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

[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.