Help Buying New Laptop

-MRS_T-

ConsumerMatt wrote: »

The fan could be going crazy because of dust buildup (some canned air can help that) - spray into the vents to dislodge dust. Although my well maintained 7 year old XPS started going fan crazy due to working harder, albeit because I installed Windows 10.

Latitude laptops are business oriented (normally made of stronger materials, designed to deal with taking a bit more of a beating). Inspiron laptops are everyday consumer and XPS are high end consumer. You can get great deals on refurbished business laptops as companies get through 100s of them. Just another avenue.

Intel use a numbering system for their processors (i3, i5, i7) - i3 being entry, i7 high performance. But; that system has been in place for nearly 9 years and current i3 processors will likely out perform older i7s for example. So thankfully there's no need to replace it with a new Core i7.

My general rule of thumb for most people (your average user who hasn't got a specific demanding requirement but wants value) is to budget around £500. That's where you'll find the goldilocks machines. No overly fancy designs or gimmicks pushing up the price and not a cheap piece of plastic designed solely to get you through the door but it'll be of good spec, have a modern lightweight design and should last you 5 years at least if your needs remain similar and there are no issues with hardware.

Thanks for the explanation between laptops and processor, that is really helpful.

EveryWhere

-MRS_T- wrote: »

I actually have a new back lit keyboard I purchased from ebay about a year ago and was going to get it fixed by a friend but then when he watched a you tube video its not straight forward you have to take the whole laptop apart so he was a bit scared to attempt it.

If the 1645 is the same as the 1640, perhaps your friend was looking at the wrong video.
Some disassemble in any old order, therefore making it look fiddly and complicated. But most of the things don't need to be removed for HDD and keyboard swap.

Here is a good tutorial; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=burTploIM2U

I reckon he could do that in half an hour, working slowly and carefully.
As you may be able to see on the same video, the HDD is visible as soon as you remove the bottom cover. You can swap the HDD for an SSD in around 10 minutes. Very easy.

For a clean install, you can use this; https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Reinstallation-DVD-Windows-7-Pro-64-Bit-SP1-/163040175170


The fitting of a Solid State Drive to that machine will make a huge difference.
That, together with a clean install of the Operating System, will solve any issues to do with speed.
You can obtain an SSD for as little as £25; https://www.mymemory.co.uk/integral-120gb-p-series-5-sata-iii-2-5-ssd-drive-560mb-s.html

So you are looking at as little as £27 to bring the machine back into normal use.

About the fan, it's a poor design. Cleaning and reapplying thermal paste may fix it; https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General/Dell-XPS-1645-overheating/td-p/4214648

£2 or so for thermal paste.
So my vote is, refurbish.

EveryWhere

Upgrade the Wireless card for £3.50; https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Ultimate-N-Intel-WiFi-Link-5300-Wireless-Half-Card-OKW374-533ANHMW-New/282059820781

Just slots in.

or splash out on an 802.11ac card; https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/For-Intel-7260AC-802-11AC-Dual-Band-Bluetooth-4-0-WiFi-Mini-PCI-E-Wireless-Card-/162822139767