New laptop time.
- Thread starter Bike N Gear
- Start date
ekuhn
Well-Known Member
No batteries need.
Couple of months back we picked up Lenovo S540 for my daughter. It's light weight and the battery life is good plus the screen resolution. It was on sale when I bought it around 580 or so. The two main requirement was battery life to last school day (she was supposed to go back in person but still needed to bring laptop to school) and weight. The other laptops that we compared it to was Mac Pro with the new Mac chip. Other similar laptop were lot more expensive.
A Potted Plant
Honorary Sod
Is that your address on that letter from NJ lol
A Potted Plant
Honorary Sod
Ah man no sending you pizza with no cheese and no sauce
Magic
Formerly 1sh0t1b33r
I finally just built up a new one about a month ago. Mine was from ~2010. Technology seems to have slowed down since then and there haven't been huge leaps in tech so it still worked great. Had to replace the video card and RAM maybe two years ago, and finally the mobo died about a month ago. Found I had a tiny leak in the upper radiator that must have slowly killed the former parts as well.
Laptops don't last as long as desktops in general because of heat. Everything is smaller and crammed into a base with bad airflow. The heatsinks get clogged with dust and most people don't clean them and use them on a blanket or pillow. Heat kills electronics.
serviceguy
Well-Known Member
going by your own statement improper use kills electronics...
Ok. I was off by a year. Yesterday would be 4 years.
Anyone want to tell me why this one looks suspiciously cheap?
discontinued model
Consumer model (Thinkpad is business)
it is preloaded with all the spyware.....reimage it as soon as you get it with boot/install media from MS.
Kidding,
maybe.
no dedicated graphics card, AMD processor (signigicantly cheaper than intel units), probably generation or two old ram chips (bit slower, but probably not an issue for general day to day stuff) looks like it only hase a 1080 panel on it, most higher end machines have higher resolution these days
qclabrat
Well-Known Member
As mentioned above, last year's specs and priced about right for this time of the year The CPU is a tad below Intel i5 and the Ideapad series is an entry consumer product. I'd go with better specs so the computer lasts another year or two. Also it will have a much lower quality battery than the Thinkpad series. Most laptops less than $1k only have a useful life of 2-3 years, 4+ if just surfing and streaming. I've had Lenovos for about 20 years and won't buy them anymore for my own use. Build quality and specs are what you get with the discount price. Been using HPs and Dells the last few years and have generally been happy with them, but again they are in the $1k or close range.
also of note, cotsco has some pretty good deals on laptops right now, if you have a membership i would suggest taking a look.
The one I posted is a V15 series not an Ideapad, but really sure which is better. Battery isn't too important as it can be plugged in all the time if necessary. Thinkpad with lower RAM and memory is about twice the price today. Not confident it would last twice as long, considering I've never had a laptop last 8 to 10 years. My wife has an ancient Thinkpad supplied by work. Pre SSD, still works but it does take 10-15 minutes to boot up in the morning.
Too many choices. Of course the laptop I'm on now works perfectly, until the random BSOD that wastes half a day attempting to fix.
You check the Windows logs to see if there was a reason for the BSOD?
The only way I've been able to cure the BSOD was with a reinstall of Windows. Any of the repair functions, safe mode startup etc just didn't work. Not that I know what I'd be looking for, but the event log shows nothing before the reinstall time and date.
w_b
Well-Known Member
My current work LT takes the brunt of my daily compu-matations and my old hand-me-down personal laptop doesn't need to come out too often. However, when tax time comes, I struggle with lockups, crashes, working in Safe Mode, etc. Enough.
Lately, in the name of security, work has basically locked me out of my work LT's USB slots, revoked admin privileges, etc, so now the time has come to upgrade the personal.
More like replace. I bought this the other day on Costco.com with a $300/off deal it was just over $600 out the door. Didn't receive it yet and see now it is out of stock but hopefully this will arrive soon and serve me well for years. We shall see. Will report back after she's hummin along.
Magic
Formerly 1sh0t1b33r
BSOD errors are completely useless. Most of the time, just reseat RAM and run firmware updates.
Laptops are hit or miss in general. If it seems cheap, it probably is. Either some shitty processor, low end RAM, or SSD > NVMe drive. For most people, it doesn't matter. Even the same exact processor, you deal with the silicon lottery and either get a good or a bad one. As long as you get something with 16Gb+ of RAM and an NVMe, you should be ok. I find Intel better for laptops, but Ryzen is my go too for a while for desktops. Most laptops just need a good software cleaning when you get them. Not a bad idea to just run Win10/11 Media Creation tool and throw it on a USB instead of uninstalling 40 programs leaving a ton of shit in registry.
Anyway, if you just need a laptop for bills, Netflix, MTBNJ.com, also consider Chromebooks. I usually recommend them to people that want something cheap. They tend to last longer and you can easily find decent spec ones for $150-300. I think I saw one at Costco for $199 recently with 16Gb RAM and a 512Gb drive.
If you want something more capable, then look at Macs too. I have a 2012 Macbook Pro I gave to my wife and it still runs like a champ. I'm not as well versed on Macs and I know the newer ones have solders storage and RAM so you get what you get when you buy it, and not sure if they are still as long lasting, but another great option if you do need more than just Chrome, stable, fast, 100% no BSOD.
rjr44
Well-Known Member
My 2019 mb pro w/ 64gb ram, 1tb ssd, 16” Retina display still runs like new…and it’s usually driving 2 27” 4k monitors (in addition to the built in display, not instead of), running a dozen tabs in chrome, half a dozen in safari, several intensive market data and trading platforms, and a bunch of other stuff.
I’ve seen $6k plus pro grade workstations on trading floors that don’t run as well cuz, well, Winblows.
And agree on Chromebooks, if ur just doing basics, they’re great. Talked my FIL into one years ago and he hasn’t looked back. Initially he wasn’t sure so he got a Windows desktop as well. Desktop became useless years ago, cb still serving him well.
BananaFred
Well-Known Member
I find that 14" is plenty of screen and much more portable. Touch screen is handy for reading docs.
Get something like the below but with 16g of ram
Get something like the below but with 16g of ram