Author Topic: Laptops (Read 10682 times)

[MAF]Vertigo · « **on:** January 15, 2015, 04:05:16 pm »

Going to buy a laptop for work. Don't need it for gaming or anything, but don't want a slow one.

What's the best brand for something like this? HP, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell? Something I haven't mentioned?

Only want to spend around $400 AUD, so yeah. Thanks lol.

[FSR]Ush · « **Reply #1 on:** January 15, 2015, 05:47:59 pm »

Just make sure there's a SSD in it, if you want it to work fast! I only ever had an HP laptop, it was fast and reliable untill the mobo burned. I think most laptops these days are good enough, although I'm not a big fan of Acer/Dell, for no specific reason.

How many euro is 1 austrian dollar worth?

3DSexVilla · « **Reply #2 on:** January 15, 2015, 06:12:21 pm »

Asus with eyes closed

[MAF]Epoxi · « **Reply #3 on:** January 15, 2015, 07:02:45 pm »

ASUS and Toshiba have the best finish and build quality from my experience.

Any laptop is good enough if you treat it carefully, all the broken laptops I am aware of are because people have mistreated them in some way (but I guess that's what a portable computer is for, carrying around etc.).

nero · « **Reply #4 on:** January 15, 2015, 07:13:52 pm »

I had a Sony VAIO for 6 years now, still gaming on it. Have to agree with Ush about Acer/Dell. Acer has best price-performance ratio, but all people I know who owned one had terrible problems with brokes pieces, overheating after short time and stuff like that. Dell is quite expensive, not sure about build quality though. Only had one friend with a high performance Dell, he was not satisfied with it.

Watch for battery time, modern chromebooks offer up to 13 hours battery life, where as "multimedia" laptops can last below 1 hour.

Go for the SSD, external storage is never a problem to buy.

Also, I have very specific expectations of a keyboard, some laptops are a pure no-go for me just because of a shitty designed keyboard (key size, pressure point, integration into laptop, quality etc).

Troublemaker · « **Reply #5 on:** January 15, 2015, 08:33:10 pm »

Lenovo is the best imo.

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #6 on:** January 15, 2015, 10:23:32 pm »

from my experience, unless you buy the premium brands (mostly lenovo and sony), there is no difference in the brands. I have a cheap acer that looks pretty good and is in a fine shape 3 and a half years later, but way more expensive asus and samsungs my friends have are made from such a cheap plastic, that it sqeaks and slightly twists when you take it in your hands.
so, don't judge the brand, and just try the particular laptop yourself.

performance-wise, i'd just suggest to get an SSD, as it's even more beneficial for a laptop, because everything will be stored in it, unlike in desktops, and laptop HDDs are even worse than desktop ones.
at that price range, you will probably have to install one on your own, but it's definitely worth it, even if you end up with way worse laptop.
you will also need to decide, do you need 256GB of storage, or will 128GB do just fine, obviously second is way cheaper.

tl;dr - brand doesn't matter, check the quality yourself, and get an SSD

[MAF]Epoxi · « **Reply #7 on:** January 15, 2015, 11:23:39 pm »

In my experience Lenovo are very middle-range. They are better than brands like Gateway and Dell (the cheaper Dells, expensive Dells are very good), but I have found them to be squeaky and plasticky.

I guess it depends a lot on which model you buy, the Lenovo I know was made of cheap plastic and the ASUS I know is made of solid aluminium, which is the opposite of Karlis's experience.

I strongly agree that an SSD is a must-have (even on a PC!), the speed difference is too big to ignore: my PC starts faster than my phone. You could always get a 128GB now, and replace it with a 256GB in a few months when it is much cheaper (and put the old 128GB in your PC to run your OS from).

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #8 on:** January 15, 2015, 11:30:55 pm »

they won't be much cheaper in a few months though, unless I'm missing something. the prices are dropping, but it happens over the years, and not in a matter of months.

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #9 on:** January 16, 2015, 02:25:13 am »

Problem is none of the laptops from normal stores come with SSD. If they did, I bet they'd be super expensive. Either way I'd rather not spend the extra cash right now.

