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Gustavus Adolphus

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Alright guys, I need your help. My PC is dying, and I don't want to deal with a PC again. I'm looking for a laptop, and I want/need recommendations on it. I'm not a gamer, so I don't need to worry about that, but I do need good video play. Looking for big memory, and looking for bigly speed.

I welcome all suggestions.
 

Ares

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If you are a Mac person I can't help. I don't know their products.

I personally like ASUS products, last 2 laptops I got were ASUS and the first one lasted me 4 years, 2nd one has lasted me 5 years and still going.

If I was going for a non-gaming machine tho I might look at a nice light Lenovo Thinkpad, had those for work and liked them.

Any idea on budget? 500$? 1000$?
 

Crystallas

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I'm thinking you're in the market for a decent i7 Kaby Lake or maybe Coffee Lake(not released yet) laptop with the integrated 630 or better GPU. 8gb-16gb of ram. But then touchscreen or no touchscreen?
 

Gustavus Adolphus

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Any idea on budget? 500$? 1000$?
I'd be willing to go as high as $1500
I'm thinking you're in the market for a decent i7 Kaby Lake or maybe Coffee Lake(not released yet) laptop with the integrated 630 or better GPU. 8gb-16gb of ram. But then touchscreen or no touchscreen?
I don't think I need anything touchscreen. That seems a bit much for stuff like power points, lesson plans, and connecting to a projector.
 

Ares

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I think Gus needs something that can play 7 Days to Die at least, I need another person chopping wood.
 

Novak

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I'd be willing to go as high as $1500

I don't think I need anything touchscreen. That seems a bit much for stuff like power points, lesson plans, and connecting to a projector.

I wouldn't spend 1500 on a laptop you have no intention of doing anything intensive on. Laptops, by design, are not meant to last more than ~5 or so years. Stay under a grand and get a new one when the one you buy inevitably fails.

Just my imo.
 

czman

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It is very hard to provide a suggested without any real data. How much battery life are you looking for? Are you getting redistributed so up x dollars it does not matter? Is size or heat an issue?

If you are just using it for powerpoint and you want something snappy you could probably go with something like:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...4&cm_re=acer_aspire_e5-_-34-315-604-_-Product

It is a 126GB SSD so any powerpoint you have on that will be fast and plenty of ram.

The only reason you need more cores is your applications scale well to more cores and I don't think it matters at all with powerpoint.

Here is an interesting Lenevo:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...nevo_thinkpad_e560-_-1TS-000E-05ZG4-_-Product

Both of these are overkill for "stuff like power points, lesson plans, and connecting to a projector."

If you are primarily reading from disk (powerpoint) an SSD or M.2 are the biggest gains you will see. More cores won't help much at all.
 

czman

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I wouldn't spend 1500 on a laptop you have no intention of doing anything intensive on. Laptops, by design, are not meant to last more than ~5 or so years. Stay under a grand and get a new one when the one you buy inevitably fails.

Just my imo.

This makes a lot of sense. The battery on most heavily used laptops will be all but dead in 3 or 4 years. You might be better off buying a laptop cheaper and then getting another battery for it 24 months or so in.
 

Gustavus Adolphus

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Crystallas

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I have a hard time recommending anything HP. Although I'm aware they have gotten better recently. Someone else with more than just a handful of purchases would need to reassure you, because I wont. Same with Acer for different reasons. Also, I love AMD, but wont suggest an AMD laptop right now. Maybe if/when Ryzen APUs show up, but that might not happen until 2018.

Specs are nice. Resolution is low (didn't realize the one I posted was low too, but the one on Dell's page is full HD) and I'm not sure if the display is IPS or not. IPS displays are easier to view from angles.
Not sure if you would get much use out of 32GB of ram for a few years. If you plan on toting this around, SSD should be a priority because they have no moving parts. At least an OS SSD(solid state, a bunch of chips) so the HDD (a bunch of spinning platters) only uses power when in use, ie: extended storage. Less shock when a spinning disk isn't being used.

Let's continue with some basics.

-How big(or small) of a display do you want? 13,14,15,17" make up the mix. 13 might be the most common right now.
-Do you want a numpad on the keyboard?
-What is the most intensive application you want to run on the machine?
-How portable? Mostly sitting on a lap somewhere? Mostly on a desk as a desktop replacement that on rare occasion travels with you? Plop it onto your bed to grind some work out before bed on a semi-knightly basis?
 

Gustavus Adolphus

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-How big(or small) of a display do you want? 13,14,15,17" make up the mix. 13 might be the most common right now.
-Do you want a numpad on the keyboard?
-What is the most intensive application you want to run on the machine?
-How portable? Mostly sitting on a lap somewhere? Mostly on a desk as a desktop replacement that on rare occasion travels with you? Plop it onto your bed to grind some work out before bed on a semi-knightly basis?
No bigger than 15"

Don't need a numpad. Would it be nice? Sure. Would I not buy a perfect laptop because it doesn't have one? No.

Most intensive application? Probably nothing more than large power points/basic internet/videos...

The ability to have it be able to move to a variety of locations, and the durability of the machine would be my most important at this point.
 

Crystallas

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Heck, you can get away with an i3 Kaby Lake with 16GB of ram, and be happy for a few years with those needs. Problem, because we had a few shortages this year on RAM, you might be better off buying a stick of ram and dropping it into the machine yourself. For most machines, this is very easy (but beware, some manufacturers have made it harder on certain systems).

What are you coming from, spec-wise? So you're not missing anything.


First recommendation. 2-in-1s are cheaper lately, you don't need to use the touchscreen.

