New laptop help

Lisaberry

redcard wrote: »

Try your luck on eBay?

There's a Lenovo Thinkpad, Core i5 4th generation, 180GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 14 inch screen, 'immaculate condition', with a buy it now of £490.

Thinkpads are solid machines, not cheap and plastic like some laptops in your price range can be,

My palms start to sweat at the thought of £500 and ebay in the same sentence. I guess paypal makes things a bit safer but if it's not new then I'm not sure I could part with my cash...my definition of immaculate condition may be very different to theirs?

DCodd

Lisaberry wrote: »

My palms start to sweat at the thought of £500 and ebay in the same sentence. I guess paypal makes things a bit safer but if it's not new then I'm not sure I could part with my cash...my definition of immaculate condition may be very different to theirs?

Check out the Argos and PC world clearance shops on ebay, they have warrantied refurbished laptops. A Macbook at around £800.00 I believe at the moment.

Lisaberry

DCodd wrote: »

Check out the Argos and PC world clearance shops on ebay, they have warrantied refurbished laptops. A Macbook at around £800.00 I believe at the moment.

That's a thought. Perhaps not for the mac... My heart belongs to the new 13.3 retina pro but I will def have a look!

ministe2003

I recently got a new laptop and it's an i7 processor, 8GB RAM and 1TB hard drive. £570 I think it cost, but it has a 15.6 inch screen - that's bigger than what you're after so an equivalent 14 inch model would be cheaper.

It's definitely worth paying slightly more for an i7 processor than i5. The processor does your calculations. It's essentially your computer's brain. The better the brain, the better everything else works. You could splash out on an SSD, loads of RAM and all the rest, but with a crummy processor you'll not get the benifit.

I'd agree with the i5 minimum, but i7 is miles better and for the £570 that I paid, it's a steal.

I personally wouldn't bother with the SSD - they cost a lot more than standard hard drives and a top processor like an i7 will outweigh the benefits of an SSD if you're trying to keep costs down. Don't worry too much about hard drive space, hard drives are cheap so if you find a great laptop but it's only got a 250GB hard drive, for example; don't let that put you off too much because you could just replace it with a bigger one or plug in an external one.

RAM is cheap, so get as much as your laptop will fit. You can always add more later, but if you can get one with 6-8GB built in you'll be sorted.

Ideally for video editing you might want to consider getting a dedicate graphics card, but again if you're trying to keep costs down you'll probably have to make a sacrifice somewhere else in order to get a graphics card so it might not be worth it.

Frankly, I'd get something with a similar spec to what I got. An i7 will future proof you somewhat. If you get an i5, you're already out of date. Don't get an i3 unless you want an expensive paperweight.

PS don't get hung up on brand or looks. I'd bin the idea of an Apple straight away. You'll pay at least twice the price of an equivalent Windows laptop. Yea it'll look great, but when you're eating beans on toast for the next 12 months to pay for it, you'll regret it. With a laptop, spec is everything, you want to get the best spec you can for the money you have. With that in mind, Apple wouldn't come into the equation.

Lisaberry

ministe2003 wrote: »

I recently got a new laptop and it's an i7 processor, 8GB RAM and 1TB hard drive. £570 I think it cost, but it has a 15.6 inch screen - that's bigger than what you're after so an equivalent 14 inch model would be cheaper.

It's definitely worth paying slightly more for an i7 processor than i5. The processor does your calculations. It's essentially your computer's brain. The better the brain, the better everything else works. You could splash out on an SSD, loads of RAM and all the rest, but with a crummy processor you'll not get the benifit.

I'd agree with the i5 minimum, but i7 is miles better and for the £570 that I paid, it's a steal.

I personally wouldn't bother with the SSD - they cost a lot more than standard hard drives and a top processor like an i7 will outweigh the benefits of an SSD if you're trying to keep costs down. Don't worry too much about hard drive space, hard drives are cheap so if you find a great laptop but it's only got a 250GB hard drive, for example; don't let that put you off too much because you could just replace it with a bigger one or plug in an external one.

RAM is cheap, so get as much as your laptop will fit. You can always add more later, but if you can get one with 6-8GB built in you'll be sorted.

