OTish; Laptops

[Tim Watts]

I had a Lenovo last time and liked it. But this time there were a lot of complaints on the forums about certain features, especially the touchpad. And the "build it anyway you want" option was extremely diminished.

Dell let me do a good customisation but it did help that I got a quite decent academic discount on mine.

I'd always keep an eye on HP, Asus and Samsung - not every time do they make great stuff, but overall they tend to produce on average pretty decent kit. Narrow the model down with a bit of forum research - some models of almost any make can turn out to be lemony.

[Bill]

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

In the case of the little old Lenovo/IBM's that I use, it's a thing that sits on the desk and you plonk the laptop onto it. The laptop works as a laptop when off it, but on it it has fixed connections to external printers, mice, speakers, monitors, serial connections, audio, more usb etc. etc. My X201, for example, is absolutely superb. On its own it is light, robust, fast and extremely handy. In the dock it picks up DVD and connections to outboard devices (in my case audio interfaces).

I'd query the need for screen size. In this house we have laptops with

19" (for the family downstairs), 15.4 that I'm typing on as a general purpose machine, and a bunch ot 12.1" machines that I have been doing up for family and friends. As the 15.4 machine ages, I'm moving everything to the 12.1" Lenovo X201. It's so much lighter and more handy.

In passing, I ought to say that I hate numeric keypads on laptops. On all the ones I've tried, the touchpad always seems to be in the wrong place in relation to the keyboard/screen etc.

[Robin]

? All the docking stations I've used worked with a separate, dedicated socket on the back of the laptop rather than the connections you would use with the freestanding laptop. Otherwise they don't offer much (if any) advantage over plugging in keyboard, monitor, power supply and mouse separately. And crucially you lose the benefit of saving on time which matters to business users who want to just unplug and go.

But I query if the saving of time would justify the cost for TMH.

[The Medway Handyman]

Thanks Tim!

[The Medway Handyman]

Or a Wong of the.....

Thanks.

[<no_spam]

Buy an ex-corporate refurb Lenovo from tier1

I have no connection but have bought several laptops from them over the years and have always been very pleased with the service and quality. Lenovo bought the IBM Thinkpad brand, which is generally thought to be the best all-round business machines (probably the cue for "angry" of somewhere-or-other to start an arguement, but check for yourself).

[newshound]

One question is whether it's going to be basically a desktop replacement, except that you can take it into the lounge, kitchen, bedroom or whatever. If you are taking it "on the road" and potentially rattling around in your van then as others have suggested it might be worth considering something like a Dell business model. A bit more robust and "modular" with more replaceable bits.

That said I have a couple of Acer "consumer" models which I use for consultancy in retirement, and one or other of them has been travelling with me to sites and client offices for the past year without mechanical problems. These have 15.6 inch screens: small enough to fit in a briefcase, big enough for visibility, separate numeric pad, and DVD drive. If I were shopping for a "home" laptop I might get the next screen size up. Although you can always hook it up to a bigger monitor.

[newshound]

I used Dells at work, with docking stations at home and in the offices. I'd be equally happy with a Lenovo. I've never bought a factory refurb laptop, but I have had three ex-office laser printers and two refurbed desktops, all have proved to be reliable and excellent value for money. All came from eBay, but the adverts/feedback suggested they were reputable firms.

I'd endorse the point about Windows 7 rather than 8. I quite like 8.1 with touchscreen personally, but it's a bit more change and W7 just works. You will probably hate the new versions of Word and Excel though, assuming you are used to something like 2003.

[The Medway Handyman]

That's exactly what it is.

Good idea, I have a bigger monitor. Ta.

[John Rumm]

I have supplied quite a few of the i5 version of those to customers recently. (£415 inc VAT if you want one Dave). They are nicely made and seem well liked.

The only downside I have found is that I can't get spare keyboards for them at the moment. (they are the type of design where the machine is built onto the underside of the top plastic and the kb is an integral part of it).

Performance and ergonomics are good. 4 USBs (2x 2.0 + 2x 3.0). Comes with win 7 pre loaded, and the option of win 8 if you want. They really perform well if you replace the supplied HDD with a solid state one.

[Jim Newman]

In my experience*, laptops can be less reliable than desktops - if only because they get moved around more, so they can get knocked etc. This means that the risk of losing your data might be higher than with a desktop.

You might want to consider getting a NAS Drive (Network Attached Storage). This is a hard drive that attaches to your router, and gives you folders that you can access equally from your existing desktop or from your new laptop. This gives you the benefit of being able to use either machine, depending on where you are.

If you do this, you may have to change the way you handle your email - as some mail programs aren't designed to be used with Network storage, but if you use a web based service like Gmail or Hotmail you should be able to have mail synchronised across both machines.

I wouldn't worry too much about changing to Windows 8 - at least since Win 8.1 it's not too dissimilar to Win 7 even without a touchscreen, and the next version Win 10 will probably make it better still.

• well, my brother's experience - through theft, accident and clumsiness he and his family seem to get through roughly one every couple of years.

[The Medway Handyman]

How would that compare to this?

[Ronnie]

A very usable computer, but if it was me, I'd install a 120GB SSD for about £80 for system and programs and use the 1TB Hard drive supplied and used as a backup drive. The SSD will make it fly along in comparison to the internal drive supplied.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

Why are you bothering? I've got a laptop and a desktop and much prefer the desktop. I've got big hands and the keys on the laptops are far too small for me. I use the laptop with a mouse, the mouse thing on a laptop is shit. I've a 22" monitor which I love, the smaller laptop screen is shit. Just buy a cheap laptop and keep the desktop. FFS don't blow 500 quid on one! I got the laptop free btw. I would not buy one.

[GMM]

Of course (just to stick an oar in), an alternative strategy is to have a smaller laptop (which is more portable) and a larger monitor with full size keyboard on a desk, for when you need to do something more serious than you might in front of the telly.

About 6 months ago, I got my external monitor at the same time as I bought a tablet and the laptop now hardly leaves the desk, unless I'm travelling for work and want to write in transit etc. The tablet is just fine for all the web-based, email, etc (ie non-work) things. Apart from coming here, as there's no decent news reader app.

Plugging it all up takes about 10 seconds (I just tried), so it's hardly complex to remove or replace the laptop.

[Davey]

A company Dell I had once had such a port, but I see nothing like that on my Samsung. But I would not bother with it anyway, I don't move the PC around that much.

[Davey]

Are you saying that the touchpad interferes with the keypad? I have had no such problems with this Samsung, but I have had touchpad problems with other laptops I have used. Or do you mean something different?

[The Medway Handyman]

Probably a daft question, but do all modern laptops have WiFi built in?

[Tim Watts]

Most do.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I can't see them selling one that doesn't.