Laptop replacement questions

[Fedup]

I always have at least one desktop computer. I buy brand new cheapest HP or Dell, always less than $500. Not that expensive. Plus it has a huge screen.

 

[CardsFan]

For that amount of money, I’d get a SSD. Either way, that machine is going to be so much better than your old machine, you’re going to be happy. I like the 17.3” size if it’s your main surfing machine. Good on the eyes.

+1

Sounds very nice and I am thinking that having a big screen size like that would be wonderful, especially if (like me) you do not carry your laptop around very much.

We tend to use the laptop as a desk top most of the time. Just want to have some level of portability. So, even though the bigger screen means a bigger laptop, that is not a problem. The old eyes will like the bigger screen.

Still considering the SSD. But it is hard to find large screens and SSD, at least at places like Best Buy. I may wait for a deal on line. It looks like I can build one one the HP site for under $1,000, depending on the CPU, DRAM, and Drive sizes.

Current laptop is still functional, so there is not a rush, but I do want to update before the old one crashes.

 

[kcowan]

All of our investments, withdrawals, notes on which items I can tax-loss harvest, bond ladders, etc are in an Excel spread sheet. I cannot imagine doing it without that. I can use Excel tools to model different scenarios (withdrawals, taxes, etc.)...

Has anyone with the need for Excel and cut-and-paste found ways to do this acceptably on an iPad?

I can use the iPad for forum browsing and internet surfing, but not for serious spreadsheet work.

 

[pb4uski]

Personally, I wouldn't get a refurbished laptop unless:
1) It is manufacture refurbished, especially if it is by Apple (I've gotten refurbished iPads and they look absolutely brand new) - or -
2) It is higher end business style laptop (for example the Lenovo T420/T430/etc.) Why? Because these were well made, built to take a beating, business systems with TONS of parts available. For instance, I just bought a replacement T430 keyboard for $25.

I have bought a number of refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads over the years and have never had a problem.... Thinkpads are pretty bulletproof in my experience.

 

[Ian S]

I have an ancient Everex laptop that came with Windows Vista so it's about 12 years old. I upgraded it to Windows 10 when it first came out (special cheap deal) and it now has a 120 GB SSD but is maxed out at 2 GB memory. It was a clean install and there are still very few programs on it but it actually runs quite well all things considered. So perhaps a key problem with your old laptop is that it's cluttered up with crap. Also, I think you would see a night and day difference with an SSD instead of an HD. SSDs are getting cheaper: for example, Fry's Electronics has a Samsung 500 GB one for $80 this week after promo code. Transfer your documents, photos, etc to an external hard drive then do a clean install of Windows 10. You might be pleasantly surprised by how well the old machine works! And even if you aren't and decide to get a new laptop, you could use the SSD as a replacement for the new laptop's hard drive.

That said, if you are not computer savvy or access to someone who is, then it may be a better idea to just buy new.

 

[CardsFan]

OP here. Thanks for all the comments. I am now thinking of getting a 256MB SSD, based on the comments. Current HD has about 185MB, but I can move 40% of that by putting music and photos on thumb drives. Specs for the current consideration are:
AMD Ryzen™ 5 2500U Quad-Core (2 GHz, up to 3.6 GHz, 6 MB cache)+AMD Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics
8GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM
17.3" diagonal HD+ SVA BrightView WLED-backlit (1600 x 900)
256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
3-cell, 41 Wh Lithium-ion prismatic Battery
DVD-Writer
HP TrueVision HD Camera with Digital Microphone (Jet Black)
802.11b/g/n/ac (1x1) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 combo
Price is $605. Seems pretty reasonable.

So, my new question is: AMD Ryzen vs. Intel. The rated speed of this processor is 7,383 (Passmark benchmark).

I need to buy a back-up drive, but those can be had for $50, no need to pay $120 for a 1TB internal drive.

Should I push the buy button? (yeah, I know, it is up to me, but want to be sure I am buying a decent computer)

 

[Midpack]

Has anyone with the need for Excel and cut-and-paste found ways to do this acceptably on an iPad?

I can use the iPad for forum browsing and internet surfing, but not for serious spreadsheet work.

