Laptop for author

ptkloon

Hi, I am looking to purchase a laptop for my wife who is currently attempting to start writing books. She would basically need word processing, and would also like plenty storage on the machine to store photo's and videos from years of external bringing up kids and capturing every moment.
Can you recommend a cheap laptop that would be sufficient for this? The cheaper ones only seem to have 32 gb of storage. Hoping not to spend more that £200 if possible!! Would be quite happy with a refurb too but not 100% sure what is a good deal
Thanks in advance

WAYT

You can buy a cheapie, such as this; http://mcscom.co.uk/product/dell-vostro-3360-i5-3317u-1-70ghz-4gb-320gb-13-3-hd-no-os-30day-rtb-wty-xmlv031/ for £102, installing the OS for yourself for free. Not difficult. Can talk you through that.

Or pay double for one in better condition and UK keyboard
http://mcscom.co.uk/product/dell-vostro-3360-i5-3317u-1-70ghz-4gb-320gb-13-3-hd-no-os-90day-rtb-wty-mlv010/

Review here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Vostro-3360-Notebook.76737.0.html


Oh....don't like the built in battery design. That's a shame, because other than that it wasn't bad. Especially with the spare m-SATA slot

Neil_Jones

The 32Gb drive may not be an issue - just get an external drive and keep anything important on that. You should be backing up anyway.

psychic_teabag

ptkloon wrote: »

Hi, I am looking to purchase a laptop for my wife who is currently attempting to start writing books. She would basically need word processing, and would also like plenty storage on the machine to store photo's and videos from years of external bringing up kids and capturing every moment.

Not sure I would try to combine these two purposes on a single machine. If laptop is being carried about, it has a bit of a risk of being dropped / damaged. (Or stolen if taken outside.) Don't really want all the photos to go too. I'd be looking to use at least one, and preferably two, external disks for that. Or perhaps dvds, but haven't had good experience of reliability of those.

For writing, I'd have thought a good keyboard would be fairly important. Even going so far as plugging in a proper one, rather than using a laptop's built-in one.

grumpycrab

psychic_teabag wrote: »

... Even going so far as plugging in a proper one [keyboard], rather than using a laptop's built-in one.

How far back are you going?

S0litaire

To be hones any "laptop/Chromebook/netbook" you can afford will do the job. But like others have pointed out keeping things like personal photos and videos on a laptop (or desktop) is not a great idea. Invest the money in a couple of good quality big external drives as well.

Also, depends on how serious the writing bug is,
Libre office (https://www.libreoffice.org/ ) is a great free word processor suite.

Or something more professional for a writer would be "Scrivener" https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php. This costs around $40 but worth it for the features and ease of use. (Windows /Mac compatible with a sadly underfunded Linux version)...

ptkloon

Thanks for the replies guys, we've recently invested in a my-cloud 4Tb drive which seems to give us no end of issues but if we can work that out better then I'm sure we won't require the mass storage. Is there anyway of linking the mycloud to the laptop without going through the router?

grumpycrab

ptkloon wrote: »

Is there anyway of linking the mycloud to the laptop without going through the router?

Did it not come with a USB cable?

psychic_teabag

ptkloon wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys, we've recently invested in a my-cloud 4Tb drive which seems to give us no end of issues but if we can work that out better then I'm sure we won't require the mass storage. Is there anyway of linking the mycloud to the laptop without going through the router?

If it's ethernet, you can usually just plug devices directly together. (In the old days, you needed a cable with a twist, but everything is auto-sensing these days.) However, if both devices are configured to expect to get network config from a dhcp server (ie the router) then you'll need to do some extra configuration.

pogofish

Surely no proper author would be wanting anything less than a classic Remington or Underwood:



Or a decent writing desk!

forgotmyname

pogofish wrote: »

Surely no proper author would be wanting anything less than a classic Remington or Underwood:



Or a decent writing desk!

Don't you just love common / poor folk?

Writing desk indeed...

Nothing less that a solid Oak Chesterfield Writing Bureau surely???