Ideally for video editing you might want to consider getting a dedicate graphics card, but again if you're trying to keep costs down you'll probably have to make a sacrifice somewhere else in order to get a graphics card so it might not be worth it.

Frankly, I'd get something with a similar spec to what I got. An i7 will future proof you somewhat. If you get an i5, you're already out of date. Don't get an i3 unless you want an expensive paperweight.

PS don't get hung up on brand or looks. I'd bin the idea of an Apple straight away. You'll pay at least twice the price of an equivalent Windows laptop. Yea it'll look great, but when you're eating beans on toast for the next 12 months to pay for it, you'll regret it. With a laptop, spec is everything, you want to get the best spec you can for the money you have. With that in mind, Apple wouldn't come into the equation.

Thanks, that's great advice. I'll have a look at some i7's. Do you know anything at all about .mov? Is there an easy way to edit them on a PC?

prowla

I think there is a bit more to a Mac than just the hardware spec.
You are happy to pay for finish/quality in other things, so why not a PC?
I've never seen a Wintel PC which has the same feel of quality as a Mac.
On the specifications, the screen resolutions tend to be higher than the supposed equivalent Wintel laptops (eg. the 13.3" retina display model is 2560x1600, and the 15.4" model is 2880x1800).
On top of that, the OS is something else, with cheap/free version upgrades, so you pay for one thing and less for another.
Whether that fully justifies the price is a question.
For me, the answer is no - I don't have a Mac laptop, but comparing a Mac to a £500 Wintel laptop is not quite a level playing field.

ministe2003

I'm not directly comparing a mac to a £500 Wintel machine, I've never even heard of Wintel so I'm certainly not comparing that brand to Apple but spec wise, my point stands - you'll almost always pay an awful lot more for an Apple than you would for an equivalent spec non-apple machine. As for screen res, I don't know why you've picked Wintel again because I didn't mentioned them so its not a fair comparison against my post, however don't always assume "retina" simply means Best in Market, there are other branded equivalents with higher res screens. Nexus for example, and the S4 compared to the iPhone 5. And both are cheaper than the Apple equivalent.

And if you're looking for cheap/free software, there's far more open source software available for windows than Apple. You're only considering the OS.

Why would I pay more for better finish/quality in some things but not a pc? Well, if I were buying a car, I might want ride quality. If I were buying a table, I might want build quality. If I were buying a piano, I might want sound quality. When it comes to a PC, the only thing that really matters is performance, especially when you're running at a budget. By performance I'm including speed, stability and storage.

You're absolutely right - there's more to buying Apple than spec. If people purchased computers on spec and price, Apple wouldn't exist. However the OP has said she's budgeting, and to say you're budgeting and then look for an Apple is an oxymoron and you'll never get the best value for money, which is presumably what the OP is after since she's posting in a money saving forum, not a tech forum.

OP - I can't really advise on video editing itself, its not something I've done much of. I'm sure someone else will be able to advise you better than me on that.

DCodd

I'm assuming Wintel is a Windows/Intel machine?

prowla

Yup - "Wintel" is a generic term for a Windows/Intel PC, as opposed to an Apple Mac PC.

Just buying a computer on spec is like buying a car on its 0-60 performance; there is more.

It doesn't really matter how many free apps there are available, so long as the one you need is available. The OP mentioned video editing, and the Mac is acknowledged to be a leader in that area (and has been designed to perform those duties with a hi-res display).

The OP also mentioned iPhone movies, which you would expect would naturally be supported in the Mac world.

Me, I like the ergonomics of things, be it the ride of a car, the lines of a table, the character of a musical instrument, the shape of a bottle, how comfortable a chair is, or a computer's styling and build. I'd rather have something which has a quality feel to it than something a bit naff.

And, since we're talking laptops here, not phones and tablets, what Wintel laptops are available which beat the Mac's Retina display?

samsmoot

Haven't read all of the thread but I'd just like to say that Lenovo make excellent machines. The two sub-£300 ones in use at the moment are fast, reliable , reasonably well built and have great sound. The one is now two years old and works about as well as it did on day one. If I needed another laptop I'd see first what Lenovo have got.