Laptop advice

[debih]

I am looking for a new laptop and have absolutely no idea what to get.

We have 3 laptops currently - all of which are sooooo slow. One is about 12 years old - a Dell. Dead expensive when we bought it but now old and clunky. It runs Windows XP (I think).

Another is one we got free when we signed up with Utility Warehouse. It runs Windows 7 (I think). It is slow and constantly telling me it is running out of disc space.

The third we got from the local college when Mick was doing some work there. One of their old ones that they were selling off. It runs Windows XP - very slowly and is forever losing internet connection.

I have cleaned them all up, disc defragmented, taken off as many programmes as possible, have hardly any photos, etc on them but still they are slow. They go to my little computer guy and come back a little faster but soon start to slow down again.

We currently use the third one, running XP, as the main one as it is by far the fastest (and its not fast).

So I am treating us to a new one with my adoption money.

I am in no rush - I'm not sure if the best deals will be before xmas or after but am happy to buy whenever (after would be perfect but the money is there for me to buy before - or at least it will be when I get round to claiming it).

We don't want to do much with it.
* The girls will need to do their homework so a more up to date Windows package would be good.
* I need to do Micks books on it so will need Excel (which will come with a Windows package)
*We surf the internet from it, send emails, pay bills, the usual bog standard stuff, occasionally watch You Tube

I don't tend to store photos on it anymore- they are all on a cloud somewhere, we surf the internet mainly from our Apple gadgets, watch tv from our Apple gadgets, we don't play games on it. It will spend most of its time sat on a desk gathering dust until a child decides to do their homework from it.

I would quite like a Mac simply as we all have apple gadgets (except Mick and he doesn't count - he still doesn't know how to send an email!!) and it would be good for them to all talk to each other. But the budget won't run that far and I know that they are a pain to get to grips with if you are used to Windows.

I don't want to spend more than £500.

I am going to pop into PC World next week to speak to them - hopefully on a Monday when I am less likely to get a Saturday boy who doesn't really know much!

Any recommendations, advice please.

[Workingman]

Hi Debih,

It is very difficult to say what is the "best". My idea might be someone else's dog's do-doo. I have had Dells, Toshibas and Acers and I keep going back to Acer because, for me, their all-round look and feel suits me best.

Your idea of going to PC World to have a play on a few possibles is a good one, so long as you don't get sucked in to buying on the spot. Check out how they feel to use, what they look like, get their description, name, code and specification then go away and do some research. You might or might not find them cheaper on the Internet. And a word of warning about specification regarding processor, memory and so on: don't get taken in by all the bells and whistles. If one machine in the same price range of many others has what looks like a much better specification it is either a promotion or the build quality is not quite so good. For such a deal look around for reviews from magazines and the public.

Judging by your desciption of what the laptop is to be used for you will probably be able to get a good deal in the £300 - £500 range. I am currently using an Acer Aspire i5 Quad Core with 8GB mem 800GB HDD 15.6 inch screen and W7 - it had W8.1 but I reverted back to W7. I do all the things you mentioned plus I watch live TV via a USB DVB-T dongle and films via the DVD writer/player. It was about £400 coming up to two years ago.

[debih]

Thanks WM.

Fortunately I don't have the money to spend immediately - it is coming from my adoption panel expenses and I still have to put them in yet and wait for them to be paid out, giving me plenty of time to look around.

I have heard good things about Acer - I will look into them more.

[Kaz]

I am very fond of my current Asus S200E, it is a netbook I suppose but Mick says an ultrabook! It has a touchscreen, and I think I would be lost without that now

They cost around £350 I think x

[Suff]

Debih, I did a bit of digging. It's not something I have looked at for a while and, honestly, I'm not impressed at what I am seeing in the market. It's like the days of Intel processor domination where you pay £100 for a tiny increment in power. Let me try and explain.

Screen size. Long, long, ago, the basic screen size was 1024x768. This is so small that you can't fit most web pages on it today. But all budget laptops had that size screen and it was truly awful to work with. However, back a decade or so, it was possible to get reasonable deals with decent increases of screen size for a reasonable amount more money.

Roll forward a decade or so and things have changed. 1024x768 has become 1280x768. Barely enough to get a webpage on. The reason it is not smaller is because Windows8 will not support a screen any smaller. My phone has a better resolution. However to get a decent resolution (1600x900) on a 15" screen, means paying between £700 and £1,000 and sometimes more.

CPU power. Here is another bewildering array. AMD or Intel. C series, E Series, A series for AMD, Pentium, Celeron, Corei3/5/7 Pentiums with D on the end, Celerons with D on the end..... By this time you are probably perplexed. Why don't they have a simple index to tell you how good they are.

Well they do. but, again, there are so many processors that it has to be split into 4 charts. the AMD E series is in the Low End. Near the top. You find the AMD A4/6 at the top of the low to mid chart. Then you get the Corei3, Corei5 and AMD A6 and A8 faster processors in the Hig mid range.

