New laptop

ladycrofter

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
Just wondering if anyone has bought a new laptop recently? I'm looking at buying something with a large screen (I think that means 17 in?). Currently using an HP that came with Win7 so pretty old, upgraded to Win10 though. Just about ready to throw it in the pond, bad enough here with our slow internet.

Thought I could get something for around £2-300 but I see that to get a "serious" work laptop, I need to spend more :cry:. I don't game (unless they bring in a Win10 version of Quake:rolleyes: showing my age now) but I do need capability to to work on websites, so lots of programs open, graphics work, etc. Battery life not a huge issue. Maybe £500 max?

I've been looking on the Argos, Tesco and Amazon sites, but there are so many models of what look like almost the same thing, it is a bit confusing. Quad core prices seem to be all over the place, some cheaper than dual???

Any advice and suggestions appreciated before I press a "BUY" button.
 

ladycrofter

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
Thanks guys. I have been dithering about some more, it's the cost that puts me off. Planning to phone PC Specialist this week to have a chat with them. There seems to be a big leap between "office" type machine specs and gaming, Think I am somewhere in between.
 

Dave

Member
Location
Lake District
Just wondering if anyone has bought a new laptop recently? I'm looking at buying something with a large screen (I think that means 17 in?). Currently using an HP that came with Win7 so pretty old, upgraded to Win10 though. Just about ready to throw it in the pond, bad enough here with our slow internet.

Thought I could get something for around £2-300 but I see that to get a "serious" work laptop, I need to spend more :cry:. I don't game (unless they bring in a Win10 version of Quake:rolleyes: showing my age now) but I do need capability to to work on websites, so lots of programs open, graphics work, etc. Battery life not a huge issue. Maybe £500 max?

I've been looking on the Argos, Tesco and Amazon sites, but there are so many models of what look like almost the same thing, it is a bit confusing. Quad core prices seem to be all over the place, some cheaper than dual???

Any advice and suggestions appreciated before I press a "BUY" button.

Had same problem, spent a long time thinking and researching, Sounds like my computer use at home similar to you. I went down the Mac root and got a MacBook Air 13, little more than your budget top side of £700+VAT, but I needed something that worked and would last, early days but it does work.

We have two windows based PCs in our office, use MS office 2012, Outlook and Xero accounts, I am able to do all this at hime if I wish, plus internet work, and print in the office from home or anywhere else I wish, so far very pleased.

Plenty of people I know who I think of as proper nerds who know a lot more than me gone down the Mac root, I hope it lasts 5 plus years to get my money worth.

Which Best Buy, think this one was 98%, the next four were Mac's as well, the Dell at 89%, £200 dearer, so no contest.
 

ladycrofter

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
I am starting to think the biggest problem is my wifi card. I lose the internet every 5-10 minutes, OH doesn't on his laptop. Maybe I just need to un-bolt the thing and put in a new wifi card. The Realtek doesn't sem to get a very good write-up. The spec on my laptop itself doesn't seem that bad when I start looking at new ones. (But I haven't really been keeping up with chip development.) The fan seems to be running much hotter lately, maybe the card is over-heating on its way out.
Bethlaptop details.png
 
I am starting to think the biggest problem is my wifi card. I lose the internet every 5-10 minutes, OH doesn't on his laptop. Maybe I just need to un-bolt the thing and put in a new wifi card. The Realtek doesn't sem to get a very good write-up. The spec on my laptop itself doesn't seem that bad when I start looking at new ones. (But I haven't really been keeping up with chip development.) The fan seems to be running much hotter lately, maybe the card is over-heating on its way out.View attachment 572194

That is indeed a good spec machine.
The AMD A10 cpu is the equivelent of the Intel i5-3427U CPU. With a 64bit operating system and the availability of 8GB of RAM, it certainly isn't going to be slow.

If it appears to be running a bit hotter, it may have some dust build up inside. Are you able to blow it out with some compressed air? Nothing to viscious, just enough to remove any dust build up.(y)
 
Good idea. Just could someone remind me how to find out how much RAM the motherboard will support?

The laptop manufacturers web site should have this information for your particular model.

Bare in mind that windows automatically allocates system RAM to integrated GPUs.
You would need to be doing some serious, graphic intensive work to start running so low that system performance degraded.
It is possible to get away with just 2GB of vRAM with Adobe Premiere Pro, I would think that your system is ok in terms of memory.
 

ladycrofter

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
The laptop manufacturers web site should have this information for your particular model.

Bare in mind that windows automatically allocates system RAM to integrated GPUs.
You would need to be doing some serious, graphic intensive work to start running so low that system performance degraded.
It is possible to get away with just 2GB of vRAM with Adobe Premiere Pro, I would think that your system is ok in terms of memory.


Okay thanks. Things have moved on quite a bit since I built my own desktop back in the year dot. After that you could get a good variety of off- the-shelf stuff so never really had the need to pay attention and keep up with things.
 

wilber

Member
Location
wales
I don't game (unless they bring in a Win10 version of Quake:rolleyes: showing my age now).

psssstt there is....

https://www.quakelive.com/

with regards to you Laptop issues's, 8GB should be fine, I would do a few things. Firstly i would buy an SSD hard drive and replace the one you have in the laptop, the difference is night and day. Check the power options and what they are set too, manufacturers normally have their own set on laptops to preserve battery life (this degrades performance in certain ways), however 90% of the people i know who use laptops, use them plugged in. Set the power options, to high power.
 

ladycrofter

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
psssstt there is....

https://www.quakelive.com/

with regards to you Laptop issues's, 8GB should be fine, I would do a few things. Firstly i would buy an SSD hard drive and replace the one you have in the laptop, the difference is night and day. Check the power options and what they are set too, manufacturers normally have their own set on laptops to preserve battery life (this degrades performance in certain ways), however 90% of the people i know who use laptops, use them plugged in. Set the power options, to high power.


Thanks, I have just put it in the office as a plugged in computer, still awaiting the Scottish government's voucher so we can get satellite broadband. (Will probably die of old age first.)

QUAKE OMG!!!!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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

  • 1,290
  • 1
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/
Top