These are a couple of the stores I'm looking at:

Website 1

Website 2 Is that HP for $299 any good?

Website 3

Terrorfist · « **Reply #10 on:** January 16, 2015, 03:26:09 am »

HP also has a good build quality but their service is :X. I'm only lucky that my 7 year old HP Desktop is running good.

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #11 on:** January 16, 2015, 11:23:44 am »

that HP is terrible, i mean... 32GB of storage... really (with the speed opposite to the ssd's lol)?

minus the lack of ssd, the Acer Aspire E5-511-280C Laptop looks very good, i wasn't aware laptops at this price point ever had quad cores (much less intel ones).
http://www.harveynorman.com.au/computers-tablets/computers/laptops/acer-aspire-e5-511-280c-laptop.html
it seems to be sold out, but you can probably still find it somewhere

the rest are worse than that.

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #12 on:** January 16, 2015, 12:17:22 pm »

Quote from: [MAF]Karlis on January 16, 2015, 11:23:44 am

that HP is terrible, i mean... 32GB of storage... really (with the speed opposite to the ssd's lol)?

minus the lack of ssd, the Acer Aspire E5-511-280C Laptop looks very good, i wasn't aware laptops at this price point ever had quad cores (much less intel ones).
http://www.harveynorman.com.au/computers-tablets/computers/laptops/acer-aspire-e5-511-280c-laptop.html
it seems to be sold out, but you can probably still find it somewhere

the rest are worse than that.

32GB? I see 500GB...

[FSR]Ush · « **Reply #13 on:** January 16, 2015, 03:00:18 pm »

Only 2GB ram tho, not sure what applications you want to run.. and how many at a time.

[MAF]Epoxi · « **Reply #14 on:** January 16, 2015, 06:40:11 pm »

My 128GB SSD is only £40 (around €52), and it's a Crucial which is one of the better ones. You don't need the laptop to come with the drive as most good laptops let you change the drive very easily (just one screw to open the flap and swap).

RAM is also cheap to upgrade, so make sure the laptop motherboard can take the extra RAM if needed.

The most important things are the motherboard, CPU, screen and graphics card (if it exists) because these are very difficult to replace, everything else can be changed for little cost and effort. I have replaced a laptop motherboard before...not fun.

[LSR]Jalicno · « **Reply #15 on:** January 16, 2015, 07:18:42 pm »

If you need laptop for work you need stable and decent premium class processor at least Pentium Quad Core or why not i3 and that is not cheap. Around world most prices are same and they start with 300 euro + if we look trough calculator that looks much more than yours 400 AUS(258 euro)

SSD drive you can't find in that range, go for 500 euro+ and you will see brands as Acer, Compaq, Fujitsu and to be honest they aren't your target.

HP has good quality,Asus currently has best prices for their products, Lenovo is close to them. Toshiba and Sony sell their products mostly cause of their good reputation in past. My favorite is Dell in premium segment but that also cost little more than others - one year longer warranty included.

Seems i didn't wrote much useful post with lot of details as i often do. But if you going buy good laptop you should prepare much more cash than you currently own.

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #16 on:** January 17, 2015, 02:29:42 am »

I guess this Acer Aspire is the best one to go for. i5 for $499.
There are a bunch of others with quad core pentiums with 2+ GHz, but I guess the i5 trumps those significantly.

I don't think I'll bother with the SSD at this stage, maybe some time in the future.

Terrorfist · « **Reply #17 on:** January 17, 2015, 03:28:40 am »

Those Quad Core Pentiums that you see are just a bunch of BGAs like the J1900. Nice pick Vert, Those Pentiums are just dual cores on HT just like i3.

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #18 on:** January 17, 2015, 02:25:08 pm »

Quote from: Terrorfist on January 17, 2015, 03:28:40 am

Those Quad Core Pentiums that you see are just a bunch of BGAs like the J1900. Nice pick Vert, Those Pentiums are just dual cores on HT just like i3.

i don't get your point.
the fact that they are BGAs or not has nothing to do with laptop choice.
and, the i5 is actually an dual core on HT too http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i5-4210U-Notebook-Processor.115081.0.html

in spite of that, it is about two times faster and has about 4 times better built in GPU than the celeron, so it could run SA and alike good enough.

i'd go with the i5, if you're fine with the price, and get a 128GB ssd bit later.

and sorry, i looked at the wrong HP back then, but still, it wasn't a good option.

