What's new
By:
Filters

Laptop recommendations?

billybob_81067

billybob_81067

Redneck
Joined
May 19, 2020
Member Number
150
Messages
851
Loc
Southeastern Colorado
I've been so far out of the tech loop for so damn long I don't even know what to look for anymore.

My wife is wanting a new laptop to run Quickbooks accounting on. It needs to have Windows 10 on it for sure, (which I'm sure everything comes standard with anymore). She also wants a nice high resolution screen (probably the larger the better) for photo editing and viewing. No movie editing or gaming will be done. Touchscreen is not necessary, overall size really doesn't matter as it won't really be carried around anywhere, just moved from place to place in the house. A 10 key number pad on the side of the keyboard for accounting purposes is necessary, and she would prefer a backlit keyboard, but that isn't a deal killer...

How large of a computer memory should we be looking for? She takes quite a few photos, but it is just of our own family, not doing photography as a side job or anything like that. Is a HDD or Solid state drive better for this usage case? How many gigs of ram should I be looking at to make things run smoothly? Any recommendations on solid brands to look at? Neither of us are Apple fans, so those are out. Of course cheaper is always preferred as long as it gets the job done well! Refurbished would be fine as long as it is solid and reliable.
 
I buy 2 year old corporate turn ins from microsoft certified refurbishers.
best bang for the buck, and they're not consumer level fragile shit. metal hinges and what not.
16GB of ram is plenty for 99% of desktop users.
SSD is faster and arguably more reliable, traditional disks are cheaper per GB.

I just buy 1tb ssds for them and send it. I use the old 256s for external backups/fixing other people's shit.

my current thinkpad is a 16GB i7 4xxx machine and after a 1tb SSD I'm about $400 in it, and it's not a complete consumer pile of shit.
 
From a cpu stand point, it sounds like anything will work... but I would avoid Celeron/Pentium. AMD seems to be going full swing right now so I'd lean that way.

RAM is as much as you can afford. Two of my machines are at 8GB, my "medium" machines are at 16GB, and my consult machine is 32GB. Keep an eye on how much memory the laptop can support... you potentially can add more unless they are limited.

I wouldn't be shocked if almost all laptops are SSD nowdays. I'd still use an HD for primary storage for things I'm not working on.

I believe you will only find a 10 key on more business class machines. At least that was what I ran into many years ago.

FWIW, I went to Officemax and paid ~$150 for a HP laptop about 4 years ago and it will easily do what you are asking for. The only problem it has had is the touch pad right button is dead. I run HP Tuners for tuning/monitoring my trucks on it.
 
my wife wanted a smaller screen laptop, went to a local computer repair shop and bought a couple year old but fresh flashed computer for ~$200 which works very well. Certainly better than anything "new" in that same or similar price point
 
Lil'John said:
From a cpu stand point, it sounds like anything will work... but I would avoid Celeron/Pentium. AMD seems to be going full swing right now so I'd lean that way.

RAM is as much as you can afford. Two of my machines are at 8GB, my "medium" machines are at 16GB, and my consult machine is 32GB. Keep an eye on how much memory the laptop can support... you potentially can add more unless they are limited.

I wouldn't be shocked if almost all laptops are SSD nowdays. I'd still use an HD for primary storage for things I'm not working on.

I believe you will only find a 10 key on more business class machines. At least that was what I ran into many years ago.

FWIW, I went to Officemax and paid ~$150 for a HP laptop about 4 years ago and it will easily do what you are asking for. The only problem it has had is the touch pad right button is dead. I run HP Tuners for tuning/monitoring my trucks on it.
Click to expand...

maybe for gaming, but for a workstation that needs to work everyday and be well supported, intel is and always will be the gold standard.

and I say that as a bonified AMD fanboi that water cooled a socket A Duron back in the day to double it's clock speed.
 
87manche said:
maybe for gaming, but for a workstation that needs to work everyday and be well supported, intel is and always will be the gold standard.

and I say that as a bonified AMD fanboi that water cooled a socket A Duron back in the day to double it's clock speed.
Click to expand...

I've read good reviews on the performance of AMD... and this is from an Intel fanboi ;) What I will grant you is Intel usually has bullet proof drivers. But I can tell you I have issues with one of their NUCs and drivers.

What the OP describes is generic computer use... not gaming nor workstation.

From what I've seen, Intel has been overall sucking. Still stuck at 14nm with I forget how many pluses:rolleyes: I think they had one CPU at 10nm(CannonLake) No comment on being on version 4 or so of SkyLake:eek: Last computer I bought was 6700k ;)
 
Lenovo is my preference, I'm on an X1 Carbon right now.

Find an 8th gen or newer i5 or better, 16gb RAM, SSD, and 1080p display, probably a 14-15".
 
87manche said:
I buy 2 year old corporate turn ins from microsoft certified refurbishers.
best bang for the buck, and they're not consumer level fragile shit. metal hinges and what not.
16GB of ram is plenty for 99% of desktop users.
SSD is faster and arguably more reliable, traditional disks are cheaper per GB.

I just buy 1tb ssds for them and send it. I use the old 256s for external backups/fixing other people's shit.

my current thinkpad is a 16GB i7 4xxx machine and after a 1tb SSD I'm about $400 in it, and it's not a complete consumer pile of shit.
Click to expand...

Like to buy ???
 
Muckin_Slusher said:
Bullshit you don't know tech stuff, you sure talk like someone who knows tech stuff.

When the fawk did "anymore" replace "now"
Click to expand...

Damn the Wheaties soggy this morning? :flipoff2:

I run refurbed Acer gear off their eBay store. It's good mid-level equipment.
 
Lil'John said:
I've read good reviews on the performance of AMD... and this is from an Intel fanboi ;) What I will grant you is Intel usually has bullet proof drivers. But I can tell you I have issues with one of their NUCs and drivers.

What the OP describes is generic computer use... not gaming nor workstation.

From what I've seen, Intel has been overall sucking. Still stuck at 14nm with I forget how many pluses:rolleyes: I think they had one CPU at 10nm(CannonLake) No comment on being on version 4 or so of SkyLake:eek: Last computer I bought was 6700k ;)
Click to expand...

the NUC deals were piles of shit and I didn't fuck with them, after the Atoms were a terrible disappointment I stayed away from anything that wasn't an i series something or other with a legit chipset.

AMD has fucked me too many times with driver bullshit, especially after the ATI merge. it's like they fired their whole driver team and replaced it with ATI's, which was notoriously shit.


Ops want for a giant screen is going to drive the price up, but newegg, ebay, all the usual scumbags is where you find lease turn in laptops.
 
87manche said:
the NUC deals were piles of shit and I didn't fuck with them, after the Atoms were a terrible disappointment I stayed away from anything that wasn't an i series something or other with a legit chipset.<snip>

Ops want for a giant screen is going to drive the price up, but newegg, ebay, all the usual scumbags is where you find lease turn in laptops.
Click to expand...

Not all NUCs were Atom/Pentium/Celeron... a lot were low powered i's ;) I'm on an i3-5010U... I also run a SkullCanyon(i7-6770HQ) with pretty good results. The only disappointment was the Celeron version that chokes on movie playback :(

Big screen and/or high rez is hard to find and an arm/leg if you can find them. I played that game years ago trying to get 17" laptop and keypad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Back Refresh