[CONSUMER ADVICE] Laptop Buying

I use the 12" PowerBook G4, and it is IDEAL.

As a music nut you will surely love iTunes. Imagine if all your music files (provided you're into that sort of thing) were in a big database that you could query based on pretty much any criteria you choose! It's more intelligent than any other software that purports to be a "library" or "jukebox" and it's inobtrusive and smartly designed (like most Apple software). Two clicks and you've burned a CD.

This computer is PLEASURABLE. To look at it when it's switched off you might say "the screen is surely too small" but believe me, I use this thing 8+ hours a day and it's the IDEAL size and more easy on the eyes than a 17" CRT. I no longer go home with raging headaches from eyestrain. If you need to hook it up to a monitor (ie. for a presentation) you can too (the only caveat being that it does not have DVI-out). Take it to a coffee shop and watch the heads turn!

The keyboard is to die for. If you do a lot of writing/typing you would be hard pressed to find a laptop keyboard that gives you a better balance between softness and clickiness. Plus, it looks more elegant than most of the Soviet-era refuse they're passing off these days ...

Also, I cannot stress how easy Mac OS X is to use. I am a massive nerd, but a lazy one, and I spend less time wrestling with with the O/S than I did when I was on Windows (and about 1% of the wrestle time I spent on Linux).

Many people have reported heat/excessive warmth issues from the 12" PowerBook. The computer does get a bit toasty (the hazard of cramming so much goodness into a small metal box, I suspect) but if you run Software Update to bring yourself up to the newest patch level, you'll be fine.

They start at £1299 which ain't so bad. If you've got a mate who goes to University see if he'll use his education discount for you and you can probably knock of a couple hundred pounds.

(fields of salmon in MacPorn shocker!)

it has a trackpad, but i've used a trackpad for like five or six years or more, happily. my old computer was in such a sorry state, too, that the button was broken so I was using the trackpad to tap, too. no problems.

macos x is a fine, stable operating system. it has unix stuff underneath but you don't have to mess with it if you don't want to. from my reformed computer nerd perspective, a lot of the new features (not just the unix stuff) are really slick. I've had no problems with software, but then I don't have any special needs for my computer. I think aside from a downloaded ftp client (using a web browser as an ftp client sucks ass), I basically only use software that came with it. ichat (aim client) is nice, and itunes (mp3 player) is great. you would probably want to buy or steal a copy of microsoft office, but it comes with word processing etc. software that does the job.

I also have an airport card and airport hub (for wireless). the hub accomodates both ethernet connected to broadband, and a modem line. it broadcasts a standard (mac or pc) wireless signal, up to like 50 meters or something. I haven't had any trouble with it (the one time I thought I did, and spent an hour fucking around with everything I could think of to fix it, it turned out that my ethernet connection to the hub on our internal network was bad - I just suspected the airport first because I figured it would be the sort of thing to get fucked up), moving around the house, down in the basement, etc. the speed is great with a cable internet connection, so if you're still using a modem, wireless would be just as fast for you as using the modem directly. oh, and the ibook's got a built-in ether port and modem, anyway. having an airport hub at home might be extravagant for you, I don't know - but I greatly appreciate the ability to move around my house with no wires. even without the hub, a card is a really good idea if you have anywhere you frequent with wireless service. I've never paid for service (though there was a pay network available in one of my coffeeshops, unbeknownst to me), since my campus, including, happily, my office, is mostly covered with wireless. obviously I think this is the greatest technology ever. I'm a little behind.

regardless of what you buy, buy a lot of extra ram. aside from the eventual upgrades that won't support your processor (the model, not the speed), ram is probably the determining factor in how much useful life you get out of the machine. or you can be a mentalist like me and have no ram for years and run two programs max at once and use no new exciting software once software development leaves you behind.

I have grown very weary of the nipple on my work laptop.

I second the recommendation for whoever have been bigging up Toshiba and IBM Thinkpads. These are the top of the heap when it comes to PC notebooks, truly. Dell is nice, but Toshiba and IBM Thinkpad are a little more reliable.

