Dell Laptop .... any good

Jaycee

I dont know enough about laptops to make an informed decision, ....is this a good deal mainly for browsing, zoom, and streaming

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/new-inspiron-15-3000/spd/inspiron-15-3502-laptop/cn30203

crunchman

The Inspiron is the low end model.  There are corners cut in the construction.

You would probably be better off looking at a refurbished Dell Latitude, which is the higher end machine aimed at businesses and designed to be more robust and not break.

Lenovo Thinkpad (not Ideapad) and HP Elitebook are other higher quality machines from the big manufacturers that are likely to last.

Jaycee

crunchman said:

The Inspiron is the low end model.  There are corners cut in the construction.

You would probably be better off looking at a refurbished Dell Latitude, which is the higher end machine aimed at businesses and designed to be more robust and not break.

Lenovo Thinkpad (not Ideapad) and HP Elitebook are other higher quality machines from the big manufacturers that are likely to last.

Thanks, I just noticed that windoews is in "S" mode which I am not keen on

fastonebaz

I have a dell xps 15 and they're great. 

Axe_meister

Anything below 500 quid will feel very slow and you will want to upgrade very quickly.

Nitefly

You can switch S mode off.

MtB

I bought a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 about a year ago - and now wish that I'd gone for something like an XPS. All I use mine for is internet browsing, watching films on iPlayer and some music streaming, but this thing huffs and puffs, the cooling fan is often running, and more worrying, at least couple of times a month it crashes at startup - I get a message saying: "Ooops we've hit a problem, Windows will have to restart".  

Danny1969

The cheap Inspirons are junk .... they do actually make a range of better ones, there's a few Inspirons geared towards business but these are more money. @crunchman suggestion of a used Latitude is what I would go for as well. 

Jaycee

How about this one ?

https://peachstores.co.uk/collections/dell-refurbished-laptops/products/dell-latitude-e6430-intel-core-i5-3340-2-70ghz-8gb-ram-128gb-hdd-124594919220

crunchman

Jaycee said:

How about this one ?

https://peachstores.co.uk/collections/dell-refurbished-laptops/products/dell-latitude-e6430-intel-core-i5-3340-2-70ghz-8gb-ram-128gb-hdd-124594919220

Looks a bit expensive for that age of machine.

That's a third gen i5 processor.  This one is 6th gen for the same price:

https://www.refurbishedlaptops.co.uk/product/dell-latitude-e7270/

That also has a 240GB SSD rather than 128GB.  The downside is that it's 12.5" screen rather than 14".

If you shop around you should be able to find more machine for the same money.

You do get a 2 year warranty with the one you linked to, where most refurbs might be 3 or 6 months.  You are basically  paying extra for the warranty.  If that gives you peace of mind, then fine, but you can get more machine for the money.

Jaycee

Axe_meister said:

Anything below 500 quid will feel very slow and you will want to upgrade very quickly.

crunchman said:

Jaycee said:

How about this one ?

https://peachstores.co.uk/collections/dell-refurbished-laptops/products/dell-latitude-e6430-intel-core-i5-3340-2-70ghz-8gb-ram-128gb-hdd-124594919220

Looks a bit expensive for that age of machine.

That's a third gen i5 processor.  This one is 6th gen for the same price:

https://www.refurbishedlaptops.co.uk/product/dell-latitude-e7270/

That also has a 240GB SSD rather than 128GB.  The downside is that it's 12.5" screen rather than 14".

If you shop around you should be able to find more machine for the same money.

You do get a 2 year warranty with the one you linked to, where most refurbs might be 3 or 6 months.  You are basically  paying extra for the warranty.  If that gives you peace of mind, then fine, but you can get more machine for the money.

Thanks again guys, I would like 14" screen minimum, as I will be using it for my mother in law who's eyesight isn't to good.

Guess I will have to dig deeper into my pockets

rocktron

The company I work for rolled out Dell Latitude E5440 Laptops for IT employees - 15.6" screen,  Intel i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB Hard Drive (not SSD). They were very good laptops.

The laptops were recommended for corporate use due to their robust build quality. However, the E5440 has been superseded by newer models. 

There are several used ones available on eBay, but do remember that they would now be showing their age.

crunchman

rocktron said:

The company I work for rolled out Dell Latitude E5440 Laptops for IT employees - 15.6" screen,  Intel i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB Hard Drive (not SSD). They were very good laptops.

The laptops were recommended for corporate use due to their robust build quality. However, the E5440 has been superseded by newer models. 

There are several used ones available on eBay, but do remember that they would now be showing their age.

You want one that has been refurbished with an SSD.  That makes a huge difference to performance.  Depending on use, you might want to look for 240GB SSD rather than 128GB though.  128GB is not a lot of space.  It's ok if you are using it only for browsing and email, but if you want to store photos and videos of your kids/grandkids, or music, you would run out of space quickly.

SSDs tend to make an even bigger difference on laptops than on desktops.  Most laptop HDs are 5400rpm rather than 7200rpm to save energy.

