Laptop Suggestions - Drop'em Hot Right Here!

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DRAGON64

DRAGON64

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10+ year old desktop is slower than dead...

New work rules for my newly furnished laptop: any non-work related computer activity will be recorded and reprimands handed out accordingly... yes that includes this patch of paradice know as The Rocketry Forum

I prefer windohs
would love a 17" for these aging eyes
SSD (no particular size, 512GB up to TB)
Decent Graphics card
i7 or equivient processor

Uses:
Surfing
Shopping
RocSim10
Video editing (nothing to extreme, just trying to get my youtube/rumble channels going again)

Price range: $500 - $1000

Models and limks appreciated!
 
DRAGON64 said:
10+ year old desktop is slower than dead...

New work rules for my newly furnished laptop: any non-work related computer activity will be recorded and reprimands handed out accordingly... yes that includes this patch of paradice know as The Rocketry Forum

I prefer windohs
would love a 17" for these aging eyes
SSD (no particular size, 512GB up to TB)
Decent Graphics card
i7 or equivient processor

Uses:
Surfing
Shopping
RocSim10
Video editing (nothing to extreme, just trying to get my youtube/rumble channels going again)

Price range: $500 - $1000

Models and limks appreciated!
Click to expand...
HP, HP, or HP. You're just not going to find a better value or better service (which I rarely need).
 
I won't give recommendations for actual computers as I'm not knowledgeable enough. However...the only time I use the keyboard and the screen of my laptop is when I'm on the road. At home it's connected to a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a 32" monitor for OldEyes like mine. So a small, light laptop is completely sufficient for my needs.
 
prfesser said:
I won't give recommendations for actual computers as I'm not knowledgeable enough. However...the only time I use the keyboard and the screen of my laptop is when I'm on the road. At home it's connected to a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a 32" monitor for OldEyes like mine. So a small, light laptop is completely sufficient for my needs.
Click to expand...
Pffft. Lightweight. Only 32"? Mine's 36", about two feet from my face, and I still have to squint to read it sometimes.
 
I worked at DG, got bought out by EMC, then got bought out by Dell. When Dell took over we had to give up our Lenovo laptops and that was a bummer. I’ve had several Dells and two Lenovos and the Lenovos were much better (more reliable, higher performing, less issues in general). My opinion was shared with every other person I knew in my situation (20ish people). I delayed the switch until I couldn’t wait any longer because I was not allowed to travel to another Dell plant with a non-Dell laptop.
 
I have a Samung which I purchased specifically for rocketry field work. It's not a notebook designed for field work, but it was the brightest daylight mode screen I could find and I've been quite happy with it for what I do, but limited ports and peripherals.

TP
 
Bought myself a Maingear at Microcenter last year, Been very impressed with it so far. Dells have some nice laptops. Look for one that has an aluminum body, they will last so much longer. AVOID TOSHIBA!!!! as an IT guy, I HATE TOSHIBA. Only thing worse than Toshiba is Apple, only because at least I can repair Toshiba's, BUT trust me, the failure rate of Toshiba laptops & components that come through my office is astonishing.
 
I mentioned Dell upthread because I have had nothing but good experiences with the Dells I have purchased over decades. Just bought a new one last year for my wife to use as her work laptop. The one in my workshop still performs well even though it is 16 years old (did get a SSD for it though).
 
MSI or HP or ASUS-Branded laptop would be my guidance.
Worked closely with all the major players and was most impressed with ASUS and MSI in their engineering capability.
HP builds fine machines and Costco had a smoking deal on a Evo qualified 14" T&L for $700 that I bought as a Xmas gift.
 
Work laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad. Not bad, but a bit pedestrian.

Home laptop is an HP with the Bang & Olufsen audio package. Nice, slim, fast. Does well as an alternate gaming machine when the desktop is busy with something else.

Desktop is a homebrew using an X570Aorus Elite WiFi motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 12-core @ 3.7 GHz clock, 32G of physical memory, two 1TB NVME SSD drives, AMD ATI Radeon 550X GPU, Schiit Hel 2 DAC/Amp connected via TOSLINK and running Linux Mint 20.3 with two 36" LED monitors at 1920x1080 each.
 
Dell is far and away the best, they have the fewest quirks. Like cars, laptops depreciate fast... you can find good used laptops on eBay, there are companies that buy up lots of off-lease laptops directly from Dell. Get an extended warranty and you're all set. The Latitude 7000 series laptops are really nice. Be sure to get a laptop with SSD drives... that's more important for performance then the processor, and make sure it's got enough memory, 8 GB for Windows 10/11.
 
When I had to buy a windows laptop a couple years ago, I found Costco had very good deals and a decent price range. The biggest thing is make sure you get an SSD boot drive, at least 256gb and 16GB of RAM. That makes about as big of difference for speed under normal usage than anything else. For my uses I needed a discrete video card, which typically costs more but depending on your needs may provide much better performance for graphics apps, especially 3D. Mine had a separate 2TB data drive, which can be replaced with a faster SSD if needed. It was about $850 at Costco.

