Laptop with numeric keypad: suggestions?

[Carlos R]

My father’s previous one, a 15 incher Vaio, has lasted him nine and a half years. 

Battery life is now crap, it struggles to open a dozen tabs on a browser, audio is shit and the thing gets hella hot. 

Time for an upgrade. 

My old man uses it mostly for excell and other Office applications. 

The one thing he is adamant on, is that whatever I get him must have a numeric keypad. 

Given that a 9 year old machine is mostly ok for his computing needs, he’ll probably try to get a decade out of his new laptop. Build quality, as such, is paramount. 

He doesn’t edit photos or videos, doesn’t game or anything else. 

This will be strictly to keep his workflow, which is essentially  spreadsheeting, with a few OneNote moves thrown in. 

He used to have a dedicate office in our home, but he much prefers moving around, so he usually uses it either on the bed or in the living room, on the dining table. He very rarely takes it out of the house with him  

 

 

More RAM and an SSD are gonna be huge quality of life improvements for him. He’s looking at, at least, five, maybe six or seven generations of improvements to his CPU. I mean, damn. 

 

What should I be looking into? 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

4 minutes ago, Carlos R said:

My father’s previous one, a 15 incher Vaio, has lasted him nine and a half years. 

Battery life is now crap, it struggles to open a dozen tabs on a browser, audio is shit and the thing gets hella hot. 

Time for an upgrade. 

My old man uses it mostly for excell and other Office applications. 

The one thing he is adamant on, is that whatever I get him must have a numeric keypad. 

Given that a 9 year old machine is mostly ok for his computing needs, he’ll probably try to get a decade out of his new laptop. Build quality, as such, is paramount. 

He doesn’t edit photos or videos, doesn’t game or anything else. 

This will be strictly to keep his workflow, which is essentially  spreadsheeting, with a few OneNote moves thrown in. 

He used to have a dedicate office in our home, but he much prefers moving around, so he usually uses it either on the bed or in the living room, on the dining table. He very rarely takes it out of the house with him  

 

 

More RAM and an SSD are gonna be huge quality of life improvements for him. He’s looking at, at least, five, maybe six or seven generations of improvements to his CPU. I mean, damn. 

 

What should I be looking into? 

What's your budget? 8GB should be plenty for him unless he's really working with complex spreadsheets. So maybe something a long the lines of a Core i3 or i5 if you're feeling generous. Depending on your price range, it might be easier to just buy a SATA SSD yourself and install it rather than trying to find a laptop with one preinstalled. Laptops with SSDs are still reserved for the 700 - 800 dollar mark and are typically the thin and light ones. And thin and light laptops historically do not have numberpads. 

[Silentprototipe]

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-envy-x360-15z-touch-laptop-3ec81av-1

 

Bam, Ryzen Envy X360. Solid battery life and can be either easily upgraded to an SSD or be put with one through the store. Also comes with a solid backlit keyboard with a numpad and can be found on sale often from between $579 (What I picked mine up for) and $699. 

[Cysero]

Not sure what VAIO he has but you could consider upgrading some components on it. It's old enough that the CPU and RAM won't be soldered on and your fathers functional demands aren't necessarily outside the means of 10 year old hardware. I upgraded my VAIO which is 7 years old and it still works fine and is more than capable for MS Office programs.

 

Build quality wise I think Dell are quite solid. Lenovo are also well built but someone in my family has had two Thinkpads and the anti-microbial coating has come off the trackpad in a matter of weeks although I haven't known anyone else with that issue. It depends how he treats his electronics to be honest. The only brand I would not recommend is Toshiba due to their poor cooling design often results in brittle plastic casing.

 

If he liked the VAIO and you want to be a little different you could go there again as they still offer two 15 inch laptop models with a numberpad however they are only advertised in Japan. The 'new' VAIO do trade in the US but their line up is vastly reduced compared to the models in their home market. Perhaps they are willing to ship other models if you get in contact?

 

https://us.vaio.com/

 

VAIO S15 from their Japanese site

https://vaio.com/products/s152/

 

Catalogue from their Japanese site

https://vaio.com/products/catalog/VAIO_PMC_201807.pdf

 

Of course it would probably be more logical to buy something more easily accessible or one of the later Sony 'era' VAIOs circa 2014. However, the new VAIO's still look quality products and have decent I/O.

[Carlos R]

52 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

What's your budget? 8GB should be plenty for him unless he's really working with complex spreadsheets. So maybe something a long the lines of a Core i3 or i5 if you're feeling generous. Depending on your price range, it might be easier to just buy a SATA SSD yourself and install it rather than trying to find a laptop with one preinstalled. Laptops with SSDs are still reserved for the 700 - 800 dollar mark and are typically the thin and light ones. And thin and light laptops historically do not have numberpads. 

No budget on this one. Looking for the thing that gets the job done, no cost restrictions (looking at it as a 10 year machine makes it easy to swallow shelling out more money upfront )

[markr54632]

Honestly just about any machine should work fine for him. It kind of comes down to more personal touches like finding a keyboard he likes, finding a screen he can look at for a long time without strain, finding something that he likes the looks of. These are things you need to decide for yourself. He will also want something easily serviceable if he plans on keeping it for more than a few years. 3 years would be considered average service life and 5 years would be considered an extended service life. I would highly reccomend looking into the professional series with a removable battery if you plan on keeping it that long. His vaio lasting that long is not the norm and certainly not for the junk out there today.

[Carlos R]

Yeah, he got an unholy amount of mileage from that Vaio. 

 

I’m looking at the ThinkPad E580, but it isn’t yet available for purchase in Brasil. That’s a bummer. Seems pretty much perfect for his usecase. 

 

 

Getting him something from the 7th gen, say, an i5, will be one hell of an improvement over what he currently has. But there’s a part of me that’s using the “well, it’s supposed to last a decade” thing to look for a four-cored 8th gen. 

 

 

 

 

[NeuesTestament]

Honestly, I would go for a quad core. Nowadays a dual core is still enough but since device should last a long time, getting a quad core will get you the required headroom for future OS updates and future programs that might be more demanding. It also gives you flexibility in case he has to use more demanding software in a couple of years 

[genexis_x]

3 hours ago, Carlos R said:

Brasil

Are you purchasing in your country? If yes, could you provide a few links of online stores?

Also, any preference on weight and battery life?