New Laptop

fermerboy

Member
Location
Banffshire
Due to home schooling looking like lasting till xmas at least, and some other factors, Mrs Fb who is a teacher is in need of a new laptop.

Not too worried about spec, anything Win 10, I5, 8gb ram, and a SSD, with a 15.6" screen will do her job, £600 is sort of the budget.

I havent bought a laptop for a good few years so, Any advice on brands? And places to buy from?

Lenovo, HP, Dell seem to be most popular in that sort of spec/money.
I know of 2 HPs that failed on the graphics chip which has put me off a bit.
Acer is another that appears on the websites too, but I always find them flimsy.
No recent experience of any of them though.
Any and all thoughts welcome before I click add to cart.
 
Due to home schooling looking like lasting till xmas at least, and some other factors, Mrs Fb who is a teacher is in need of a new laptop.

Not too worried about spec, anything Win 10, I5, 8gb ram, and a SSD, with a 15.6" screen will do her job, £600 is sort of the budget.

I havent bought a laptop for a good few years so, Any advice on brands? And places to buy from?

Lenovo, HP, Dell seem to be most popular in that sort of spec/money.
I know of 2 HPs that failed on the graphics chip which has put me off a bit.
Acer is another that appears on the websites too, but I always find them flimsy.
No recent experience of any of them though.
Any and all thoughts welcome before I click add to cart.
using a lenovo not bad look up currys on interweb get bargains on their internet store delivery too, although prefer my acer aspire faster than lenovo.
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
We've a hp laptop in office. Had it a few years, hasn't been any bother.

We've a It company, (computer nerd) who looks after stuff like that for us. Bought it off him and just phone him if any problems.
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
Due to home schooling looking like lasting till xmas at least, and some other factors, Mrs Fb who is a teacher is in need of a new laptop.

Not too worried about spec, anything Win 10, I5, 8gb ram, and a SSD, with a 15.6" screen will do her job, £600 is sort of the budget.

I havent bought a laptop for a good few years so, Any advice on brands? And places to buy from?

Lenovo, HP, Dell seem to be most popular in that sort of spec/money.
I know of 2 HPs that failed on the graphics chip which has put me off a bit.
Acer is another that appears on the websites too, but I always find them flimsy.
No recent experience of any of them though.
Any and all thoughts welcome before I click add to cart.
Do you have children that will be going back to school too? My wifes a primary school teacher.

Not sure what we are going to do if the days our children are at school doesn't match the days she is teaching. We are normally at harvest in August when they go back so I won't manage.
 
Not sure if the 'sheds' are re-opening now, but avoid Currys/PC World as they will want to sell you loads of shyte to go with it.
Make sure you get one with an SSD

Maybe look at the Dell 'outlet' shop
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
Not sure if the 'sheds' are re-opening now, but avoid Currys/PC World as they will want to sell you loads of shyte to go with it.
Make sure you get one with an SSD

Maybe look at the Dell 'outlet' shop

The refurbed Curry's deals can be OK when buying online. Just Say No to any extra "offers" such as extended Warranty, AV etc. All can be got cheaper elsewhere if you are bothered :)
 

Boysground

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Wiltshire
Bought my mum a cheap Hp from PC World back in January and I have been very pleased with it.

If I buy for myself I use PC Specialist. You can choose your own spec and more importantly they don’t put any junk on the machine.

And have a ssd every time.

Bg
 

___\0/___

Member
Location
SW Scotland
Do you have children that will be going back to school too? My wifes a primary school teacher.

Not sure what we are going to do if the days our children are at school doesn't match the days she is teaching. We are normally at harvest in August when they go back so I won't manage.

We are in the same boat, our kids will get put in a hub as being a farmer means we are both key workers. Assume you should have hub access aswell?
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
If you can stretch to £850 you will get a quality Lenovo Legion5i. Add an additional 7200rpm 1TB hard drive, if you think the extra storage is necessary above the standard SSD, for £55. Or you could increase the size of the standard SSD or add a second SSD, all available at extra cost from the Lenovo website.

It will be good for many years use and even if you just get the basic machine now, it will be easy to add an extra SSD and RAM in future.


Just as an aside I fired up my 2002 Toshiba 17" laptop today for the first time in some years, possibly in ten years. Very disappointed to find that four or five keys no longer function, even after removing the key caps to clean and the whole keyboard to clean and reset the ribbon cable. Would not be an issue normally, because I only want to check the contents, but I have set a password for myself and the number 0 key doesn't work and is part of my password. :banghead:

So unless you need the security, do not password protect the launch into Windows. There is a way around it apparently, using a program downloaded to another machine and transferred to a USB stick. May do it some day.
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
We are in the same boat, our kids will get put in a hub as being a farmer means we are both key workers. Assume you should have hub access aswell?
The hub workers are librarians and life guards up here. The council are getting hard up. They are paying them anyway so put them in there. I don't really want them teaching our children.