Alternatively, buy one with the original hard drive, which will be much cheaper, and buy an SSD yourself and replace the hard drive.  You can buy a 240GB SSD for under £30 these days.

nanoman

I got my wife the Inspiron 15 7000 series 2 in 1 and i think the build quality is really good. Hinges look like they will last the course and it isn't used in tablet mode every day. I did get the 3 yr warranty though just in case. Personally i'd go for black as i can't touch type and even with the backlit keyboard i struggle to make out the characters on her silver model but i have old eyes

Danny1969

rocktron said:

The company I work for rolled out Dell Latitude E5440 Laptops for IT employees - 15.6" screen,  Intel i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB Hard Drive (not SSD). They were very good laptops.

The laptops were recommended for corporate use due to their robust build quality. However, the E5440 has been superseded by newer models. 

There are several used ones available on eBay, but do remember that they would now be showing their age.

The shop I do all the laptop repairs for still sell those, they do go on forever and even when they don't due to coffee or wine spillage  repairing them is straightforward as all parts have a Dell partnumber like the motherboard which is 692PG. If something fails you can replace that part and because it's a corp machine there are always parts available

The whole bottom slides off so fititng an SSD takes less than 5 mins, as does cleaning the fan. I'm actually still using a Latitude from 2010, an E6410 and it's still faster in use than most of the high street stuff I have to fix. Some of the cheap high street models are so slow they feel like wading through treacle to me compared to using the old Latitude. 

Jaycee

Danny1969 said:

rocktron said:

The company I work for rolled out Dell Latitude E5440 Laptops for IT employees - 15.6" screen,  Intel i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB Hard Drive (not SSD). They were very good laptops.

The laptops were recommended for corporate use due to their robust build quality. However, the E5440 has been superseded by newer models. 

There are several used ones available on eBay, but do remember that they would now be showing their age.

The shop I do all the laptop repairs for still sell those, they do go on forever and even when they don't due to coffee or wine spillage  repairing them is straightforward as all parts have a Dell partnumber like the motherboard which is 692PG. If something fails you can replace that part and because it's a corp machine there are always parts available

The whole bottom slides off so fititng an SSD takes less than 5 mins, as does cleaning the fan. I'm actually still using a Latitude from 2010, an E6410 and it's still faster in use than most of the high street stuff I have to fix. Some of the cheap high street models are so slow they feel like wading through treacle to me compared to using the old Latitude. 

That's good to know, I have been looking mostly at the Latitude,  and bringing myself up to speed on the specs.

One thing I didn't realize is a lot of the CPU's are 2 core rather than 4 due to heat, which makes sense when you stop and think about it. 

Danny1969

Jaycee said:

Danny1969 said:

rocktron said:

The company I work for rolled out Dell Latitude E5440 Laptops for IT employees - 15.6" screen,  Intel i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB Hard Drive (not SSD). They were very good laptops.

The laptops were recommended for corporate use due to their robust build quality. However, the E5440 has been superseded by newer models. 

There are several used ones available on eBay, but do remember that they would now be showing their age.

The shop I do all the laptop repairs for still sell those, they do go on forever and even when they don't due to coffee or wine spillage  repairing them is straightforward as all parts have a Dell partnumber like the motherboard which is 692PG. If something fails you can replace that part and because it's a corp machine there are always parts available

The whole bottom slides off so fititng an SSD takes less than 5 mins, as does cleaning the fan. I'm actually still using a Latitude from 2010, an E6410 and it's still faster in use than most of the high street stuff I have to fix. Some of the cheap high street models are so slow they feel like wading through treacle to me compared to using the old Latitude. 

That's good to know, I have been looking mostly at the Latitude,  and bringing myself up to speed on the specs.

One thing I didn't realize is a lot of the CPU's are 2 core rather than 4 due to heat, which makes sense when you stop and think about it. 

Yeah, a lot of the Intel Macbook Pro's are only dual core too. Multicore processing is effective only on certain applications where it's possible to do so ... on many things one process can't start until one has finished and has the right answer to pass on. For these applications clock speed is far more important. 

One thing to be careful off is you can't really tell a laptops speed by looking at the CPU speed and amount of ram. Time after time I've seen better designed Latitudes and Thinkpads render audio quicker or process a very large image quicker than a cheaper laptop fitted with a faster processor and more ram. 

This is because a laptops speed is governed by it's SMC chip. If it's well designed in terms of power distribution and heat conductivity then it will actually run faster than a poorly designed laptop that kind of lurches between running full pelt and then having to throttle down 

axisus

We had all Dell computers at work some years ago. They were absolutely terrible, but obviously a low end model. 

Jeremiah

axisus said:

We had all Dell computers at work some years ago. They were absolutely terrible, but obviously a low end model. 

We used to have Dell laptops, I always thought they were great, but I think they were quite high end models. Then they replaced them with Microsoft Surface Books, which are horrible.

Jaycee

These look interesting any thoughts

https://www.easyit.co.uk/collections/hp-laptops/products/hp-elitebook-840-g3-core-i5-6th-gen-8gb-256gb-ssd

https://www.onbuy.com/gb/storage-memory-storage-memory-storage-memory-dell-latitude-e7450-touchscreen-intel-i5-win-10~c8345~p35158853/?condition=refurbished