And not to start a brand war, but I owned a software training company and bought or leased 100’s of computers, and had a lot to do with maintaining them. I’d never buy another Dell, based on my experiences. But as always, your mileage may vary.

And as mentioned above, I always use my laptop with an external keyboard and mouse. Having a real, full sized number pad is crucial to how I work though.

Good luck!

Tony

PS: if it’s going to be mostly stationary, consider a smaller 15” screen and add an external 22” or 24” monitor. That’s what I do and it makes a world of difference.

here’s an example that is in your budget and includes a discrete video card:

https://www.costco.com/lenovo-ideap...0---1080p---windows-11.product.100794677.html
 
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The company I work for, we buy 2k to 5k worth of laptops a year. We have tried a few different brands over the years and always ended up back with HP. My personal laptop is an MSI and has been running a sign shop for almost 2 years with zero issues. I had a dell before this MSI and it was the worst computer I ever had. I am looking to buy another laptop for the shop, and it will be between an MSI or HP.
 
Adding in here, I have an ACER and my son does too. Both bought online from Costco, and both have been good choices. I went Intel, he went Ryzen, and we are both happy. Last time I looked they had a variety of models in different sizes/features. And at the time I bought, it was two year warranty for everything built in.
 
Looks like there are a number of proponents of HP and of Dell, as well as some who don't like 'em. I prefer LOTS of data so...

One nice thing about Costco and computers is that they usually have lots of reviews. Originally I had planned on buying Brand X Model Y (don't recall which one), but reading the one-star reviews, a couple of common threads appeared: that particular model had a fan much louder than usual, and there were several cases of that model going full-dead within a week or so of purchase. So check the ones that have a lot of bad reviews.

Best -- Terry
 
I bought Dell's back in the day, but work switched to HP and I generally liked what I had. When I needed a few laptops for home, I bought HP Zbooks and like them. I have an older Probook that is my play computer (for this kind of stuff). I just purchased a new HP255 G8 (low cost, single use machine) and it runs fine, but feels much more plastic-y that I like. The keyboard feels like it will fail.

I will stick to HP in the future most likely, but I will avoid that lower end model if it is ever going to travel or be used for heavy lifting.

Sandy.
 
Sandy H. said:
When I needed a few laptops for home, I bought HP Zbooks and like them.
Click to expand...
They are what work provides for us. If you get a new model it will likely have troubles docking and undocking for a year or two. They can't seem to get their heads around the necessary logic to get it reliable. Happened on my laptop 3 years ago, happening on my laptop from 6 months ago. Eventually, when enough users around the world complain, they will revise the firmware and you will end up with something acceptable. Maybe.

My current HP has trouble with multiple screens. When you move a window across to another screen it gets the scaling wrong and really doesn't do a reliable job. For the first two months doing that would give a blue screen of death. They revised the firmware but scaling still wrong. Icons in some programs (Altium, Solidworks) are minuscule on the screens on the docking station, to the point where you can't even determine what they are. Ask me again in a year if they have fixed it.

Also, need to add that their dock does not play well with the Dell monitor I have at home. The monitor uses a standard HDMI interface but the dock keep disconnecting, reconfiguring and reconnecting. Impossible to use in a conference call. It is the dock firmware that is the issue.

To the designers of HP docking stations: May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.
 
OverTheTop said:
They are what work provides for us. If you get a new model it will likely have troubles docking and undocking for a year or two. They can't seem to get their heads around the necessary logic to get it reliable. Happened on my laptop 3 years ago, happening on my laptop from 6 months ago. Eventually, when enough users around the world complain, they will revise the firmware and you will end up with something acceptable. Maybe.

My current HP has trouble with multiple screens. When you move a window across to another screen it gets the scaling wrong and really doesn't do a reliable job. For the first two months doing that would give a blue screen of death. They revised the firmware but scaling still wrong. Icons in some programs (Altium, Solidworks) are minuscule on the screens on the docking station, to the point where you can't even determine what they are. Ask me again in a year if they have fixed it.

Also, need to add that their dock does not play well with the Dell monitor I have at home. The monitor uses a standard HDMI interface but the dock keep disconnecting, reconfiguring and reconnecting. Impossible to use in a conference call. It is the dock firmware that is the issue.

To the designers of HP docking stations: May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.
Click to expand...

Interesting. My work laptop doesn't have a dock, so I plug the monitor, mouse, spaceball and speakers in each Monday and unplug them each Friday when I bring the computer home, in case something goes wrong over the weekend. My monitor is VGA and I only use 1 monitor.

For my home laptops, they are all stationary (i.e. a desktop would work for each application) 99% of the time. I use a KVM to switch between a few of the computers and others are at dedicated stations where they are used.

I do recall a coworker complaining about docking station and multiple monitors. We had an issue where if we printed to a particular printer, they would bluescreen. It started after a domain update, but I do think the root cause was related to a driver, not just the domain update.

Interesting how our use cases yield such different experiences!

Sandy.
 

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