Sorry folks, another laptop buyer - what to sacrifice

firsttimebuyer2013

So I need a new laptop, one that will run Photoshop for moderate use, and my budget is about £500

[STRIKE]I've seen one on Curry's for just over the £500 mark, with 8GB of ram, 1tb hard drive but it has the 'older style hard drive', so I'm led to believe. Should I be going for SSD and if so why?

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5570-15-6-laptop-black-10169763-pdt.html

If so, can I get that in my budget? :money:[/STRIKE]

Edit: Ok, so I'm convinced on a SSD drive, and quad core processor. My budget has increased because of this

So, I'm looking at this sort of spec.

https://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/dell-inspiron-15-5570-15-6-laptop-silver-10169864-pdt.html

Is there anything similar for a better price? I don't really know where to look and places I have are unclear whether they are dual or quad core processors.

Tom99

The main advantage I found is that a SSD will boot up and close down in just a few seconds rather than minutes for my previous laptop.

emptybox

Tom99 wrote: »

The main advantage I found is that a SSD will boot up and close down in just a few seconds rather than minutes for my previous laptop.

Also any software and updates install much quicker. And malware scans proceed quicker as well.
Basically any task that involves accessing the hard drive works faster.

another_casualty

Could be wrong here, but if you can try to get 16gb of ram instead of 8 then your laptop would be more durable .

Energize

An SSD is well worth it, all your applications will load a lot faster but you're looking at £700+.

another_casualty wrote: »

Could be wrong here, but if you can try to get 16gb of ram instead of 8 then your laptop would be more durable .

Laptops with 16GB of ram are well outside his budget.

Debbie_Savard

Avoid a hard-disk at all costs, get an SSD. If you're tight for RAM, Photoshop will use the SSD for temporary store and you need that to be as fast as possible.

What about £300 HP 840 14-Inch G1 Business Laptop (Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 180 GB SSD, Windows 10 Professional) (Certified Refurbished) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-840-14-Inch-Business-Laptop/dp/B06VVXNX5Z

It has an SD card reader inbuilt which is handy if you use a camera

Energize

Debbie_Savard wrote: »

Avoid a hard-disk at all costs, get an SSD. If you're tight for RAM, Photoshop will use the SSD for temporary store and you need that to be as fast as possible.

What about £300 HP 840 14-Inch G1 Business Laptop (Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 180 GB SSD, Windows 10 Professional) (Certified Refurbished) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-840-14-Inch-Business-Laptop/dp/B06VVXNX5Z

The screen on that is pretty low resolution (1366x768) I wouldn't consider it for photoshop use.

custardy

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/hp-250-core-i7-7500u-8gb-256gb-ssd-15.6-inch-windows-10-laptop-2sy44es/version.asp#/specs

Few refurb options for less that tick the boxes

firsttimebuyer2013

Thanks for the replies. For some reason I've never even considered a refurb. Are they ok?

Debbie_Savard

I've bought several refurbs, been OK. Always worth asking the seller a sensible question and if they respond in a professional manner, you should be OK.

toshi

Debbie_Savard wrote: »

Avoid a hard-disk at all costs, get an SSD. If you're tight for RAM, Photoshop will use the SSD for temporary store and you need that to be as fast as possible.

Good point. This is rather old 2013 test results with 2008 MacPro, but very intuitive one. I can safely say that 8GB SSD computer is much much faster than 16GB hard disk one.




(Please note I am not saying RAM is not important, but in modern computing, excess RAM is used for caching to compensate slow hard disk bottle neck. I assume that desktop OS architecture still is based upon a slow hard disk and very small amount of memory. With a flash memory based computing, we need to update our understating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn6zxoh3oK4

firsttimebuyer2013 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. For some reason I've never even considered a refurb. Are they ok?

I am not sure if you would find the suitable model, but they sell business grade refurbished computers, which is far better quality, durability than consumer ones.

https://www.encore-pc.co.uk/offers/black-friday

Happy computing