Looking for a new laptop but what has happened?

StewedApple

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6683944/looking-for-a-new-laptop-but-what-has-happened

The price change is driven by AI demand.

About 18 months ago I priced a new machine (I build them tailored to my needs) but decided against buying, when I subsequently reviewed the price of the same kit it had increased by about 150%.

I still haven't bought one!

debitcardmayhem

Just a question really how much did you pay for a laptop with 2TB SSD in 2017 ? A 2TB SSD would have cost a bomb back then and they aren't "cheap" now. e.g. AI says

Krakkkers

I still have the original bill, its a 2017 Dell Alienware R4 17 inch with 16gb ram, 2 x 1TB ssd drives, I7 7700,

2500 res screen, Nvidea GTX1070 8GB bought from the Dell outlet site.

Frozen_up_north

Is there a particular reason for wanting a huge amount of storage in your laptop? Whatever you have stored needs to be backed up externally on a spinning rust HDD, or possibly to the cloud.

Windows 11 will run quite happily on an i5 laptop with 500 GB storage and 16 GB RAM, which is the specification of most laptops on the market and where the prices are generally keenest.

Krakkkers

I am a hoarder of old movies/tv shows/radio comedy downloaded from usenet.

Exodi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82143251#Comment_82143251

A pretty top of the range laptop for the time - what was the price? Inevitably it was in the thousands.

Important to note as it's probably not completely fair for us to compare entry level laptops today that cost £500 to a top end laptop that cost ~£3k.

What type of SSD drives are they? If they are m.2 (like google suggests) then it's likely you could just take the SSD's out of your old laptop and put them in a new one (though I'd suggest migrating the data from the old laptop to external storage, then doing a fresh OS install + format on them with a new laptop, then moving the data back).

Of course SSD's don't last forever so this should feature as part of your thinking, though current memory costs may help sharpen the mind!

forgotmyname

Dreading any of my hardware failing, just working stuff out recently and to replace this desktop PC would be just
shy of £5k today. I purchased some 20TB drives a while back for the NAS and a single drive now costs more than
I paid for 3 of them less than a year ago.

Draqo

2017 a 2tb SSD would have been rare, sure it wasnt a 2tb HDD?
Might be better off getting a new battery and then backing up what you ahve now and doing a reinstall?

Krakkkers

No it was 2 x 1 tb cards.

It needs new fans and a battery and the battery on these is pretty hard to get too.

Frozen_up_north

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82143576#Comment_82143576

Do not waste money on a laptop with a large SSD, use an external HDD they are more economical. You can also put your existing SSD into a low cost caddy that plugs into the new laptop via USB. Typical price for a WD 4TB USB external drive is £140, a USB drive caddy about £10, from Amazon.

Beware that SSD drives do fail, I've had one fail in a Dell desktop. Make regular backups, I use Acronis True Image.