Laptop choices

mrc1

Looking for a new laptop as the current one is starting to throw wobblers and is reaching the end of its useful life (5 or so years and not very good to start with).

PC World business centre recommended this one:

http://www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk/catalogue/item/P119449P?home-ad=lenovo-thinkpad-edge-e520&home-ad-id=2413&banner-position=1

Seems like a pretty good deal all considered but I wondered whether anyone else could recomnmend something else within that budget or slightly more (an absolute max of 700)?

Its mainly used for MS Office but also needs to deal with pictures from a DSLR and some picture/short video editing. Does this laptop have the graphics power for this sort of stuff? Can I add a graphics card to boost its performance or is that not possible?

Cheers

Rob

rick_chasey

It's a good one.
http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-co ... ?artc_pg=3

Tech radar rate it for exactly what you want it for.

esspeebee

ThinkPads are good. Generally sensibly specced, and well put together.

Don't assume that you can upgrade any laptop at all. The exceptions are hard disk, which is usually doable on anything but the ultra-thin models, and RAM, where there may or may not be space for more. That said, you won't need a graphics card for picture or video editing -- the dedicated card is only needed for the sort of 3D rendering done in games or modelling applications. The more important thing for photo and video work is memory. That's got 4G, which is probably enough, and will take an upgrade to 8G later if it isn't. It ought to do fine.

UndercoverElephant

The correct answer, of course is:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FC968B/A

il_principe

Hate to say it, but if you can stretch to a macbook then it's worth the investment. They seem to last far longer than windows machines without slowing down quite so badly. I assume because the OS and the Hardware are made for each other. Convinced that in the long term it works out as being cheaper.

vermin

Retailers will always help customers to purchase massively over-specced computers.

Up to you, of course, but ... you want to use office, photos and the odd bit of video editing? You'd get away with something like a bog standard cheapo AMD Fusion chip and a couple of gigs of RAM and still have a machine that is more than adequate. Anything more goes into the 'nice-to-have' category. Honestly, buying an i5 or i7 laptop for word-processing really is sledgehammer/nut stuff.

So you could sacrifice some of the processing power in favour of searching out the best display you can find for your money, rather than concentrating on performance specs. After all, that's what you spend the whole time looking at, and the vast majority of laptop screens are just pants (dimly lit low res 1366x768 jobs with washed out colours and no contrast). I haven't looked for anything so specific, but Dell screens are usually pretty good and you might be able to custom-build a high-res screen into a lower-end build for that sort of money.

vermin

I think I would consider recommending a Mac these days, because whilst they take the p with their pricing, and their corporate attitude and insincere/misleading marketing stinks to high heaven, they use wonderful displays and some of the upfront cost can be offset by the resale value.

Unfortunately, the OP has a £700 limit, which would buy him a MacDongle, at best.

UndercoverElephant

vermin wrote:

Dell screens are usually pretty good and you might be able to custom-build a high-res screen into a lower-end build for that sort of money.

Certainly not on my work laptop, god-awful screen on that one - and it wasn't a cheap laptop either.

UndercoverElephant

vermin wrote:

I think I would consider recommending a Mac these days, because whilst they take the p with their pricing, and their corporate attitude and insincere/misleading marketing stinks to high heaven, they use wonderful displays and some of the upfront cost can be offset by the resale value.

Unfortunately, the OP has a £700 limit, which would buy him a MacDongle, at best.

I linked to a £719 refurbished MacBook Air, extremely good machine and unlikely to give any backache when carried in a backpack. £19 over budget, but offset anti-virus costs and it's a winner. Plus the quality of output from the iWork suite of word-processor, etc makes Office look like crap (though you can also get office). If you're wanting photo editing, the Mac wins hands-down.

vermin

Re: Dell screens - Yeah, but you're comparing to to a Mac!

To be fair to them, Dell have changed a bit in the last year or so - the new screens are really rather good, and the opportunity to custom-build-in a high-res sets them apart from the usual Windows crowd.

Re: the refurb'd Air - good spot.

Yukirin

My main, everyday use, dont care if its dropped by the kids laptop is a p4 1.6 vaio with 256mb ram. Running a stripped back windows xp it does all my open office, itunes, tv web streaming, photoshop and browsing no trouble. The laptop you've picked would be fine for the needs you listed wouldnt worry about upgrading graphics card unless you want to enter games territory, in which uping your budget to an alienware by Dell would be a very good call.

meanredspider

UndercoverElephant wrote:

vermin wrote:

I think I would consider recommending a Mac these days, because whilst they take the p with their pricing, and their corporate attitude and insincere/misleading marketing stinks to high heaven, they use wonderful displays and some of the upfront cost can be offset by the resale value.

