What miminum laptop speck should I be looking for

thehorselady

My old Dell is almost dead, it never gave good service, so I'm in the market for a new laptop.


What should I be looking for - speck, price etc? Any recommendations?


I really only use it for emails, surfing and a little office work.


Many thanks
Cara

thehorselady

bsod wrote: »

what spec do you have, and why doesn't it suffice

It's an Ispiron 1764 and it never did seem to run smoothly. But lately it has been freezing on a regular basis, when I turn it on quite frequently the screen turns white and I have to turn it off and on again. Occasionally the screen will go white when I'm in the middle of something. And if I'm typing a message, like this, sometimes the cruiser jumps back three or four lines for no reason at all. Oh yes and there are a number of keys that need to be depressed a little harder at times.


All rather annoying


thehorselady

thehorselady

bsod wrote: »

Reinstalling the operating system might cure many of the problems. If you have a Dell datasafe icon on the start menu, that's the easy way, but make sure you copy your data elsewhere beforehand as it will put the machine back to day one

I appreciate all that you are saying but to be honest I've had so many headaches with this machine that I really want a new one. Hence my original question. What minimum speck should I be looking for and what should I be looking at in hard cash. I'm thinking that over Easter there might be some deals on offer

LeafGreen

For light use like that any new laptop should be powerful enough. My personal pick for good value is the Hp 255 G3 which ebuyer have for under £200 at the moment.

enfield_freddy

before splashing out on wonderful fancy names , most laptops now use specially made CPUs , to aid the battery performance , often those have fancy numbers "i5 and i7" but are cut down slower versions with an extra letter to denote this at the end. it often found that some of the I7s are not 4 core etc , please look at http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php before choosing


also do a google search on the CPU number.


a chap on this forum a few weeks ago bought a "asus" , all dancing all singing thing with (can,t remember) a i5 or i7 that had less power than a £40 Pentium.


often manufacturers pack the machines with memory to overcome the weak CPUs.


please do some research before spending big bucks




for example , the one listed above (Hp 255 G3 ) has a AMD A4 5000 cpu with a score of 1902 ,


a basic Pentium g3240 (£41.91 ) used in the most basic of desktops has a rating of 3273


the first review of the A4 5000 , sums it up CPU performance firmly in ultramobile territory
Not enough graphics cores for proper gaming
Doesn't dramatically move the APU game on
Has us worrying about next-gen CPU performance


higher is better!

thehorselady

Enfield Freddy that was a great post, at least I think it was, it's all gobblygook to me

Seriously though I'm after some recommendations. The machine will be used for no more than web surfing, watching YouTube and occasionally a little online TV though I tend to use Chromecast now. And a little light office work. It will store photographs and music and that's about it

I don't do gaming or Skype calls

So how about some suggestions with say a budget of £350 would that get me anything decent. (could go to £375 in a push)


TheHorseLady

enfield_freddy

I,m sorry I stopped giving suggestions as to the best model , some time ago , because trying to compare quality parts to cheap nasty parts on price is hard.


just to give an example , your old laptop was a Ispiron 1764 and a quick look shows that the CPU was a i5 430m or the lesser i3 330m


the laptop suggested above
Hp 255 G3 =1902


your laptop


i5 430m 2112
or the lesser popular one i3 330m =1811


so if your old machine is the feebler i3 model , then the one suggested is only fractionally faster after 5 yrs or evolution
and if your old laptop is the more common i5 , then the suggested new machine is substantially slower than your old one


sorry its a minefield out there , with the likes of PCWorld going out of the way to con you out of your money

Deru

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E555

Part No: 20DH000TUK Stock Code: 6872453

• AMD A8-7100 Quad Core Processor
• 15.6" HD Screen
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition
• 4GB DDR3 RAM
• 500GB HDD
• DVD Rewriter
• AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
• USB3 | HDMI | Bluetooth
• Dual Operating System - Windows 7 Pro installed with Windows 8 Pro License and System Restore included
• 20DH000TUK

This one. Build might be adequate with Lenovo. Spec is reasonable. Price not bad. Hopefully with that model, software isn't buggy. There's a £50 cashback off until the end of the month. I think it's adequate for what you need it for.

£249.99 after £50 cashback at Save on laptops website.

Should it slow down in a years time, I suggest a £70 SSD hard drive upgrade.

thehorselady

enfield_freddy wrote: »

I,m sorry I stopped giving suggestions as to the best model , some time ago , because trying to compare quality parts to cheap nasty parts on price is hard.

just to give an example , your old laptop was a Ispiron 1764 and a quick look shows that the CPU was a i5 430m or the lesser i3 330m

the laptop suggested above
Hp 255 G3 =1902

your laptop

i5 430m 2112
or the lesser popular one i3 330m =1811

so if your old machine is the feebler i3 model , then the one suggested is only fractionally faster after 5 yrs or evolution
and if your old laptop is the more common i5 , then the suggested new machine is substantially slower than your old one

sorry its a minefield out there , with the likes of PCWorld going out of the way to con you out of your money

I appreciate your comments and why you are reluctant to advise on models. It certainly is a minefield out there, that's the beauty of this Forum you can always ask for guidance. Many thanks

enfield_freddy

because if I suggest a good one , someone will come on and suggest som "tat" that is massed produced and will last 366 days , and not be repairable.


in the past I have suggested desktop machines built by PC shops using industry standard parts , easily upgradeable , then someone posts a link to a machine using a 170w PSU with a half height DVD and other flaws for £30 cheaper and people are only interested in cost.

Herzlos

thehorselady wrote: »

I really only use it for emails, surfing and a little office work.

Laptops hit the point of being good enough for that stuff 10 years ago, just buy the cheapest one you can find with a screen big enough to work from (say, 15") as everything else will be fine.

Unless you're doing something computationally intensive (staring at the screen for minutes at a time waiting on it to do something) then the actual spec doesn't matter.