You cannot go wrong with an Apple, as they just make solid pieces of hardware.

Toshiba and some of the Sonys I have heard good things about, but I have no experience with either one.

No, no Macs, sorry.

anyways, i also want to use soulseek so macs are out.

i am trying to decide between a Dell Inspiron 5100 vs an Ibm thinkpad. i have not looked into the thinkpads, are they worth the it?

help!

I'm getting my new work to get me one too but I don't really want to have thousands of MP3s on a new job's PC.

Since you seem to be quite iAware, I've been meaning to find out: is it normal to have a 6-7 second delay every between every 5th or 6th track when on 'shuffle'? It sort of growls and sounds like it's doing what it should, and the pause is only vaguely irritating, but I've never heard anybody else mention it. Again, I'm using the old 20G beast...

I need a new laptop.

my current one is OK but for, mostly, its build (probs w/ screen/power supply/CD/DVD). it has 512MB RAM, some shitty shared graphics, 30GB HDD, 1.2GHz processor. I've had it for 2 years and had it around europe and america for almost a quarter of that time--it hasn't lasted too badly.

I will be using the new one for drawing and modelling, mainly, so memory and extra, dedicated graphics memory is most key. the bigger the screen, the better. the better the processor, the better. of course. CD/DVD. not too fussed about HDD, since I have an external 200GB drive, so 30GB or so would prob be fine. the more robust, the better, too.

tell me things I don't know. PLEASE GUYS

COME ON PLEASE

oh, would like to pay less than £1200/$2200 but if there was something great, for a little more, who knows?

COME ON PLEASE PLEASE

I have a 15" screen, just now, and that is OK. ideally, I would have a 12" or 14" and another 19"+ screen to plug it into, on my desk!!!!!!!!

it's the graphics memory that makes it difficulter. HP look good and toshiba look good, too. sony is expensive, yes.

: S

Is it new enough to be on warranty? If so, get it replaced! It is unlikely that yours was the only fuck-up, so they are already fielding complaints and replacing yours would be just S.O.P.

If it is approaching its expiration date but money is too tight to buy a replacement, it might be worth looking for a keyboard remapping utility program. I know such programs used to exist, ages ago. There are fans of non-standard keyboard layouts, like the Dvorak keyboard, so such programs may still be floating around out there. This might provide a relatively cheap workaround, but only if all the required characters can be produced by pressing a key somewhere on the keyboard; it could not magically produce characters all on its own.

Even then, I won't guarantee success.

I am on a 90-day warranty, so i should be able to get it replaced.

Is it definitely the keyboard? I've definitely been on Windows machines before where the language got switched somewhere in Control Panel (or, obnoxiously, through obscure keyboard combinations which can be hit accidentally) so that it was interpreting input as German, or Chinese.

well, i hit the keys and different characters come up. i don't know how to begin to determine what causes it. how would i unfuck the control panel?

this is what i hate about this century. i never wanted to own a car because you have to be an amateur mechanic! now i have to be an amateur geek.

give this kind of thing a try

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/258824/how-to-change-your-keyboard-layout

will do

this thing has Windows 10

similar, i think https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4027670/windows-10-add-and-switch-input-and-display-language-preferences

thx

yeah, def sounds like settings

wishin & hopin

so it's kinda funny, right next to date/time at the bottom it sais "ENG LB", which stood for English/Luxembourgish keyboard. I have clicked and changed it to "ENG US".

Thanks for everyone who pointed out the obvious, lob 'senile uncle' jokes at me.