Unfortunately, the OP has a £700 limit, which would buy him a MacDongle, at best.

I linked to a £719 refurbished MacBook Air, extremely good machine and unlikely to give any backache when carried in a backpack. £19 over budget, but offset anti-virus costs and it's a winner. Plus the quality of output from the iWork suite of word-processor, etc makes Office look like crap (though you can also get office). If you're wanting photo editing, the Mac wins hands-down.

MacBook Air would be a fantastic purchase. I was sorely tempted the other day when I saw them at this price and I don't even need a laptop! I can vouch for Apple's refurbs too (27" iMac - gorgeous). If you know anybody vaguely in education, those prices are sometimes even better (not sure about refurbs though)

jamesco

Editing pictures is helped when you've got a good and preferably calibrated screen. A laptop screen really isn't optimal - a decent external monitor is the way to go.

I'd take a look at the Dell outlet store where they sell refurbished (usually returns) and 'scratch-and-dent' machines. A refurbished E6220 with solid state drive (best upgrade these days), 3 year next-day business warranty and i5-2520M processor is £621.10 + delivery. From the home side, an XPS 14z with i7-2640M and 1 GB Nvidia GT 520M is about £660.

mrc1

vermin wrote:

Up to you, of course, but ... you want to use office, photos and the odd bit of video editing? You'd get away with something like a bog standard cheapo AMD Fusion chip and a couple of gigs of RAM and still have a machine that is more than adequate. Anything more goes into the 'nice-to-have' category. Honestly, buying an i5 or i7 laptop for word-processing really is sledgehammer/nut stuff.

So you could sacrifice some of the processing power in favour of searching out the best display you can find for your money, rather than concentrating on performance specs. After all, that's what you spend the whole time looking at, and the vast majority of laptop screens are just pants (dimly lit low res 1366x768 jobs with washed out colours and no contrast). I haven't looked for anything so specific, but Dell screens are usually pretty good and you might be able to custom-build a high-res screen into a lower-end build for that sort of money.

Fair advice but I've previously gone down the cheapo laptop route and have always been disappointed/frustrated by the woeful speeds and had them become chronically slow after a year or so. The Office stuff is fair enough but the photos/videos do have a hugely noticeable slowing effect on my current laptop (Samsung one - reasonable spec with a dual core processor). I perhaps wrongly assumed that buying a very well specced one now would help with longevity but please correct me if I'm wrong!

The main reason for looking at the one I posted was how cheap it was in comparison to HP, Sony etc etc.

On the Mac front, we are very tempted but we are a bit concerned with compatability issues (all our current docs are on Office programmes and we use Outlook etc). Im not that tech savvy so I've always assumed this would be an issue when moving to Mac given that I don't want to buy a Mac and then put Microsoft programmes on it! I had also been put off by the costs, but having seen the refurbs I'm quite tempted...

meanredspider

Office for Mac is fine. Outlook is no good for Mac but Safari is fine (it's just a browser)

ETA - if my wife can manage the conversion (and she literally can hardly turn her MacBook Pro on) I'm sure you'll be fine.

vermin

If you just want a powerful, future-resistant machine, this is the best all-rounder I've seen in a very long time, and it's bang on your budget:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 378/review

It has the most powerful chip, a very powerful graphics card, a great screen and all the bells and whistles you could want. It even looks nice, if not in a Mac-nice way.

Worth a look

vermin

If you just want a powerful, future-resistant machine, this is the best all-rounder I've seen in a very long time, and it's bang on your budget:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 378/review

It has the most powerful chip, a very powerful graphics card, a great screen and all the bells and whistles you could want. It even looks nice, if not in a Mac-nice way.

Worth a look

UndercoverElephant

iWork for the Mac will open all of your documents, if you really need complete compatibility the Office for Mac is OK. I have it on mine at home, because my work got me it for £8 - has Outlook and everything. The main reason for that over iWork is that the kids have to do Powerpoint presentations for school, and the ones they make on iWork look so good that they get disappointed when they convert them to Office and they look, well, ordinary. Better for the expectations to be lower from the start.

DonDaddyD

Why not get a desktop computer far more everything for less wonga. I'm a desktop man.

UndercoverElephant

meanredspider wrote:

if my wife can manage the conversion (and she literally can hardly turn her MacBook Pro on) I'm sure you'll be fine.

That's the real thing, before the Mac, Mrs. Elephant used to have to get me to get photos off the digital camera and upload them places. Now she plugs the camera in, iPhoto starts automagically and downloads, organizes them and allows her to edit/post to facebook etc without any hassle. So much easier to use it's unbelievable.

vermin

UndercoverElephant wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

if my wife can manage the conversion (and she literally can hardly turn her MacBook Pro on) I'm sure you'll be fine.

