New work laptop

tom52 · March 15, 2016

As of about 5pm tonight, my 4 year old Acer Aspire Timeline X no longer recognises either my 2.5" SSD or my 2.5" HDD, both of which work. I'm in the market for a replacement work laptop, and was wondering what you guys would recommend or steer clear of. For me, the things my new laptop has to have are....

1) Excellent battery life. I have to be able to work all day, mostly TeX and programming, on one charge.

2) A large screen. My Acer was about 17", and I wouldn't want to go below about 15". I use it for watching videos at home, so good viewing angles and such would be nice! Not that fussed about touchscreen. Size is important as well for productivity and because I like a full-sized keyboard.

3) An SSD. Doesn't need to be above about 500GB.

4) An optical drive would be nice, but I can probably work around not having one

5) Enough power to run FTL, Dishonoured, maybe something like prison architect if I ever get round to buying it. I think I'd struggle to find a machine that wouldn't run that lot...

Any (well, most) suggestions would be really appreciated!

Thanks,

Tom

EDIT: Somewhere in the range £500 to £750 ideally ($700-$1100 US)

pithball · March 15, 2016

How much are you willing to spend?

tom52 · March 15, 2016

Oh yeah, sorry - uhm, as much as it takes really. I'm hoping to get something around £500? I could be persuaded to go to £750, but not much more. I think that works out as $700 to $1100 US, or about half a million Canadian.

cc143 · March 16, 2016

I was actually looking for a laptop within a similar price bracket about a month ago. It will be hard to get anything, especially in the UK, you could try to look at the inspiron 7559 linus reviewed recently, but it is at 749 pounds instead.

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-7559-laptop/pd?oc=cn95710&model_id=inspiron-15-7559-laptop

EDIT: This might work:http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-5559-laptop/pd?oc=cn55908&model_id=inspiron-15-5559-laptop

Do keep in mind the i7 6500U is actually a hyperthreaded dual core but apart from that and perhaps the dGPU (I'd prefer a 960m myself.) it seems quite solid