asus is absolutely your choice. asus is the manufacturer of several pieces of hardware i own (external blu-ray drive, nexus 7 tablet) and their equipment is excellent quality IMX for a decent price point. i was using an asus laptop at work that had to be replaced with another machine, but the only issue i ever had with it was inability to skype and the laptop had been through several users before i got it.

i agree with dream operator re: OSes. skip win 8 or even 8.1. you should be able to find windows 7 boxes easily enough.

ed

silverwhisper said:

lenovo has always been a chinese company. the thinkpad brand was originated by IBM but lenovo's acquisition of the thinkpad brand from IBM was a decade ago. the lenovo laptop i use personally is approaching 2 years and the work-issued one was just fine. i am inclined to think that your boss's laptop was atypical, given my own experiences.

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Most of my friends have been happy with Lenovo, but they fucked up bigtime last year by deliberately shipping machines with pre-installed adware that (probably not intentionally) badly broke security. Their excuse was that it was supposed to "supplement the shopping experience" (read: they were paid $250k to do it.)

After initially denying the size of the problem, they've apologised and promised never to do it again, but I'd be hesitant to buy from then even if I knew the machine was clean; companies that screw their customers over like that need to be punished for it.

Christopher is correct...most gaming laptops are very expensive and actually are desktops disguised as a laptop. They run hot, they seem to crap out quicker than a equivalent desktop and they cost an arm and a leg, over $1,000. They are also not very flexible in upgrading them...sure you can swap a diskdrive, but that's about it. The graphic chipset is usually on the motherboard, so it can't be swapped out.

Better off to get a descent laptop and forgo the gaming and spend the money you save on the laptop to upgrade any existing desktop you might have.

Christopher2012 said:

You will not find a laptop that will run current gen Call of Duty nor Crysis 3 with $1,000. You can do that on a custom-built desktop PC (for $1,000) but not a store-bought laptop. Besides, what's the point of forking out the extra cash for 15 minutes of a video game like CoD/GTA/Crysis?

I'm pretty sure one session of Call of Duty is a bare minimum of 30 minutes with the lobby wait, loadout selection, game, endgame, etc. And one level is probably averaging around 30 minutes as well.

Pre-built laptops are not meant for gaming unless we're talking Alienware (overpriced crap brand name).

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I've been very satisfied with Lenovo for my last couple of laptops. A relative bought a $500 14 inch screen model at Best Buy and it's rock solid.

After three Toshiba laptops, I went out a year ago bought the top end TOshiba with Windows 8, it crashed on me 4 times in the first 24 hours.

I took it back, windows 8 is awful. I ended up buying a Macbook pro which after 18 months I still don't find simple or intuitive, it was very expensive but I prefer it to windows 8.

I couldn't find a good windows 7 machine at the time.

Like I said, I can live without games. It isn't THE determining factor for an eligible laptop. Since I can't get a laptop that can play games of that level, I think I would be better off saving my money for a future desktop.

*shrugs*

So assuming that laptops are going to suck at gaming, I'm thinking about ditching the gaming option altogether, and focus on a laptop that's good at doing small stuff like writing and playing videos.

I don't have to fork out $1000 if I do that, right? I think can get a good one in the $500 range.




@silverwhisper:

I'm a med student, part-time photographer, part-time writer and a full-time lunatic. There's about 300 GB worth of data currently but my main shit, the one which I cannot live without, is about 8.5 GB. There's draft of my stories, ideas, mine and other's published articles, photographs and videos (art, not porn, in case you're wondering).

I keep my flashdrive in a safe. Literally. It sees light of the day only when I have to backup files from my laptop. Other than that, it's inside. With a thing that small, I don't trust my own pockets to hold it in.

I'm getting the hang of Google Drive. Cloud is surely the way to go in near future. But I think until my data becomes unmanageable, I'll hang on to my lil pendrive buddy.

There are so many brands to choose from, so I'm treading carefully out here. Too many people are complaining about Toshiba, so I'm guessing their quality control manager has gone on an extended holiday.

I love Win 7. Even if I get hold of a laptop with Win 8/8.1, I'll format the fuck out of it and replace it with Win 7. I love it *that* much.

I swear by an old Toshiba. My husband swears by an Asus. I can't help much in manufacturer department.

My friends usually recommend a comparative analysis of specs of various companies. Do that after you've decided what you're looking for, AND your budget range. Since you're not looking to play games in a laptop, start looking at writing notepads that can start from as low as 280-300 USD. The hardisks are a bummer, though, so check that out too beforehand.


*hugs*

Here you go...on first page all under $500...all good machines...all Windows 7. I would only deal with the new ones, I have never bought a refurbished laptop.