That's the real thing, before the Mac, Mrs. Elephant used to have to get me to get photos off the digital camera and upload them places. Now she plugs the camera in, iPhoto starts automagically and downloads, organizes them and allows her to edit/post to facebook etc without any hassle. So much easier to use it's unbelievable.

WOMEN - know your place.

mrc1

DonDaddyD wrote:

Why not get a desktop computer far more everything for less wonga. I'm a desktop man.

I'd definitely get a desktop if I could. Unfortunately we need a laptop as we need to able to regularly move it from home to France and back and use it at hotels etc with Le Domestique Tours. I had considered an Imac as it is one box but id be too worried about damaging the screen when moving it!

mrc1

UndercoverElephant wrote:

iWork for the Mac will open all of your documents, if you really need complete compatibility the Office for Mac is OK. I have it on mine at home, because my work got me it for £8 - has Outlook and everything. The main reason for that over iWork is that the kids have to do Powerpoint presentations for school, and the ones they make on iWork look so good that they get disappointed when they convert them to Office and they look, well, ordinary. Better for the expectations to be lower from the start.

I'm happy to use Mac software going forward its just that all our existing docs (all our accounting info which is quite formula heavy) is on Excel. If we could easily convert the excel docs to Mac software without having to buy Office for Mac then we'd be happy to use the Mac stuff from then on. Is that possible?

roger_merriman

mrc1 wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

iWork for the Mac will open all of your documents, if you really need complete compatibility the Office for Mac is OK. I have it on mine at home, because my work got me it for £8 - has Outlook and everything. The main reason for that over iWork is that the kids have to do Powerpoint presentations for school, and the ones they make on iWork look so good that they get disappointed when they convert them to Office and they look, well, ordinary. Better for the expectations to be lower from the start.

I'm happy to use Mac software going forward its just that all our existing docs (all our accounting info which is quite formula heavy) is on Excel. If we could easily convert the excel docs to Mac software without having to buy Office for Mac then we'd be happy to use the Mac stuff from then on. Is that possible?

sure http://www.openoffice.org/ will do that, but i'd test it first as if it doesn't well other options are mac office £££ or numbers from apple not sure how well numbers would cope though.

mrc1

roger merriman wrote:

mrc1 wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

iWork for the Mac will open all of your documents, if you really need complete compatibility the Office for Mac is OK. I have it on mine at home, because my work got me it for £8 - has Outlook and everything. The main reason for that over iWork is that the kids have to do Powerpoint presentations for school, and the ones they make on iWork look so good that they get disappointed when they convert them to Office and they look, well, ordinary. Better for the expectations to be lower from the start.

I'm happy to use Mac software going forward its just that all our existing docs (all our accounting info which is quite formula heavy) is on Excel. If we could easily convert the excel docs to Mac software without having to buy Office for Mac then we'd be happy to use the Mac stuff from then on. Is that possible?

sure http://www.openoffice.org/ will do that, but i'd test it first as if it doesn't well other options are mac office £££ or numbers from apple not sure how well numbers would cope though.

I'll take a look at that - cheers

meanredspider

Yup - most spreadsheet packages are compatible with Excel for obvious reasons.

From a business point of view, a MacBook Air would certainly project a good image. Battery life is excellent as is portability. I wish I needed one. I use an iPad for just about everything, reverting to the iMac for heavy duty stuff like HD video editing

dhope

http://outlet.uk.lenovo.com/store/lenov ... .247637800
Rapid

mrc1

meanredspider wrote:

From a business point of view, a MacBook Air would certainly project a good image. Battery life is excellent as is portability. I wish I needed one.

Annoyingly true - I wish Apple's weren't so "cool". Certainly a better image than a horrible black steam powered Asus!

vermin

mrc1 wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

From a business point of view, a MacBook Air would certainly project a good image. Battery life is excellent as is portability. I wish I needed one.

Annoyingly true - I wish Apple's weren't so "cool". Certainly a better image than a horrible black steam powered Asus!

Lol. For what it's worth, I agree.

roger_merriman

mrc1 wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

From a business point of view, a MacBook Air would certainly project a good image. Battery life is excellent as is portability. I wish I needed one.

Annoyingly true - I wish Apple's weren't so "cool". Certainly a better image than a horrible black steam powered Asus!

meh I was using them long before they became cool!

mrc1

roger merriman wrote:

mrc1 wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

From a business point of view, a MacBook Air would certainly project a good image. Battery life is excellent as is portability. I wish I needed one.

Annoyingly true - I wish Apple's weren't so "cool". Certainly a better image than a horrible black steam powered Asus!

meh I was using them long before they became cool!

Which makes you super cool 8) .... or Forest Gump....