I'm thinking of buying a new laptop this year and, for the first time a non-macbook

I had the 2014 Air which was great, but has gradually ground down over the last few months and now no longer turns on. I have a 2017 Pro from work, and Ive never liked it. Bad keyboard, and would hang sometimes, has never felt particularly solid. That had an incident and is now also dead, anyway

With both being dead I've had to buy an emergency laptop so i could actually work. Got the cheapest one in the shop, a €250 Lenovo Ideapad. 4gb RAM and runs like a dog (on windows), awful. I put Linux on it, and its actually kind of not that bad. I still have to reboot it as it does hang, so not a good longer term solution. its bulky and heavy but usable for right now

Going to need a proper replacement though, and looking at macbook prices idk I can justify it! Was looking at the Asus Zenbook as a possibility. 800ish doesnt seem so bad, but can i go cheaper and still have something good to use?

criteria:
1) light/small-ish
2) good battery

zenbook looks good, maybe the dell xps? the vivobook is cheaper so maybe theres a trade off. is there any reason in 2019 to got back to macbooks?

its a decade since i bought a laptop but im always peeking

id have said an xps with min i5 to futureproof a little but a decent spec thinkpad or similar should be zippy enough too

im presuming that you know enough to get an ssd in and max the ram for whatever model it is you currently have. makes a huge difference in a windows.

I won't have windows on it, will be a linux distro!

the zenbook is 8gb ram and 256gb SSD for €849. I don't think i need to spec it up any more than that. I'd like to be able to run vagrant and docker, but above a certain level of performance, size, weight and price are more important

Just make sure you're comfortable with the keyboard, mousepad and screen before you buy. My laptop (Acer, 8mb, SSD) is perfectly functional but the screen isn't great and I find not having separate mouse buttons really awkward.

this is definitely a worry, never thought about it with the Air, but the keyboard and feel of the last macbook just wasnt right

OK so the Dell XPS 13/15 seems to be the de facto undisputed Windows laptop these days, but what else is in a similar league? They are SO expensive!!! Also, my work laptop is a 14" screen and it is the perfect sweet spot between the 13 (which feels a little too tiny) and the 15 (which I prefer but is a bit bigger and more $$$)

Ideally I'd like something with user-upgradable RAM, though I know that gets harder and harder these days, and a Ryzen would be great but isn't critical. The only heavy duty stuff I do is very occasional video ripping/conversion with HandBrake, and retro-ish gaming, like mostly stuff that came out 10+ years ago. I don't play a lot of newer stuff, so I think an integrated GPU should be more more than adequate (for reference, my current machine is a 2012 ThinkPad T530 with 8 GB of RAM and I played through Dead Space and Bioshock Infinite just fine on the lowest settings, which I didn't at all mind). I want a nice, solid keyboard, and in terms of screen I want it to have great color and brightness, but I don't need it to go beyond 1920x1080 (I had 3000x2000 on my last work laptop, and it was great but unnecessary and caused scaling issues in a lot of programs, and I switched to a 1920x1080 several months ago and it's caused little-to-no bother). I also don't really care about touch.

When I last bought a laptop (2012), USB3 was still newish and a lot of laptops didn't have it, but I assume everything at this point has USB-C/Thunderbolt, so I don't imagine ports or interfaces will be much of a factor.

Given that I'm only looking for 16GB of RAM and something in the i5 range, do I even need a workhorse/ultrabook style laptop? Does build quality drop off precipitously at the $1000 range? I have no idea what I'm doing anymore apart from whatever Wirecutter recommends.

I bought two of my kids the HP PC Portable Pavilion Gaming 15,6" i5-9300H - RAM 8Go - Stockage 128Go SSD + 1To HDD - GTX1050 - Win 10. Each was 600 €. They seem fine?

I need a new laptop. This one is fucked. It keeps randomly switching itself off, dunno why, I don't think it's overheating, the battery isn't dead, there's nothing in the Event Log. The headphone socket/soundcard is also fucked, which is v annoying because it's the main way I play music through my stereo.

I have no idea what brands/etc are good these days. I only know I wouldn't buy one of these again, it's a Medion and it's a piece of junk. it has a serious drawback for a laptop. you can't take it anywhere or the screen will break. I've had to replace it twice, just through it being in a suitcase, wrapped in clothes, in the boot of a car. get to destination and the screen is totally fucked, like in those videos of idiots punching their TV when their sports team loses. never had that happen with any other laptop ever.