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #19 on:** January 17, 2015, 02:44:57 pm »

Thanks for the opinions. Like I said I'm not using this for gaming, so I think it will be more than capable for what I need.

Uitblinker · « **Reply #20 on:** January 17, 2015, 04:34:11 pm »

Interesting thread

! I'm also planning to buy a new laptop soon to replace my old Dell laptop. Coincidentally I'm also planning to buy the HP Pavilion-15 that has been listed here. I don't really need my laptop for gaming either just like Vertigo.

I have one question about the SSD thingy, my friends told me that I should consider it as well since it greatly improves the performance (well just like you guys stated over here) but since I'm such a big computer noob, I'm wondering how it practically works!. If you have a hard disk already and if you "add" the SSD thing, will you still benefit from it? Or will the performance only increase if the only drive is the SSD (so no hard disk included). Also, how should this change my search? Do I need to look for specific things if I want to have such a SSD thingy?

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #21 on:** January 17, 2015, 04:39:24 pm »

Things stored on the SSD will be fast, but those stored on the HDD won't be. That's why usually people install windows and their most demanding programs on the SSD, but keep rarely used data like movies on HDD. However, if it's an laptop, most likely, you won't get to keep both of them because of size constraints, unless you want to replace the DVD disc drive with another case for HDD/SSD, which is often possible.

Uitblinker · « **Reply #22 on:** January 17, 2015, 04:47:09 pm »

Alright thanks Karlis, really helpful!

Still considering it, just a pity that the price per GB is much higher for SSD's compared to traditional hard disks.

[FSR]Ush · « **Reply #23 on:** January 17, 2015, 05:33:54 pm »

I recently bought 256GB of SSD for 100 euro's. Which is quite cheap. I got the crucial MX100 (good price/performance)

[MAF]Epoxi · « **Reply #24 on:** January 17, 2015, 06:41:35 pm »

@Uitblinker: You can always buy an external USB HDD if you want to have lots of data storage on your laptop at the same time as having a super fast SSD for OS and programs.

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #25 on:** January 19, 2015, 04:45:18 am »

The sale on the Acer I found finished. Fuck.

Is this Acer a good compromise? It's $527, compared to the Aspire (not on sale) which is $598 and the CPU holds up pretty well, especially since I'm not planning to overclock. Or is the Aspire THAT much better?

There's also this one, which is a little cheaper again.

Or maybe even this one with an i3.

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #26 on:** January 19, 2015, 09:29:36 pm »

the i3 is just about 50% slower than the i5, but the AMDs are both more than two times slower, and their GPU is worse too, so i3 is the better deal.

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #27 on:** January 20, 2015, 03:32:26 am »

That's so annoying, I'm getting 50% of the speed for the same price. Oh well.

[LSR]Jalicno · « **Reply #28 on:** January 20, 2015, 09:44:13 pm »

AMD processor and Acer brand i would pass without doubt. Put some more effort into your search, there should be some Lenovo or Asus by same 'special price' they are often in shops now days. Especially models with I3 processors and Nvidia 820 video cards what i recommend in premium class (400-450 euro, no Windows 8.1 pre-installed)

[MAF]Vertigo · « **Reply #29 on:** January 21, 2015, 02:47:37 am »

The Lenovo's were all expensive and the Asus one's at the same price weren't as good.

[MAF]Karlis · « **Reply #30 on:** January 22, 2015, 01:55:15 pm »

Quote from: [MAF]Vertigo on January 20, 2015, 03:32:26 am

That's so annoying, I'm getting 50% of the speed for the same price. Oh well.

i worded it badly, its actually 67% of the original performance, as in 67% + 50% of 67% = 100%.
but still.

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Author Topic: Laptops (Read 10682 times)