On Potential New Laptops

[danieldwilliam]

I'm thinking of buying a laptop.

I'm currently using MLW's old laptop but it's become so rickety that it is barely usable.

Perhaps it is fixable. Perhaps not.

Mostly I need the laptop so I can do work in Office applications, Excel and Word mostly and web-based collaboration tools like Trello and Slack. I may play the odd computer game but that's not my main interest.

I do not think I want a Mac - nothing else in my house is an Apple product.

I have screen mirroring at home so a huge screen size is probably not needed. If I need something embiggened I can borrow my 40 inch TV from myself. I'm more likely to find myself working on trains or at borrowed desks or in meetings.

I'm not made keen to spend millions on a totally top spec machine

Any suggestions for make or model or vendor?

Comments

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

You lost me at "not a mac" :)

[matgb]

Two questions, well, one, which is the most important to you, specs or durability?

I have an Acer Aspire that was a good choice in terms of costs/capabilities, but it's in a cheap plastic case that doesn't handle moving around a lot and I managed to crack it, making it even harder to move, trays are essential, etc. But, 3.5 years on (and it was an end of line ex-display bargain then) it's still going fine and does what I need.

On the other hand, with a previous employer I had a Lenovo Thinkpad, which was expensive for its specs but incredibly durable, I was doing marketing work for them and we had stories of them falling off cliffs (while closed, not running), or being trampled by herds of african beasts, and still running fine.

So if it's an around the house device, then an Acer or similar will be fine, but if you travel a lot or it needs to take a bit of punishment (or it might get dropped/stood on) then a more durable thing would be good, a reconditioned one would be a good value given your spec requirements I suspect.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

That is a very good question.

I expect the spec / price axis is the most important. I'm not intending to be lugging this thing all around the place. I need it at home in the evening or the weekend and for the occassional trip to London for Unlock Democracy Council meetings.

If I'm only spending a few hundred pounds on it I'm also happy to wear the cost of replacing it in two or three years time if it gets broken.

[andrewducker]

I went through this with Julie recently.

My advice would be to wander down to John Lewis with a techie friend* and see what looks good to you. The advantage of John Lewis is that if it goes wrong in the first couple of years they'll take it back in the shop and get it fixed, rather than you having to deal with postage and frustrating phone calls.

And they actually have some perfectly decently priced ones in, in a variety of sizes.


*When he gets back from India in a couple of weeks

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Cheers - will do.

This feels like it ought to be an easy enough decision once I can join up the advertised capabilities with what I actually want to do with it.

[andrewducker]

If your needs are:
"Mostly I need the laptop so I can do work in Office applications, Excel and Word mostly and web-based collaboration tools like Trello and Slack."

Then you cannot buy a (Windows) computer which will not do this.

I wouldn't spend more than £450-£500 on it, personally.

Playing the odd game would push the specs up, depending on the game, because most PC games tend to be aimed at the higher end. On the other hand, most games that are three years old (or older) should be fine.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think £400 is my upper limit to be honest.

Perhaps a little more if I can persuade MLW that her business needs to provide a laptop to its finance director.