I may be missing what you’re asking, but you can use Excel on your iPad no? When they first offered Excel for the iPad you had to subscribe to do anything. What I missed until very recently was shortly after the initial release, Excel 1.2 was a pretty good spreadsheet app for free, way more capable than Numbers. I’ve been able to download even my most complex Excel spreadsheets with all sorts of functions and calcs and they work perfectly.

You can still subscribe and get even more functions, but there’s a lot in the free version.

Just in case others missed the course correction Microsoft made with iOS Excel!

 

[easysurfer]

I have bought a number of refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads over the years and have never had a problem.... Thinkpads are pretty bulletproof in my experience.

I bought a used Lenovo T420s several months back. No OS, but that was fine as I slapped a Linux distro on.

Everything was good except a very loud fan that ran constantly. So I went ahead and bought a generic fan and took the laptop apart. My mistake was I used the thermal paste that came with the fan, so the laptop then ran really really hot (cpu pushing 100 degrees celsius under heavy load). Realizing my mistake, I went ahead and took the laptop apart again, applied thermal paste correctly. Now the thing runs like a charm and is my go to machine when I need to do some things on.

 

[Golden Mean]

8GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM
17.3" diagonal HD+ SVA BrightView WLED-backlit (1600 x 900)
3-cell, 41 Wh Lithium-ion prismatic Battery

That screen resolution is way low for that size screen. 1920x1080 is probably the lowest limit I'd go on a 15". On a 17.3 you probably want 1920x1080 or even 2560x1440. Also, it was my understanding, a few years ago when laptop shopping, that 17.3" 1600x900 screens are typically very low quality with respect to contrast, brightness and color uniformity.

8GB is low for a modern computer. 16GB would be much better.

The battery size seems very very small, esp to be driving a 17.3" screen. Have you found real world tests of the battery time for this machine? It can't be more than 2hrs or so with such a tiny battery.

 

[Ian S]

OP here. Thanks for all the comments. I am now thinking of getting a 256MB SSD, based on the comments. Current HD has about 185MB, but I can move 40% of that by putting music and photos on thumb drives. Specs for the current consideration are:
AMD Ryzen™ 5 2500U Quad-Core (2 GHz, up to 3.6 GHz, 6 MB cache)+AMD Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics
8GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM
17.3" diagonal HD+ SVA BrightView WLED-backlit (1600 x 900)
256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
3-cell, 41 Wh Lithium-ion prismatic Battery
DVD-Writer
HP TrueVision HD Camera with Digital Microphone (Jet Black)
802.11b/g/n/ac (1x1) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 combo
Price is $605. Seems pretty reasonable.

So, my new question is: AMD Ryzen vs. Intel. The rated speed of this processor is 7,383 (Passmark benchmark).

I need to buy a back-up drive, but those can be had for $50, no need to pay $120 for a 1TB internal drive.

Should I push the buy button? (yeah, I know, it is up to me, but want to be sure I am buying a decent computer)

I don't know how things compare now but laptop AMD CPUs used to be a bit less energy efficient than those from Intel but that may have changed. I've had AMD CPUs in my desktops for years and they've always been good. They also tend to give you more bang for your buck. Certainly, I'd expect that your proposed laptop would work well for you. It's a big screen so I assume it's more of a "desktop replacement" than it being for someone always on the go with it. So battery life may not be an issue.

 

[CardsFan]

I don't know how things compare now but laptop AMD CPUs used to be a bit less energy efficient than those from Intel but that may have changed. I've had AMD CPUs in my desktops for years and they've always been good. They also tend to give you more bang for your buck. Certainly, I'd expect that your proposed laptop would work well for you. It's a big screen so I assume it's more of a "desktop replacement" than it being for someone always on the go with it. So battery life may not be an issue.

Bingo on the desk top replacement. 95% of the time that is how it is used. battery life is not really an issue.

To address Golden Mean: Current resolution is 1366 x 768, with a 15.6" screen, so probably the same. For normal web use, more than adequate, I think. I can upgrade to 1920 x 1080 for $100. Is it really going to make a big difference? No gaming. Nothing special.

 

[Golden Mean]

Bingo on the desk top replacement. 95% of the time that is how it is used. battery life is not really an issue.

To address Golden Mean: Current resolution is 1366 x 768, with a 15.6" screen, so probably the same. For normal web use, more than adequate, I think. I can upgrade to 1920 x 1080 for $100. Is it really going to make a big difference? No gaming. Nothing special.

