Buying a Laptop Help Reqd

Baza 07

Baza 07

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Hi all,i'm thinking of buying a laptop for around £450,£550,but when your not PC savvy its a bloody
minefield,so any help would be gratefully appreciated,at the moment i've a HP desktop 64bit,
what i'm wanting to use it for is only the usual stuff Youtube and general PC work ie a bit of home
office work (not the government HO ) plus i've lots of photos,so i'm not sure of how much space
i need,also fancy a 16"screen and CD player,cant think of owt else
Thanks in advance Baza
 
Very few laptops come with a CD/DVD player so just get a player that plugs into a USB port for the few times you need it.
Photo storage: Not a good idea to use a laptop for long term storage. Again, use a standalone device and maybe a cloud backup.
I bought a laptop a year ago from Argos when they had 20% off. It was an Asus and is very good for just over £300. It's up to £379 now https://www.argos.co.uk/product/4709534?clickPR=plp:12:52 15.6" screen, next size up is 17"

Same price at JL with 2 year warranty https://www.johnlewis.com/asus-vivo...512gb-ssd-15-6-inch-full-hd-silver/p111268563
Don't buy the MS365 or use the McAfee. Win 11 has a perfectly good virus/malware protection built in. I use Libre Office which is free and does everything I need instead of buying MS365

No need to spend more for a domestic laptop for general browsing and home office use. I also have an old Samsung TV and it is fine for streaming videos to it over a Chromecast.
 
NeverRodeBefore said:
First thought was you'd be lucky to find one with a CD or DVD drive.

My recent laptop was recommended to me as buy one by Lenovo.
Click to expand...
I bought a Lenovo around 4 years ago - best I've had in over 20 years. Feels just like my work Dell laptops.

Fires up quick, has a solid chassis, I don't game, so no need for a super quick processor.

Previous two were rubbish "HP" before and they both failed with screen issues.
 
Thanks for your replies fellas,so now the ball is rolling I take it I’m looking for decent processor speeds, then memory,then storage,so just asking the question,dyou think 8 GB is enough or would you go 16 GB,plus I’ll not bother with the CD/DVD player,
Cheers Baza 👍
 
8GB likely fine as it does not sound like you are using any resource heavy stuff like image manipulation or gaming.

a laptop with a decent size SSD rather than spinning rust hard drive will improve performance on a good bang for buck ratio. The 512GB as in my recommendation seems a good cost/benefit ratio, especially if you store your photos and other big media files in a dedicated physical or cloud storage. I automatically send phone images to Dropbox. Once in a while I sort through them, bin the dross and archive the keepers to Google's G Drive.

With Intel processors, steer clear of the cheaper ones like Celeron and i3. For domestic use, an i5 processor is likely perfectly adequate, an i7 will be a bit quicker but few people would notice the difference. With Asus, going from i5/8GB/512GB to i7/16GB/512GB adds £120, so within your £500 budget.
The jump from a 512GB to a 1TB SSD for storage seems to be another £200, which is a lot compared to buying a standalone storage device like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT1000X6SSD9-X6-Portable-SSD/dp/B08FSZT2J7
 
Wessie thank you for taking the time and effort to reply👍
Now for my turn to do the research 🤦‍♂️
BTW how easy (probably not the correct word) will it be to transfer all the old PC stuff to the new.
Would you suggest me buying a separate HD and transferring it to that
Cheers Baza 👍
 
Its handy to have external hard drives as Wessie says. I use 2 2TB Crucial X9's mainly for Photo and Music storage. Over modern USB3.1 they move about 100 MB per second so back up fairly quickly. I use FreeFileSync and back up data about once a week to one of the two external drives a system I've been using for 15+ years. I keep one with the machine and one in my sisters house about a mile away so I always have offsite backup. I have a load of photos from when my now adult kids were young that I wouldn't like to lose. For most people online storage is probably a better option but my backup is now just under 1TB of data and I haven't gotten round to looking for the best online option for this.
 
Baza 07 said:
So what does the team think of this
Click to expand...

it's will be fine, it is the same package as mine with the faster processor and more RAM.

