new laptop?

[JacobB]

Hey guys, I really want to buy a new laptop which will be used mostly for school work, watching movies, browsing the web etc. I will also want to do some casual gaming. My budget will is going to be £750. Is there anything you guys would recommend?

I was thinking of this http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-7537/pd?oc=cn75307&model_id=inspiron-15-7537 mind you this doesnt have to be touch screen.

[Wyre]

Dell, Lenovo are both fine choices. The dell e series laptops are pretty serious equipment. The T series from Lenovo is also very solid devices.

 

Inspiron 15z Ultrabook™ with Touch Screen starts at $599 USD. That might be a really solid choice.

 

Prices and availability are very different in the UK... Did find this though:

 

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-14-7437/pd?oc=cn74306&model_id=inspiron-14-7437

 

£649 to start... gives you a few options.

[Norwegiantweaker]

Hey guys, I really want to buy a new laptop which will be used mostly for school work, watching movies, browsing the web etc. I will also want to do some casual gaming. My budget will is going to be £750. Is there anything you guys would recommend?

I was thinking of this http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-7537/pd?oc=cn75307&model_id=inspiron-15-7537 mind you this doesnt have to be touch screen.

in my experience. ASUS is the most durable laptops ever, ive done so much shit with mine and it still works, lost it in the rain dropped it off a mountain had it to parties and all that stuff. still works like a charn just had to change the screen a few times hehe

[Kern0wek]

Hey, I have this exact laptop and I must say its really great.

 

I have however make a few modifications notably removing the HDD and replacing it with a 256GB SSD and installed have Ubuntu instead of Windows 8. This was really easy too, just a few screws on the back, with easy access to HDD as well as RAM slots and wireless card.

 

The build quality on this laptop is great, very solid, maybe not the most portable thing ever but definitely not heavy. The keyboard is nice with a numpad which was some I missed from smaller laptops. The screen is fantastic, colours great and super bright. Battery life is good even at full brightness. I don't game it, got my desktop for that, so I'm, not sure how the battery would last whilst gaming. I use mine primarily for programming and uni work. 

 

In terms of other brands lenovo seems to make some really solid laptops too, almost when with one of theirs. If you've in the UK check out some of the laptops from novatech, pretty good for the price.

[gilm0re3]

Dell, Lenovo are both fine choices. The dell e series laptops are pretty serious equipment. The T series from Lenovo is also very solid devices.

 

Inspiron 15z Ultrabook™ with Touch Screen starts at $599 USD. That might be a really solid choice.

 

Prices and availability are very different in the UK... Did find this though:

 

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-14-7437/pd?oc=cn74306&model_id=inspiron-14-7437

 

£649 to start... gives you a few options.

I'd have to say, if you are going for an overall clean and pleasant case design, going with the T series from Lenovo may not be the best choice, since it is definitely more rugged and designed to be used for business purposes, and the aesthetics aren't that good..Judging by the your choice of the Inspiron 15 7000, you might prefer the Lenovo U series. They look great, have nice CPUs, and can even be ordered with a Nvidia graphics card. They didn't have any available on the Lenovo UK website, but someplace like Ebay or Amazon might have them.  

[Wyre]

Really want to see what laptops will live the longest? Put them in a work environment. We have thousands of laptops at work, and a lot of different manufacturers. The Dell e6410 seems to be the toughest of the bunch, followed by the Lenovo T series. HP are garbage, the Acer laptops are useless. Still have a few Sony Viao units hanging in there. And dont even get me started on the complete CRAP Apple Mac laptops.

[JacobB]

Really want to see what laptops will live the longest? Put them in a work environment. We have thousands of laptops at work, and a lot of different manufacturers. The Dell e6410 seems to be the toughest of the bunch, followed by the Lenovo T series. HP are garbage, the Acer laptops are useless. Still have a few Sony Viao units hanging in there. And dont even get me started on the complete CRAP Apple Mac laptops.

The problem with vaio is that they are being sold off, this will probably mean rather bad support.

[Wyre]

The problem with vaio is that they are being sold off, this will probably mean rather bad support.

Oh I agree... I am just saying that we still have a few hanging on. They haven't just died like the HP and Acer laptops.

[Kern0wek]

Yeah the HP's I've used have always seemed a bit flimsy. 

[Tom7410]

If your not doing a whole lot of gaming, I recomend saving up for a macbook. my brother has one and he really likes it along with alot of my friends

[JacobB]

If your not doing a whole lot of gaming, I recomend saving up for a macbook. my brother has one and he really likes it along with alot of my friends

I dont really think mackbook is a good choice, its well overpriced for the specs and i dont like the os. Thanks for the suggestion though

[Wyre]

If your not doing a whole lot of gaming, I recomend saving up for a macbook. my brother has one and he really likes it along with alot of my friends

 

With a budget of £750 buying a crapbook just doesnt seem logical:

 

15-inch: 2.0GHz

with Retina display Specifications

• Dispatched:

  Within 24 hours

• Free Delivery
• £1,699.00 Includes VAT of approx. £284.00.*

 

So you are asking this person to save up another thousand pounds to buy a laptop that is bested by the much less expensive Dell?

[Kern0wek]

Such dislike of the macbook! Whilst I agree they are unjustifiably overpriced, they are very well built with great screens and battery life. I considered one for myself, most of my developer mates have one, just could not justify the extra money. Using a Linux distro just destroyed all their arguments in favour of getting one.

 

What issues with them have you found in your job? I imagine maintenance is fairly difficult with there trend of soldering everything they can to the motherboard.

[Wyre]

Because we are such a large company we literally have thousands of laptops (like 5000+) ... a few hundred of these are macbooks. 

 

Here are a few of the reasons.

 

Batteries are epoxied to the inside of the chassis, removal is damn near impossible without warping the lower chassis. (poor design)

The laptops run hot when asked to render, causing the processors to throttle. (poor design and slow)

Memory is  unupgradeable as it is soldered directly to the motherboard (poor design and ... just why in the actual hell)

The screen is actually part of the external glass and requires replacing the entire display assembly (poor design and EXPENSIVE)

Binding aluminum directly to the glass means that the parts are no longer recyclable. (poor design and bad for the environment)

Mac dropped the EPEAT green certification. They are no longer compliant. (poor design and bad for the environment)

 

If anything on the mac book pro fails it requires the complete replacement of an entire assembly. The upkeep on these hot running little (removed) is insane. The initial cost is ridiculously high for the performance, and the rather poor internal build quality. Apple / MAC used to be an engineering driven company producing products that made sense and were well designed inside and out. You paid for that quality, hence the Apple tax. Today I can not say that. There are laptops made by other manufacturers that are better built and perform much better.

 

The Dell Precision M3800 has a higher res screen that even the retina based macbook pro, is faster at everything, is lighter, made of aluminum/magnesium composite, upgradeable, 5 year warranty, and is about 20% less expensive! There is NO reason to purchase a macbook today. With a name that has PRO right in the name it should be expected to handle day to day performance in a professional environment. To date out of the several hundred macbooks that are in rotation... nearly all of them have had to be worked on.