business laptop that's easy to upgrade and cheap

[Ashleyyyy]

ok, so here's the story. i used to have a macbook pro as a main system, but it has too many issues to comfortably use it as a main system. 

i have a secondary laptop, a HP EliteBook 9470M, which is fine i guess, but the dual-core i5 is not the fastest, and the battery is aging. 

so i want to replace it with something else. 

 

requirements:

quad-core cpu (generation doesn't matter)

ddr3 ram support (i can pull 16gb of ram out of the hp laptop i already have)

ssd not required, i have a spare one

not too heavy

good keyboard

good trackpad

no bigger than 15"

decent screen

decent battery life

about €200 (€300 max)

 

discrete gpu not needed, i have the gaming laptop for games

 

i'm fine upgrading said laptop to meet the specs if needed. (to a limit, i'm not comfortable replacing screens or keyboards)

 

it needs to be able to have good linux compatibility (to use as main os), and be able to run Windows 10 (i need it for school )

 

@iamdarkyoshi @Comic_Sans_MS thoughts? you seem experienced with the kind of machine i'm looking for

[dizmo]

Some form of Lenovo. I'd go for the T series, the older X series had a horrid trackpad.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, campy said:

Youre kinda asking for a bit much with the price range and form factor.

For business laptops, the only range youre gonna find quadcore or even quadcore compatible laptops is going to be workstation lines, which even older used generations are going to be over 200.

The only thing i can think of that would be in that price range with a quadcore is the Thinkpad T440p. And the quadcore models were super unpopular because they were hot as balls and you rarely see them pop up on ebay.

An alternative is Dell M4700 Precisions, but theyre also fairly hit and miss.

i'm willing to upgrade the laptop though. i found this cpu for €40...

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, campy said:

I mean its cool and all, a mobile quadcore is a fun thing, but really upgrading an older workstation laptop is just going to bring you to the tier of modern cheap ULV processors.

That i7 is beat out by an i5 8350u, which you can find in decent business laptops for under 500 USD

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitude-5290-12-5-HD-i5-8350U-quad-8GB-256GB-SSD-Webcam-Win10Pro-Warranty/153268029643?hash=item23af7c88cb:g:x1EAAOSw-4Jb8v8X:rk:8:pf:0

yes, in the USA. here, the second hand market works differently. 

also, for some reason when i opened that link my antivirus alerted em about a malicious connection to godaddy.com, so i dunno what's going on there... 

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, campy said:

well thats an ebay link so if your antivirus is picking up an entirely unreleated site im pretty sure you've got some kind of malware

might have been an ad. that happenes sometimes.

 

also, i looked up the model in that ad, and the cheapest one i found used here is €799. that's how expensive this type of laptop is here. 

[comicsansms]

2 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

i'm willing to upgrade the laptop though. i found this cpu for €40...

The elitebook 9470M has a soldered CPU. No replacing that. 

 

I cannot remember off the top of my head if zbook 17 G1 or G2 have socketed CPU's or not, but those are the most recent HP Business laptops to not solder on their CPUs if they didn't. And those machines are kinda shit, and are too large.

 

I really like the elitebook 8x70 line up, the best one in that would be the Elitebook 8570W, which has an MXM GPU slot, and I have heard of people upgrading those to GTX 980M's, so those are beastly, and will be the beat built gaming laptops.

 

But if you are looking for a laptop without discrete GPU, the 8470P (wouldn't go for models with AMD graphics, so wouldn't get the 8470W too. Basically same but with shitty firepro instead of HD 7570M) 8570P (once again, not AMD graphics model, and the 8470W is very different), are great devices. I honestly believe 14" is a better sized screen, 15" is too big imo, so I would (and have) gone with the 8470P. Cost for those vary quite significantly, depending on when you buy them.(bought my brother's 8470W for $113AU - i7 3630QM, 4GB RAM, HSPA+ network card, 500GB HDD, though I have seen similar laptops sell for double that).

 

 

Laptops that need a bit of work sell for less. My brother's 8470W had an Arabic keyboard that was missing keys. The Seller also didn't list the specs in the description, but I worked out the CPU using HP's part surfer.

 

My 8470P with AMD graphics came with the default bios settings cleared (no serial number...). Got a tool from a friend, so was able to reprogram that. Not sure if it was an error from the factory, or a poor motherboard swap from warranty replacement (I've seen both before), I kinda doubt the bios got corrupt on that spot only.

 

My most recent 8470P was missing keys, but since I had a spare keyboard lying around, I decided to buy it. Didn't look at the pictures closely enough, was a no webcam model, though that doesn't matter much.

 

I got screwed with my 9470M, I over paid, and it was a POS. They used blury pictures to hide the damage from being in a very salty environment. But they didn't say anything misleading, so I'm not going to fault the seller for that.

 

Also, don't buy a Lenovo with a damaged keyboards. Replacements are about $55AU, compared with $17 for an elitebook.

 

 

[Ashleyyyy]

6 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

The elitebook 9470M has a soldered CPU. No replacing that. 

yup, i know. figured that out when replacing the thermal paste a while ago...

 

7 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

I really like the elitebook 8x70 line up, the best one in that would be the Elitebook 8570W, which has an MXM GPU slot, and I have heard of people upgrading those to GTX 980M's, so those are beastly, and will be the beat built gaming laptops.

i don't need that at all. i own a 17" gaming laptop with a 960M in it, which is more than fine for me for games, but i don't want to use that to take with me everyday. it's going to replace my desktop soon, just sitting on a stand. 