I would say yes, it's worth it for the higher res. Especially since you'll probably get a higher quality screen too. 1600x1200 at 17.3 is 106 ppi. For reference, I don't think Mac has made a laptop less than 200 ppi in years. Fonts will look much clearer. Most books are printed at 300+ dpi for example.

If you have a Fry's or Best Buy close by, you might try to find a 1600x900 and put it next to a higher resolution/dpi laptop and see if it makes a difference to you.

This article touches on the issues with the lower res displays: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-screen-resolution-ripoff

 

[CardsFan]

I would say yes, it's worth it for the higher res. Especially since you'll probably get a higher quality screen too. 1600x1200 at 17.3 is 106 ppi. For reference, I don't think Mac has made a laptop less than 200 ppi in years. Fonts will look much clearer. Most books are printed at 300+ dpi for example.

If you have a Fry's or Best Buy close by, you might try to find a 1600x900 and put it next to a higher resolution/dpi laptop and see if it makes a difference to you.

This article touches on the issues with the lower res displays: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-screen-resolution-ripoff

I read the article, and understand what you are saying. I will take your suggestion and go to BestBuy tomorrow to make an in person comparison,

Thanks

 

[Kim451]

Just to add my 2 cents worth... and my opinions only, of course! But...

Windows 10 is an improvement over 7; more stable and support for 7 will be terminated before too much longer. Microsoft claims Win 10 is their long-term solution. We'll see.

8GB is enough for a laptop; unless you're playing Fortnite/FarCry/Call of Duty/etc type games which are memory hogs.

I like ASUS computers; Macs are great and the Mac store will teach you the interface so also very good support, if pricey; HP, ACER, Dell, Lenovo, etc are all good, it just depends on the features you want.

For word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Apache's Open Office is free and fairly comprehensive. I've been using a home version of MS Office so haven't done a lot of experimenting with the online ones like Google Sheets so no opinion...

SSD boots up faster than traditional hard drive. The earlier models had a higher failure rate but seem to be ok now. My SSD is 500GB and is plenty of storage. If you need more, buy a portable external hard drive (although not a WD external drives because they partition them and it's annoying; try Seagate) or store on the internet - assuming you always have good internet connectivity (I travel and often don't) and are fairly trusting of the provider's security.

Best Buy is a good place to buy. I bought my travel laptop off a discount sites on the internet, and the gamer off Amazon. I wouldn't buy from Wal-Mart, it strikes me as very low-end stuff. I haven't bought Dell because I thought they were too high priced but maybe they're more competitive now. Microsoft stores are pricey too.

I use Vipre internet security for my anti-virus & firewall; fairly low profile and not power-hungry. McAfee & Symantec are good and the big names with good support and there're lots of others out there.

If all you're moving are your Word, spreadsheet files, you can do that yourself by copying everything out of your My Documents folder over. If you're using Chrome, and let it sync over the internet, it'll move all your bookmarks and favorites over for you (if you're using them) but with Internet Explorer or Edge, you'd need to google to see how to move the bookmarks.
For games or software programs, if you have the disks and license keys, you can easily install them yourself. Geek Squad can move them for you but they'd still like your disks and license keys if you have them, in which case it's just as easy to do it yourself.

AMD has made a comeback - either AMD or Intel are fine.

I agree with: "That screen resolution is way low ... 1920x1080 is probably the lowest limit I'd go" And if you're not planning on traveling with it, 17" screen would be better. 15" is good for travel laptops. Also, if you're not traveling, battery life shouldn't be an issue since you can plug it in.

 

[gooddog]

Bought the computer I have linked below last year off of Amazon. This is easily the best bang for the buck computer out there. It has 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a DESKTOP GTX 1060 6GB Nvidia card. A 256 GB SSD, with Windows 10 and an Intel i7-7700 CPU finish the major specs off. The case is metal instead of plastic, and the fans are metal, with aerospace grade bearings. It is easily the best computer I have come across, desktop or laptop, for the $. Have had personal computers from the 1980's and can tell you this thing is a steal.