I don't want to spend more than £1000. any ideas? I don't play a lot of games or anything too intensive really. what are good brands these days? I had a Lenovo before this one that was good for a lot longer but I have no idea what they are like nowadays. I use a MacBook for work but I am not an Apple fan at all. I figure I'll get a Windows laptop, then wipe this one and stick Linux Mint on it.

Lenovo are solid value, asus and acer in the same bracket as safe vets before you start to delve into the different configurations available

i reaearched a purchase for my brother lately and ended up recommending matebook which has really good build quality on top of the actual reportwd specs

I just got an HP laptop with bang & olufsen audio through this site - https://www.mycheaplaptop.co.uk/ - they do refurbished only, I got a laptop sold for £2000 a couple of years ago for £500 and they were happy to change the specs (I wanted a bigger HD) when I called them. Been burned on refurbished laptops before but this one seems good so far, the website looks really dodgy I know.

It is great having a top spec sound card after years of shitty laptops

My company gave me a Dell laptop at the start of the pandemic... I don't actually know the model number. It's fine, fairly robust but I've only taken it out of the house a handful of times

Asus & Acer seem to be pretty affordable, thanks dmac.

there are some bargains on mycheaplaptop.co.uk, processors are well old though, presumably that's why they're so cheap though. pity they don't have anything a bit more expensive at the moment, because the prices seem good. thanks, will keep an eye on it

dependimg on whats important to you the variations can be fucking dizzying out there tbh

xp yeah having a look they just seem to have the cheaper ones on there right now for some reason.

I went browsing in the shops on tottenham court road before I bought, that was useful.

this isn't going v well.

I thought maybe I'd splash out a bit and upped my budget a bit, but the 2 laptops I had my eye on, at different websites, both went up £350 last week. wtf. so those are way out now because they were already more than I planned to spend.

another thing - are UK keyboards being phased out or something? I keep seeing laptops at UK shops like Currys with US keyboard layouts. what's that about?

thinkpad x1 carbon series is a bit above your price range but are excellent machines that work well with linux

If you're not bothering with Windows, you can save a bit and customize pretty much everything on your laptop (including keyboard layout):
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-intel

Also, if you're mostly using a browser and music playback (not recording), you could save even more with a Chromebook (which does have the option to run Linux within it, but apparently there's no USB support so forget recording music etc...).

Lastly, if you're alright with having your work MacBook do double duty, you could install a Linux virtual machine on it via https://getutm.app/ and work out a backup/encryption scheme if work ever reclaims it, or segregate it entirely by running it off a small external SSD.

don't transport it by wrapping towels around it! laptops are delicate precision machines! spend £20 on a padded laptop protector at least

I have a £300 voucher for Currys/PC World, as a replacement for a laptop that was so slow as to be useless (but had been covered by one of their insurances). Would probably double my spend to get something half decent. Likely to be used a lot but not for much fancy (eg. gaming) - more emails, internet browsing and a small amount of music. As ever, any recommendations? Ta!

And/or anything to particularly look for? (Bloke in shop mentioned Corei3 or above).

Do PC shops in the UK let you test out devices in-store?

Something I think really gets overlooked for laptops is just how comfortable the keyboard is -- try a few typing tests with them.
If they have internet set up, you might also try testing how responsive it is after opening 20 tabs on a browser playing various youtube clips simultaneously -- also pick a movie scene you like to see how much you like the screen.

As far as processor goes -- this wouldn't be a direct test, but if you can, try the above tests using just battery to see how it performs (often, laptops behave quite differently plugged in than on battery), listen to hear if a fan starts revving up.

Chromebook could cover a lot of your requirements while allowing budget for screen/build quality imo

Ta, both.

https://gizmodo.com/hp-pavilion-plus-14-2023-review-performance-1851066819

$900 is budget now?