so @bears @daggers @1101010 @chuff
My current laptop is a dell latitude 5500, which is no longer available, but that kind of spec is actually more affordable than i thought.
just looking at the Inspiron chuff has just linked to, and comparing it with similar spec’d Latitudes… are there any key differences between these ranges? the manufacturers website is so hard to understand or see through the marketing language…
god this is boring
oh god I didn’t even consider this. So yeah looks like the package costs hundreds, but you can get with subscription for £5 a month yeah? Does that include Teams?
You can pirate Office 2003 and it has no DRM.
Teams is free.
like I’m looking at 2 laptops right now which seem to have pretty much identical specs, but the inspiron is £200 cheaper than the latitude. apparently the latitude is more suited to business users cos it’s faster and stronger or some shit.
Is it the processor? the inspiron has a
“AMD Ryzen™ 5 5500U 6-core/12-thread Mobile Processor with Radeon™ Graphics”
and the latitude has a
“Intel Core i3 11th Gen”
is that £200 worth of better processor? If so is it worth it for me? I do plan using it mainly for business purposes, but idk, help, end this.
Do laptops still come with CD drives or would I need to find a USB one?
Nope. Yes.
in my opinion it’s worth it to have faster RAM and a fast SSD hard drive than the processor
the ram and ssd on those two are the same… screen size and resolution also… can’t see anything else substantive
I would always choose an Intel over an AMD if that helps.
So Michael Dell is full GOP nightmare so I’ve always just not been into the idea of Dells. That said I’m sure all the other corporations are run by fascists but it means I don’t know them.
And as far as I know Aliienware gaming laptops are Dell and I’d buy one for gaming.
Lenovo are good but you will get absolutely buried in options on their site. In general the more expensive the model the better.
Personally I really love my Surface Pro. It’s actually the bottom end model but it’s great for everything I need. I don’t game on it though. I got the pen and the type pad cover/keyboard. F really loves to draw on it and it has great cameras. You’ll probably need a USB hub that’s all.
can i just send you some money and you send me a laptop please x
Nah, you only get shit US keyboard layouts here. It’ll drive you mad!
That used to be the case, but AMD have greatly improved recently and were generally considered to be the better option last year. Intel has since improved so it is now more complicated.
I don’t wanna be rude but basically everything daggers is saying is not really accurate
Don’t worry about ranges or anything like that. Make sure it’s the right size. Get 8GB RAM at least and make sure the hard drive’s an SSD and big enough for what you need - RAM and SSDs are much of a muchness really.
That’s the easy bit done. Processors can get complicated as even an e.g. Ryzen 5 has loads of different varieties to compare, but if you use a site like CPU Benchmark it’ll give you a nice simple number you can compare against other processors.
It’ll take a bit of research but you’ll find the right combo for your money.
I would heartily welcome a range of views on what I should look for or comments on my questions, including from your good self x
Imo on the lower budget end get this
And on the higher budget end get this
Yeah, in general you won’t need an i7 CPU unless you’re getting into high end development or big gaming or movie processing.
But even low-end machines can still run pleasant indie games that aren’t 3D modern monsters.
And low powered chips can still do things like render complex movies they just do it slower.
Ooh or you could shop around for a top of the line ThinkPad from a few years ago I’ve heard that’s a good shout