Adding a 2nd drive, or more memory (which seem silly) is very easy to do.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y4GZS9C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[catii]

What will you use the laptop for? I've owned a computer consulting business for 32 years, & that's always my first question. The speed difference between your old Pentium Dual Core & today's Core series is immense, so unless you're creating YouTube videos, using Photoshop for editing, or other high-end work, just about any new laptop will work.


That said, look for at least the following: Core i3 processor, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB hard-drive, Windows 10 Home. Anything above that is fine, depending on price. More RAM is always useful (my minimum is 32 GB), but not necessary. SSDs are great for people like me who use high-end software, but you'll never care about the speed difference.Lots of bells & whistles you can add, depending on budget.


Your Works files can be imported into any of the current Office versions, so no worry about that. Buy a student version of Office at Costco or Sams. Buy a new HP printer, too, as Windows 10 is picky about what will work with it. Last, buy a 4TB external hard-drive that connects with a USB cable. Use it to transfer all of your existing data (NOT programs!) from the old machine, & copy those files to the new laptop.


Have fun!

 

[beowulf]

Costco has a Dell Inspiron 17.3", 256GB SSD, 2TB HD, 16 GB RAM, WIN 10, Intel I7-8550 processor and a bunch of other stuff for $899 until Oct 28. You should be able to find it here:
https://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiro...B-AMD-Graphics---1080p.product.100380003.html

Picked one up a week ago and it's working well. Replaced a 12 year old Dell 15.6" Inspiron with similar features (no SSD drive), old everything, Vista, and paid about $1100 in more valuable dollars. If you're only going to have one computer, it's worth the money. Unless you're really young and can actually see what's on a 13" screen.

 

[FIREarly]

SSD well worth it!

Spend a few extra on the SSD. I just upgraded HDD to SSD and kept everything else the same. The computer loads so much faster. Applications load dramatically faster. The computer does not make that sound that a HDD makes when it is reading. With time, HDD is going to become the next dial-up. The only thing keeping it going is costing a little less.

There is a great deal on Samsung 860 500GB SSD at Microcenter right now. This is what I just replaced mine with and Samsung makes a great SSD. It's on sale for under $100. The battery will also last longer to save you money over time. Saving money is nice with a longer battery and the much faster computer makes using the computer much more enjoyable.

It is well worth it!

 

[Travis Bickle]

You would have to pry my laptop with the SSD from my cold dead hands. I will not buy one without it. Everything is faster and runs so much better.

 

[kcowan]

Just in case others missed the course correction Microsoft made with iOS Excel!

Thanks. I definitely missed that enhancement. Also has anyone discovered a decent way to cut and paste on an iPad? Every month I have to cut a portion of a spreadsheet to publish the Monthly results as a Jpeg on another site.

 

[braumeister]

has anyone discovered a decent way to cut and paste on an iPad?

It's easier than you may think.
How to Select, Copy, and Paste Text on the iPad

 

[target2019]

I would go no lower than i5 +16GB +SSD, in order to future-proof the investment.

 

[CardsFan]

OP here.

Pulled the trigger. I had a hard time finding the options I wanted in a standard unit, without topping $1,200 and getting a gaming computer. So I customized one on line. $870+tax.

i5 8250U processor, 17.3" 1920x1080 screen, 512 GB PCle NVMe M.2 SSD, 1 x 8 GB RAM (I can always add more later if I think I need it). It does have a DVD-RW drive. No HDD. Now I need to wait until Mid-November for it to be built, shipped and delivered.

Thanks all for your comments.

 

[kcowan]

It's easier than you may think.
How to Select, Copy, and Paste Text on the iPad

Yes thanks. I do copy but sometimes when moving the blue bars, it decides I want something different and I start over, sometimes multiple times. Nothing as concise at my laptop trackpad. I wondered if anyone had found a better alternative?

 

[Golden Mean]

OP here.

Pulled the trigger. I had a hard time finding the options I wanted in a standard unit, without topping $1,200 and getting a gaming computer. So I customized one on line. $870+tax.

i5 8250U processor, 17.3" 1920x1080 screen, 512 GB PCle NVMe M.2 SSD, 1 x 8 GB RAM (I can always add more later if I think I need it). It does have a DVD-RW drive. No HDD. Now I need to wait until Mid-November for it to be built, shipped and delivered.

Thanks all for your comments.

This sounds like a pretty sweet system. Hope you enjoy!