Fun Stuff > CLIKC
Help Gareth decide on a laptop to buy
Edguy:
They way I see it, when it comes to laptops, you have two choices; buy a solid one, or a cheap one.
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: cesium133 on 29 Jun 2013, 16:38 ---The university I'm at has a contract with Dell, so unfortunately I couldn't avoid them. It didn't help that all the computers in our lab were the same model, bought at the same time, all with the same defect that caused the capacitors to blow up at the same time.
--- End quote ---
And when the issue was identified, if the IT people were sufficiently on the ball to be in touch, Dell were round to replace all the affected components FOC regardless of age and warranty status (I had just two of that model). Capacitors are a real pain, though. I've had two audio interfaces fail in the last week, a MOTU and an E-MU, both with power supply cap problems.
Dell also do this sort of replacement proactively; I had a couple of failures of three-year-old hard disks (in RAID, so no data was lost), and the third time Dell identified that the disks concerned were part of a suspect batch and sent me replacements for all my disks that came from that batch without my even asking. (What's more, the new disks were four times the size of the originals, so I got a useful upgrade along the way!)
On AMD vs Intel: I can't speak for comparative reliability, because I've never had a cpu failure ever. Intel made a big efficiency and performance mis-step with the Pentium 4 range, and AMD got the edge for those years; but with the Core-2 range Intel took the technical lead back decisively and still have it. But the difference is small when pricing is considered as well.
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: cesium133 on 29 Jun 2013, 17:56 ---640 kilobytes ought to be enough for anyone. :roll:
--- End quote ---
He was being so modern there... - I got along with my pile of punched cards just fine; when my shoe box got full, I got another one.
Lupercal:
I think we got greedy with floppy disks - although I do miss buying those ones that were opaque colours. Made data storage exciting!
Ok Gareth - I haven't purchased a new laptop since 2009. Still, I will say that most companies will say that Laptop X is so good because it has 1tb Hard Drive space and 4gb RAM. They will balance this out with a shit processor and more than likely have a terrible fan. One of the main issues I've seen people have with laptops is the design of airflow and how you let the thing cool down - my girlfriend's Acer (AVOID) just has the air outlet on the bottom - where you'd have it covered by your lap, really.
Go for a reputable brand, have a decent amount of storage space on the thing without sacrificing processing power. You're not going to get something brilliant for £300 but it will certainly suit your needs - you could possibly consider a refurbished laptop.
Plus, usually if you buy these online there's the ability to chuck in an external HDD at a discount, so look out for that. 1tb can be as little as £35.
Also, this might interest you: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/laptop/3214583/group-test-whats-best-ultraportable-laptop/
LTK:
My sister has an Acer laptop with comparatively high specs, and it's fast, thin, light and quiet. Of course, it's my anecdotal evidence versus Lupercal's, so you should really just look for information on the specific model you're planning on buying if you want to know how reliable it is.
If you ask me, you shouldn't bother with anything less than 4GB of RAM and a dual-core processor. If I were to buy a laptop I'd definitely want one with an SSD, but I have no idea if laptops with SSDs are actually on the market, and affordable.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version