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Touch...6011,p_n_feature_twenty_browse-bin:9521929011
 

AussieBear

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Heck, you can get away with an i3 Kaby Lake with 16GB of ram, and be happy for a few years with those needs. Problem, because we had a few shortages this year on RAM, you might be better off buying a stick of ram and dropping it into the machine yourself. For most machines, this is very easy (but beware, some manufacturers have made it harder on certain systems).

What are you coming from, spec-wise? So you're not missing anything.


First recommendation. 2-in-1s are cheaper lately, you don't need to use the touchscreen.

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Touch...6011,p_n_feature_twenty_browse-bin:9521929011

yeah the i3 would work

i gotz a toshiba satellite 2nd gen i3 in late 2010 i think (maybe early q1 2011), its still running. 15.6 in" screen, 4gb ram, 500 gb hhd....ive replaced the battery, upgraded the ram and had to fix the keyboard twice because of a child pulling out keys..but its been solid, no complaints.. may be due for another battery soon though....idk.. i only use it in bed at night now...

it would handle your applications. graphics was a hd3000, - handled skyrim, starcraft2 etc while being on the go (plugged in at hotels though). even though you dont care about gaming, it could game some on low-med details.

i think i only paid 299-499 from frys, cant remember exactly now.. i just remember getting it on sell before a new gen of i3s came out.

you could probably get a toshiba i5,i7 for 500-800.. hell get a refurb..
 

Crystallas

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An i3 today is faster than an i7 from 2011 in most applications and uses. Even for grandma users who just play facebook games, new archs take advantage of memory benefits. 8gb of DDR4 on a new arch is better than 8gb of 6 year old DDR3 on a 2011 arch.
 

AussieBear

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An i3 today is faster than an i7 from 2011 in most applications and uses. Even for grandma users who just play facebook games, new archs take advantage of memory benefits. 8gb of DDR4 on a new arch is better than 8gb of 6 year old DDR3 on a 2011 arch.

as a non techie, i agree to a degree. perhaps faster per core but not overall when accomplishing multitasking. well im looking at my old arse 6 core xeon.. so idk.. but same theory

heres a 7th gen i7 for 619

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834217481

only 4 gb ram and no ssd drive, but 1 tb of hdd space.. 8gb and 256gb ssd was 200 more iirc
 

Crystallas

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as a non techie, i agree to a degree. perhaps faster per core but not overall when accomplishing multitasking. well im looking at my old arse 6 core xeon.. so idk.. but same theory

heres a 7th gen i7 for 619

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834217481

only 4 gb ram and no ssd drive, but 1 tb of hdd space.. 8gb and 256gb ssd was 200 more iirc

Not in theory, that includes most multitasking. The only benchmarks that show better scores are irrelevant, because they already max out or they haven't been optimized for new CPUs. Going forward the newer arch is more futureproof. Plus, bus speeds alone make up for a lot of performance, not just the CPU. Things like newer sub-version SATA compliance and PCIe/m.2. And as mentioned, the memory controller is much better.


Since 7200Us are the most common although a low-end i5 instead of i3(the 7200U is a 15w CPU. It's actually slightly slower than the 35w i3 anyways in most tasks, including multithreading, but the 7100H isn't widely released, nor are benchmarks widely made), lets use the fastest Westmere mobile CPU, which was the fastest mobile i7 actually available for purchase (not a paper launch) of 2010 and well into 2011.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-2640M-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7200U/m791vsm153577

And mind you, this isn't fully tuned or optimized for Kaby Lake quite yet. That still takes a few years. Westmere, even Sandy Bridge optimizations are at 99.9+% completion, it will only degrade over time.
 

Crystallas

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Not really. Like I said, the 7200U was using the low power i5 as an example. Then to skip the laptop i3 and go for the low power i3(7100U, versus the faster 7100H) makes it an unfair comparison. The 7100H is the fastest CPU of all mentioned, including the Sandy Bridge, which wasn't available in your time frame (2010 to Q1 2011) except as a paper launch. Buying a Sandy Bridge laptop would have been Q2 2011. But still, the i3 7100H is for all effective normal user purposes and multitasking, the faster CPU. Given time, more opts, that small gap will grow more.

http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_core_i3_7100h-694

Bare in mind, this is the laptop CPU being compared to whatever pops up in their DB, including DESKTOP cpus, which is not a fair comparison. But funny enough, the i7 7100H hangs with a number of i7 Desktop CPUs.
 

AussieBear

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Not really. Like I said, the 7200U was using the low power i5 as an example. Then to skip the laptop i3 and go for the low power i3(7100U, versus the faster 7100H) makes it an unfair comparison. The 7100H is the fastest CPU of all mentioned, including the Sandy Bridge, which wasn't available in your time frame (2010 to Q1 2011) except as a paper launch. Buying a Sandy Bridge laptop would have been Q2 2011. But still, the i3 7100H is for all effective normal user purposes and multitasking, the faster CPU. Given time, more opts, that small gap will grow more.

http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_core_i3_7100h-694

Bare in mind, this is the laptop CPU being compared to whatever pops up in their DB, including DESKTOP cpus, which is not a fair comparison. But funny enough, the i7 7100H hangs with a number of i7 Desktop CPUs.

youre coming from an engineer's perspective.. vs me consumer grade mind.. i aint caring and trying to match power etc to makes it a fair tess... just comparing a mobile i3 of today vs old gen mobile i7 which be 4% better on da bench. you could probably get one dem old i7 laptops for 100 bucks or less.. so ptp.. is it even close... however i did suggest he getz a 7th gen i7... 600 dolla.. high cost.. but meh.. its a laptop.. would work and last 5-10 yrs..

as a consumer.. not really impressed by cpu evolution da last 7 yrs.. dey be lazy peeps... be like buying madden every year.. a slight roster update for years... thats what it seems like from my end.. hopefully amd/intel will push each other for some great gains the next 7.. cause me slightly interested as a consumer now..
 

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