 

8 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

But if you are looking for a laptop without discrete GPU, the 8470P (wouldn't go for models with AMD graphics, so wouldn't get the 8470W too. Basically same but with shitty firepro instead of HD 7570M) 8570P (once again, not AMD graphics model, and the 8470W is very different), are great devices. I honestly believe 14" is a better sized screen, 15" is too big imo, so I would (and have) gone with the 8470P. Cost for those vary quite significantly, depending on when you buy them.(bought my brother's 8470W for $113AU - i7 3630QM, 4GB RAM, HSPA+ network card, 500GB HDD, though I have seen similar laptops sell for double that).

i saw a bunch of 8470p's for about €150, so that's great. however i noticed that the screens have 1366x768 and that's not enough for me... 

 

15 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

I got screwed with my 9470M, I over paid, and it was a POS. They used blury pictures to hide the damage from being in a very salty environment. But they didn't say anything misleading, so I'm not going to fault the seller for that.

that's annoying. i bought mine off a friend for €270, and it came with 8gb of ram and a 120gb ssd so... that was decent i guess. it also has the 1600x900 screen which is a nice upgrade over 1366x768..

 

but yeah, looking at all this ii guess i'll have to love with my 9470M for a while longer... those 8470P's look promising but the screens are too low res... 

[comicsansms]

56 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

i don't need that at all. i own a 17" gaming laptop with a 960M in it, which is more than fine for me for games, but i don't want to use that to take with me everyday. it's going to replace my desktop soon, just sitting on a stand. 

Figured that much 

Quote

i saw a bunch of 8470p's for about €150, so that's great. however i noticed that the screens have 1366x768 and that's not enough for me... 

Most 8470P's are 900p, that said later budget release, 768p screen options did exist, and you cannot just swap over the panels (they don't use the full bandwidth LVDS cable). My latest one had a 768p screen, but I'm swapping the ribbon cable and panel, so didn't really matter to me.

 

Also noted, the full bandwidth LVDS cable do support 1080p screens, but no 14" LVDS 1080p screens exist (look at @iamdarkyoshi's thread for more details about getting around that, mine will have similar updates in the next couple of months). 

 

Also, you can swap a 8570P screen with a 1080p panel (assuming it comes with the 900p screen, so comes with the full bandwidth LVDS cable), because 15" 1080p LVDS panels do exist.

 

Quote

that's annoying. i bought mine off a friend for €270, and it came with 8gb of ram and a 120gb ssd so... that was decent i guess. it also has the 1600x900 screen which is a nice upgrade over 1366x768..

Yeah, 768p isn't good enough. 900p is also bleh.

Quote

 

 

[Ashleyyyy]

7 hours ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Figured that much 

Most 8470P's are 900p, that said later budget release, 768p screen options did exist, and you cannot just swap over the panels (they don't use the full bandwidth LVDS cable). My latest one had a 768p screen, but I'm swapping the ribbon cable and panel, so didn't really matter to me.

 

Also noted, the full bandwidth LVDS cable do support 1080p screens, but no 14" LVDS 1080p screens exist (look at @iamdarkyoshi's thread for more details about getting around that, mine will have similar updates in the next couple of months). 

 

Also, you can swap a 8570P screen with a 1080p panel (assuming it comes with the 900p screen, so comes with the full bandwidth LVDS cable), because 15" 1080p LVDS panels do exist.

 

Yeah, 768p isn't good enough. 900p is also bleh.

 

I’m not really comfortable replacing a screen...

 

and 900p at 14” is perfect for my eyes, so i’d prefer it over 1080p. 1080p even at 15” makes text too small for me.

[Ashleyyyy]

@Comic_Sans_MS i found this listing: link, for an 8570p. is this something i should get? it says it has a 1600x900 screen so... and it's damaged so it'll be cheap. 

[comicsansms]

20 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

@Comic_Sans_MS i found this listing: link, for an 8570p. is this something i should get? it says it has a 1600x900 screen so... and it's damaged so it'll be cheap. 

It's a dual core i7 (if it doesn't have a Q in it's name, it's a dual core), probably similarly preforming to your i7 in your 9470M. It also has AMD graphics. The HD 7570M hasn't had a stable release graphics driver since late 2014, plus it uses more battery than the iGPU (though about twice as fast), and you cannot disable it in the bios, which is why I would avoid.

 

I would look for a model with a quad core i7, because buying a CPU and a laptop seperately usually costs more.

 

The most important skill for buying used is patience, otherwise you will end up with mediocre stuff for a mediocre price.

 

[Ashleyyyy]

@Comic_Sans_MS i thought you could disable the amd gpu.. nevermind then. 

 

and yea i know, but i'm bad at patience  

[comicsansms]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

@Comic_Sans_MS i thought you could disable the amd gpu.. nevermind then. 

 

and yea i know, but i'm bad at patience  

No, not on the 8470P at least, and I kinda doubt it'd be different on the bigger version of it.

 

Yeah, same. Hence why I have bought a Probook 6460B, Lenovo T410 and Elitebook 9470M.

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Yeah, same. Hence why I have bought a Probook 6460B, Lenovo T410 and Elitebook 9470M.

the 9470M i got was one fo the best purchases ever. it's never crashed, and still works perfectly fine. all i had to do to it was replace the thermal paste.

[Canada EH]

On 11/22/2018 at 3:24 AM, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Lenovo T410

Ah I see, interesting. Very interesting thread here. Learning lots.

T520 i5-2520M and 8570P i5 3320M gen with soldered cpu.

 

The Q's are ideal, I saw that. Not something too common that I have run into.

[comicsansms]

3 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Ah I see, interesting. Very interesting thread here. Learning lots.

T520 i5-2520M and 8570P i5 3320M gen with soldered cpu.

  

The Q's are ideal, I saw that. Not something too common that I have run into.

No, the T520 (sandybridge) and 8570p (ivybridge) have socket G2 CPUs.

 

Most laptops apart from ultrabooks used socketed CPUs, that was until Haswell.