UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
No idea how old mine is, but it's been through a few upgrades. That's a bit shit on their part, thought everything was on the net these days!
Affordable laptop recommendations: budget £350-£450
- Thread starter psycherelic
- Start date
No idea how old mine is, but it's been through a few upgrades. That's a bit shit on their part, thought everything was on the net these days!
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
No problem, hopefully you'll have many years of trouble free computing with your new friend. Funnily enough that Acer laptop is currently on my shortlist as I have been asked to help one of my Dad's friends to by a new laptop after her current (old win xp) one was wrecked by a coffee spill. I've had a couple of trips to PC World and had a gander and will probably suggest that she get an HP Stream 14 which is about £250. She is quite elderly and won't be using it for downloading videos and music etc mainly surfing, skype, youtube so storage isn't a high priority.I got an acer aspire e14 from pc world and an HP envy printer/ scanner/ photocopier.
Thanks for the advice.
I used to use avg and malwarebytes back in the Windows XP days, but haven't installed any third party anti virus software since Windows 7 and just use the delivered Windows Defender. I think there's a lot of fearmongering and scare stories which helps to sell anti-virus software, and I've found that the software can sometimes be more of a hinderance than help. I personally wouldn't install McAfee even if it was free, however if you feel more comfortable and safer having it installed then go for it.They gave me macafee anti virus free as I refused to buy it and they were ' concerned'.
I have always used free avg as well as spy bot and lavatory.
Any anti viral advice?
I'm thinking I might need a new laptop. My current one, a Dell Latitude E6400, has been good to me. It was someone else's ex-business computer, sold on to me through an independent shop where I used to live. I have another similar shop near me now who I think are quite good, so can any of you knowledgeable people tell me what kind of spec I need? Most of what I do is just using the web, and not gaming. I stream, use torrents and Soulseek, but other than that not much else. The shop in question have said they can build something to order, so I'd like to know what I should ask for. I don't have a strict budget as such, and I could go a little higher than the thread title if needed.
My Dell has that annoying joystick button in the middle of the keyboard, between the G, H and B keys. It sometimes drifts the cursor, which fucking annoying, and is part of my reason for considering a change.
My Dell has that annoying joystick button in the middle of the keyboard, between the G, H and B keys. It sometimes drifts the cursor, which fucking annoying, and is part of my reason for considering a change.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
They can build you a laptop? 
No specific suggestions, but worth thinking how portable and what screen size you need it to help narrow the search.
No specific suggestions, but worth thinking how portable and what screen size you need it to help narrow the search.
Chz
Stark Raving Sane
If you have the proper Dell driver installed, you can turn off the nipple or the touchpad. You can even disable the upper set of "mouse" buttons.
They can build you a laptop?
I may have misunderstood/misheard then.
The engineer I spoke to there previously suggested that the nipple was interlinked with the keyboard, so disabling it would mean the keyboard was defunct. Quite why anyone would want the nipple is beyond me.
Portability isn't a factor, as I only use it at home, and almost always in the same place on a table. I'm more investigating what sort of processor I should be looking for, and the RAM and storage memory. Not being particularly techy, I'm not aware of the important factors, so all advice is welcome.
In the absence of direct recommendations, can someone tell me if this is a decent enough guide please? It's from a retailer, so one could question its objectivity.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
It's not a bad guide I guess. What do you want to use it for and what's your budget?
Mostly surfing the web, with torrents, live streams and Soulseek thrown in. The only game I ever play is the ancient but excellent Arcade Pool 2, but that's not online at all.
As for budget, I'm prepared to pay what I need to as I use it a lot, so I'm open to hear opinions. This caught my eye in my browsing.
cybershot
Well-Known Member
Not bad for the price, especially as it comes with Win 10 Pro. You might be able to scrape something slightly better for that price elsewhere if you're happy to use Win 10 Home Edition instead and sacrifice the DVD drive. (for something thinner and lighter)
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Also if your torrenting films you'll probably want an external drive, but that's okay as an SSD as the main one will make the machine far nicer to use.
nick
Pleomorphic Adenomas R us
FWIW I just got a Thinkpad X1 Refurb X1 Carbon [1st Gen] i7-3667U 2.00GHz 8GB 240GB SSD Grade A
£470 with Win 10 Pro
From an initial play (whilst setting it up, installing office etc) it seems to be a nice machine. Makes my reconditioned T430 seem like a house brick
£470 with Win 10 Pro
From an initial play (whilst setting it up, installing office etc) it seems to be a nice machine. Makes my reconditioned T430 seem like a house brick
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
That looks a lovely bit of kit!