My wife's been told teachers children don't have access to hubs after August. I think the government/local councils are figuring out how short of money they are. My wifes school had 4 probationers who had been told they all had jobs next year. The local authority has now changed its mind none of them have jobs.
 

___\0/___

Member
Location
SW Scotland
Our hubs are full of teachers at the moment but they are not allowed to teach the kids. Teachers are all out of the hubs shortly and will be staffed similar to yours.

My wife is going to take unpaid leave if we have any difficulty over child care. Not sure if that is an option for you.
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
Our hubs are full of teachers at the moment but they are not allowed to teach the kids. Teachers are all out of the hubs shortly and will be staffed similar to yours.

My wife is going to take unpaid leave if we have any difficulty over child care. Not sure if that is an option for you.

Not that she's letting on!

She's on about giving up her job completely if it comes to that. I would miss the money!

Other option would be to just move our children to her school. The kids have said they would move. They could just go in with her on days she's working.
 

fermerboy

Member
Location
Banffshire
Do you have children that will be going back to school too? My wifes a primary school teacher.

Not sure what we are going to do if the days our children are at school doesn't match the days she is teaching. We are normally at harvest in August when they go back so I won't manage.

The hub workers are librarians and life guards up here. The council are getting hard up. They are paying them anyway so put them in there. I don't really want them teaching our children.

My wife's been told teachers children don't have access to hubs after August. I think the government/local councils are figuring out how short of money they are. My wifes school had 4 probationers who had been told they all had jobs next year. The local authority has now changed its mind none of them have jobs.

We are the same as you, my wife is a primary teacher, and both my boys are at primary school as well.

Think the boys will likely be in on different days, and unlikely to be on the days my wife works she is in a different school.

We are in Moray and she has been told that ours will get access to the hubs. So far its teachers who are manning the hubs but I expect that to change. There certainly won't be any teaching in the hubs, thats not happening now even with teachers there.
Not that keen on the hubs but theres a lot of the time I won't manage to look after them, so need a plan.
We have the option of moving them to her school but I can't see them being happy with that.

The whole thing is at the moment a shambles, nobody knows what the plan is, how its going to work, who is going to do what. I think there is a high risk of it all falling to pieces very quickly. It just takes one family to get Covid or suspected, and then as many others will need to isolate for two weeks the whole thing could collapse.
 
If you can stretch to £850 you will get a quality Lenovo Legion5i. Add an additional 7200rpm 1TB hard drive, if you think the extra storage is necessary above the standard SSD, for £55. Or you could increase the size of the standard SSD or add a second SSD, all available at extra cost from the Lenovo website.

It will be good for many years use and even if you just get the basic machine now, it will be easy to add an extra SSD and RAM in future.


Just as an aside I fired up my 2002 Toshiba 17" laptop today for the first time in some years, possibly in ten years. Very disappointed to find that four or five keys no longer function, even after removing the key caps to clean and the whole keyboard to clean and reset the ribbon cable. Would not be an issue normally, because I only want to check the contents, but I have set a password for myself and the number 0 key doesn't work and is part of my password. :banghead:

So unless you need the security, do not password protect the launch into Windows. There is a way around it apparently, using a program downloaded to another machine and transferred to a USB stick. May do it some day.

Have you tried launching the on screen keyboard in the Ease of Access Center at the logon screen? Be able to enter correct password then to get into the system.
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
We are the same as you, my wife is a primary teacher, and both my boys are at primary school as well.

Think the boys will likely be in on different days, and unlikely to be on the days my wife works she is in a different school.

We are in Moray and she has been told that ours will get access to the hubs. So far its teachers who are manning the hubs but I expect that to change. There certainly won't be any teaching in the hubs, thats not happening now even with teachers there.
Not that keen on the hubs but theres a lot of the time I won't manage to look after them, so need a plan.
We have the option of moving them to her school but I can't see them being happy with that.

The whole thing is at the moment a shambles, nobody knows what the plan is, how its going to work, who is going to do what. I think there is a high risk of it all falling to pieces very quickly. It just takes one family to get Covid or suspected, and then as many others will need to isolate for two weeks the whole thing could collapse.
Your right, a shambles would be word to describe it.

They don't seem to know what there doing, policy changes daily. At least English primary schools already back and that should give them some indication how it will work.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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