Note, it is £50 cheaper at John Lewis but unsurprisingly, out of stock. If not in a hurry, sign up to the "email when back in stock" as you will also get a longer warranty from JL.

As for swapping between machines, if you have created a Microsoft and Google account it is a piece of piss. Especially if you also have their authenticator apps on a phone or tablet. As for data like photos and documents, you should be having them backed up to the cloud or external drive anyway, so get that process underway. For email, I use Gmail as it syncs email across all of my devices, even non Gmail ones from legacy accounts.
 
Baza 07 said:
So what does the team think of this
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/4668668?clickSR=slp:term:asus laptop:8:53:1
Click to expand...

Windows/Apple aside (personal choices mostly) that is not comparable to an M1 MacBook Pro.

I'd decide if going one platform or the other first. Then get lost on the hardware.
Small note: as explained above. 8Gb unified memory on Apple Silicon architecture doesn't compare as the same 8Gb (non unified) memory on a standard Intel architecture (including older Intel Macs).

Apologies! :D
I mixed up threads!!! Ignore the above.
 
wessie said:
it's will be fine, it is the same package as mine with the faster processor and more RAM.

Note, it is £50 cheaper at John Lewis but unsurprisingly, out of stock. If not in a hurry, sign up to the "email when back in stock" as you will also get a longer warranty from JL.

As for swapping between machines, if you have created a Microsoft and Google account it is a piece of piss. Especially if you also have their authenticator apps on a phone or tablet. As for data like photos and documents, you should be having them backed up to the cloud or external drive anyway, so get that process underway. For email, I use Gmail as it syncs email across all of my devices, even non Gmail ones from legacy accounts.
Click to expand...
Top draw fella,thanks for all the advice, I haven’t got an external HD, what would you recommend 🤔
Cheers Baza
 
er-minio said:
Windows/Apple aside (personal choices mostly) that is not comparable to an M1 MacBook Pro.

I'd decide if going one platform or the other first. Then get lost on the hardware.
Small note: as explained above. 8Gb unified memory on Apple Silicon architecture doesn't compare as the same 8Gb (non unified) memory on a standard Intel architecture (including older Intel Macs).

Apologies! :D
I mixed up threads!!! Ignore the above.
Click to expand...

I did wonder if you had been sniffing glue
 
Baza 07 said:
Top draw fella,thanks for all the advice, I haven’t got an external HD, what would you recommend 🤔
Cheers Baza
Click to expand...
see post #7 and #9

I have linked to a Crucial branded device at Amazon and @Mzokk has referenced its bigger brother with 2TB. Crucial is a well regarded brand for memory products.
 
I've just bought one of these from this eBay seller, for someone in my team:

www.ebay.co.uk

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th Gen i7-8550U 16GB 512GB SSD FHD Windows 11 Laptop | eBay UK

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th Gen i7-8550U 16GB 512GB SSD FHD Windows 11 Laptop at the best online prices at eBay UK! Free delivery for many products!
www.ebay.co.uk


1738358577793.png

It's a really good laptop, well made, and a great price, with a 12 month warranty. I had to reutrn it as it had an error with a USB port, which they fixed without issue and returned it to me. 100% rate.


For photos, I'd suggest Google Photo's cloud storage, it's either free or inexpensive.
 
Baza 07 said:
What does the team think of this one,only because i can get this today and the Crucial one will take a week
Click to expand...

it's not an SSD but a magnetic, mechanical job so a very different beast

are you really in a big hurry to transfer the data? If you need some stuff urgently from the old laptop, use free cloud space like Onedrive, or GDrive. The SSD will be a much speedier and reliable device.
 
wessie said:
it's not an SSD but a magnetic, mechanical job so a very different beast

are you really in a big hurry to transfer the data? If you need some stuff urgently from the old laptop, use free cloud space like Onedrive, or GDrive. The SSD will be a much speedier and reliable device.
Click to expand...
Cheers mate knowledge is everything 👍
I’ll wait till Thursday and get the Crucial
Cheers Baza 😉👍
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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