Yes, that's something the bloke at the shop mentioned to me when he did a previous fix on my existing laptop. The torrenting thing is fairly new, but the thousands of MP3s would be a great loss.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Unless you have a truly heroic MP3 collection they'd probably fit.
I think a lot of home broadband boxes now support plugging in a drive if you didn't fancy the cables to the laptop.
Ive got a little micro server filled out the drives that everything on the network can access.
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
x1 carbons are lovely. The only thing that would put me off slightly is that they don't plug into a base station like the T series and the position of the control key which lenovo refuse to move even though nearly every other keyboard has the control key in the corner where it belongs. I bought 2 T430's for the kids on ebay about 6 months ago for £190 each and so far have been very happy with them even though as you said they are a bit more chunky compared to a carbon.
nick
Pleomorphic Adenomas R us
Yep the Base station thing is annoying - as I managed to borrow one from a place of employment.
The weight makes up for it as it is for my daughter now she has started secondary - and she may need to lug it into central London on public transport occasionally
Was also pleasantly surprised to find out that it is also touch screen - when I tried to clean the screen and things started happening. I didn't know that when I ordered it
The weight makes up for it as it is for my daughter now she has started secondary - and she may need to lug it into central London on public transport occasionally
Was also pleasantly surprised to find out that it is also touch screen - when I tried to clean the screen and things started happening. I didn't know that when I ordered it
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
As I personally use my laptop at a desk +90% of the time, I'd rather have the base station although I can see the benefits of light weight. The other disadvantage of thin and light "ultrabooks" is that they tend not to have easily replaceable batteries and have to compromise a bit more on power because they are harder to cool. When my current laptop expires which hopefully won't be for a good while, I'll have my eyes on something like a Thinkpad T460/70 or a P50/51 (complete with base station of course
).Is there a reason why cables into the laptop might be a bad idea? I thought the back-up drives could be used as a separate entity, for adding stuff periodically. Have I got the wrong end of the stick?
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
No at all and that solution works just fine as well. Personally I don't like external drives dangling of laptops, buts thats only personal preference and if you want to transfer large amounts of data a cable is still the easiest way.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Most Toshibas I've seen feel cheap and plasticy. That's not the end of the world though if it rarely leaves the home.
When I get round to replacing my aging thinkpad I'll be willing to compromise on the internals for something tough as I've got a desktop as my main machine, so it's for occasional use out and about. If I was buying a laptop as my main computer I'd probably be go the other way and get the most grunt I could for the money.
Unlike desktops I think there's something to be said for going to your local Currys and handling one, even if you don't end up buying from there.
When I get round to replacing my aging thinkpad I'll be willing to compromise on the internals for something tough as I've got a desktop as my main machine, so it's for occasional use out and about. If I was buying a laptop as my main computer I'd probably be go the other way and get the most grunt I could for the money.
Unlike desktops I think there's something to be said for going to your local Currys and handling one, even if you don't end up buying from there.
Throbbing Angel
this is no longer a place of honour
Aye, go and play with laptops in a shop - John Lewis are great for this if you have one nearby - very helpful staff. I did this last couple of times I was buying. It helps a lot. There's nothing worse than buying a laptop online and then it landing and you hate the keyboard, or the way the touch-pad ain't just as intuitive as you'd like etc etc.
Throbbing Angel
this is no longer a place of honour
Hows it going with this X1 Carbon? I'm interested/tempted but worry about processor being older models.
So how are you finding it nick ?
nick
Pleomorphic Adenomas R us
Can't answer fully yet - my daughter is getting it for her birthday this weekend - so I 've only been on it to set up and install software etc.
The boot up is quick - due no doubt to the SSD. It certainly feels quicker than the T430 and (I guess) the I7 is a relatively newish processor?
It feels speedy enough for day to day stuff - but suspect it will never be challenged with video encoding / graphics rendering / heavy gaming etc etc
The boot up is quick - due no doubt to the SSD. It certainly feels quicker than the T430 and (I guess) the I7 is a relatively newish processor?
It feels speedy enough for day to day stuff - but suspect it will never be challenged with video encoding / graphics rendering / heavy gaming etc etc
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
I agree that "hands on" time can be valuable, although tbf even then you don't always catch the quirks and foibles until you've got the laptop at home and start using it properly, then you can pick up on things like fan noise or overheating. I would also recommend doing at least a bit of research and having some idea of what you want before you visit the shops. I've found that shop sales staff aren't that knowledgeable themselves. PC World staff next to useless John Lewis better but often have little more than superficial knowledge.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
God. I wouldnt go to a shop and expect to actually get useful advice!
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