To save you the bother of trawling through the charts, unless you want to, forget the AMD chips. Their $ value price point for the faster processors (A8/10) is so high that unless you have a burning need for budget games performance graphics, they are not worth buying. ( I did so I have a netbook with an AMD E series so I know what I'm talking about here).

Personal experience tells me that Corei3 is just too slow even for normal browsing and Word/Excel work. My transition laptop when my old Fujitsu died, was a Dell which I upgraded from a Pentium to a Corei3. Even with one of the fastest hard drives going, the system is still slow.

So, from my experience, I would suggest you get a budget 17.3" laptop. These normally come with 1600x900 screen resolution (workable) and with a Corei5 come in around the £500 mark.

Next problem. Memory. Almost every machine sold today should be a 64bit machine. That means the operating system should say it's Windows8.1 64-Bit. Ok so now we've decided what the operating system should be, then what are we looking at in memory. In short, you could live with 4GB. But I can tell you that my work machine, 32bit with 4GB of RAM is constantly hitting the upper limits of memory. So if you want to buy a 4GB model, make sure that it can take a second memory DIMM. Then you have the choice of buying the DIMM at the same time as the machine and having your man from the shop install it, or adding it later.

Final problem. Hard drive. Now this is a specific bugbear of mine. Hard drives are one of the two biggest performance issues with older PC's. The first one is above, memory. It's probably #1 and a simple memory upgrade can fix around 60% of all performance issues with older machines. However the next major culprit is the hard drive. If you want a truly sprightly machine, then you need a SSD. However that has it's issues. Windows is not designed with SSD's in mind. It has swap files and intends to use them. This, over time, slowly consumes the entire SSD and then forces it to keep overwriting the same space over and over again. This is death for SSD's as they have a whole life read/write/erase cycle of 10,000. If you think about it, that's not a lot. Every SSD I have put into my machines has had to have remedial action taken to recover it somewhere between 18 months and 2 years. So I'm wary of recommending one. They are cheaper now and your usage is not quite like mine so it may be better.

So I'll give you two options for a fast machine. You said you don't need a lot of space. So here is what I do in your position.

I buy one of these. This allows you somewhere to put the drive out of the old laptop and use it.

I then buy either a SSD or a hybrid drive. My main laptop has both for speed and space.

One of these for SSD is good enough to make the machine supercharged in terms of disk.

Or one of these will significantly improve performance over the long run. Note it's a lot cheaper and twice the space.

So, is there a machine which encompasses what I have stated and fits your budget?

Well, there is this machine at the moment. I'm sure you'll have to search again when you get the expenses.

Memory? 4GB. But it has two slots, one empty
Screen? 17.3 1600x900
Processor? Core i5 and it's in the third fastest of the CPU benchmark chart, right up in the top 25. It is, in fact, more than 50% of the speed of the CPU in my £4,000 odd laptop.
Disk? Slow, very slow, 1TB drive.
Cost? £434.72 with a possibility of free delivery.

So what would I do? I'd buy the Second drive option (Seagate hybrid for £44.16) and the drive caddy I linked on ebay. Take them with the Laptop to your man and get him to image the internal drive to the hybrid. Then swap them over and put the original drive in the caddy. Put the caddy away for a year and if you have a breakdown, get the drives swapped over and send the original back.

That is how I work. It gives you a reasonable laptop, in your price range, with better performance, for the price you want to pay.

Sorry for the long ramble but a lot to explain about how I think and why. Simply put you do not get what you pay for unless you want either crap performance at £199 (cheapest Dell I saw), or excellent performance at £1,500.... The middle ground is a mire to take money from the unwary.

Oh and avoid cheap Toshiba's and Lenovo's. They are both using the bottom end AMD chips and the performance is somewhat similar to a windmill on a calm day....

[debih]

It hanks for that Suff - that's really helpful.

I'm going to have a proper look tomorrow over coffee.

[meriad]

Debih, I had a Dell and then replaced that with an Acer and I'm very happy with that one. However it is coming up to 5 years old and it can be quite slow at times - but then I am very impatient when it comes to technology But look and feel wise I love it and would totally buy another one

But, the one thing I know I would be looking at is the software - I don't know many people that are very happy with Windows 8 that seems to be standard on most laptops now-a-days. Yes apparently one "does get used to it" but that's more because you have to that because it's user friendly.

[JoM]

I have a Dell and have had it for nearly two years but wouldn't have another, it's quite glitchy and temperamental at times. My last was a Sony Vaio and I liked that.

[debih]

I use Windows 8 at work and although it took some getting used to I love it now.

[Workingman]

I loved it at first, but we had to get divorced.

It was taking over my laptop by changing settings, offering to open stuff with "this" app, or telling me there was a CD in the drive - I know there was, I chuffing put it there!!! It's a music CD and no I do not want to install Windows Media Player or listen to it on 'Music' I want to do it My Way.....