It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
RE: Lenovo. I bought a Lenovo Flex 10 10.1" (500 GB, Intel Celeron, 1.46 GHz, 2 GB) about 2 years ago and I hated it! I found it a little slow and the writing was so tiny on the screen and there was no way to increase the overall writing on Windows at that time. I don't remember what version of Windows it had on it, maybe Windows 8. I remember it came with that Superfish thing preinstalled on it too.
I was pretty disappointed and sold it two weeks later. I know it was a cheaper Lenovo, but the experience put me off the brand.
Are the ThinkPads all good machines?
I bought a Lenovo Ideapad 720s. Really happy so far. I think there is value in this kind of model, the flagship models (like the Yoga 920) tend to be quite a bit more and no better specs, just fancier cases. This one was top of the less premium range but for £900 has quad core i7 (7th gen), dedicated graphics (1050ti), 8GB upgradable RAM (unlike macbooks and Yoga’s etc), aluminium case. The equivalent Mac was over £2k, but this is very fast, a very impressive experience. Boots up and logs on with fingerprint in less than 10s.
The only downside, the screen is good but not quite up there with the best, not quite as bright or vivid as a mac or XPS.
I was initially put off by the 7th gen processor but them looked at benchmarks and realised it was faster than many of the 8th gen I5’s. I’m really happy I didn’t spend an extra £500+ on an XPS or £1000 extra on a macbook pro.
I'm guessing something with an SSD and a 8GB of RAM, but it's not going to need an i7.
It's hard for me to recommend any laptop in terms of reliability because by the time I can tell you a model is reliable for 3 years or more it's out of date and of little interest to the spec driven buy today. What I can say though if your interested in something that has more chance of giving 3 to 5 years or reliable service is
Don't buy any laptop with an AMD chip. I write off way more AMD based laptops given to me by the shop due to failed motherboards than I do Intel.
Don't go mad with the processor ..... sweet spot for reliability and performance is an i5, more processing power = more heat = less reliability
Don't go for a powerful GPU .... more GPU power = more heat = less reliability ..... By far GPU ball grid array joints are the biggest cause of motherboard failure. The more powerful the GPU the more likely it is to fail. If your into gaming get a desktop
Don't buy any model with soldered on ram even if it has a spare ram slot. If the onboard ram goes duff putting another one in the spare SODIMM socket won't help. Buy something with no onboard ram and preferably 2 SODIMM slots
Don't buy any model with SSD storage soldered straight on the board for the same reasons as above. A lot of models now have the SSD in a PCIE type slot, that's fine or standard 2.5" format is fine but if onboard SSD fails you need a new board AND you have zero chance of recovering data
Don't buy anything with a reverse loaded keyboard unless it's Macbook Pro or high end Lenovo or Dell ...... Making a laptop with this design looks cool but requires expensive manufacturing techniques ... in the case of the Macbook and Lenovo it means some 40 odd tiny screws hold the keyboard firmly against the underneath of the palmrest ....... solid as hell but means the keyboard can be easily replaced. Acer, Asus and a lot of cheap brands try to achieve the same thing by plastic riveting the keyboard to the palmrest and this means the keyboard moves like a diving board and replacing the keyboard means replacing the whole palm rest assembly as well or spend hours melting plastic rivets and carefully gluing in a replacement keyboard
In terms of screen res you can actually upgrade the screen on almost all models as the LVDS is common to more than one panel ..... I actually often grade down my machines because I prefer size to desktop space, being an old guy with failing eyes. There's a couple of different connectors, 30 and 40 pin being most common and a few different mounting brackets but generally you can buy a screen for one specific model in 3 or 4 different resolutions
Better brands have proper part number systems .... IBM \ Lenovo have FRU numbers, proper HP laptops have numbers in the format 344343-001 for example, Dell part number is typically something like 0yh39c ....... I couldn't tell you what a Asus part number looks like or a Packard Bell or Novatech despite being in the repair game for over 20 years
Dell XPS laptops tend to do this as I understand. Razor are probably much better due to more sophisticated cooling.
My Lenovo throttles quite heavily. For example, you can play Tomb Raider 2013 fine, but some later games drop frame rates as soon as heat would become an issue. But the throttling ensures the laptop doesn't heat up at least, using Intel Extreme Tuning utility is seems everything is operating cooler than my previous non dGPU laptop. So it is handy for some GPU tasks and light gaming and I could probably tweak setting to improve gaming performance but then heat definitely become an issue. At present I don't think it is but agree the addition of a GPU adds more to go wrong. An eGPU would be a better option for laptop gaming but ultimately desktops are where it is at. Still my laptop runs cool enough under full load and self limits so prepared to take the risk, but did make sure I payed the extra for 3 years warranty.
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-for/HP-Compaq/envy-13-(models-13-ab001---13-ab199)
Forums are always good to, basically have a gander at PC world but then do a bit of research before you buy it. Have to say though PC World sell some truly dreadful machines at the low end, literally garbage that rarely last 18 months in my experience before developing serious problems ...... And the warranty won't always help as they can claim broken DC sockets, snapped hinges and cracked plastics are a sign of misuse rather than accepting these parts are broken because they are poorly designed and not made from strong enough materials
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Saying that a decent wireless mouse is usually preferable, I take mine everywhere and use a sticky 3m mousepad that always stays on the back of my screen.
I only use a mouse for photos and gaming. General office work in excel and word etc it's touch pad all the way. Give me those gestures for scrolling and zooming!