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**anton pulisov** · 25-12-2015, 22:00

Laptop buying advice required

Best to look into a laptop marketed at business users. None of the graphics/gaming razzmatazz, no shiny bits, but generally good processor, memory and screen, as well a keyboard made for typing.

Try and get one without tacked on number keypad because it makes the laptop too bulky. You can hook the laptop up to your external screen and keyboard for heavy duty work anyway.

Lenovo U series might be worth a look.

SSD hard drive is highly recommend. Makes e erything ten times faster.

**WOM** · 26-12-2015, 13:26

Laptop buying advice required

Sometimes the 'v' key sticks, though. There's a recall on it.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 26-12-2015, 20:36

Laptop buying advice required

Almost bought an Asus Zenbook but couldn't bring myself to drop 550 notes, SSD or not. So, still looking.

**Duncan Gardner** · 27-12-2015, 13:53

Laptop buying advice required

I've got an Asus Eeebook. �140 at the depressing PC World. Admittedly there isn't quite enough storage for my library of plodding 70s dad rock and embarrassing pictures of big Laugherty.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 27-12-2015, 14:41

Laptop buying advice required

This seems decent for the money, does anyone have any experience with Asus?

**anton pulisov** · 27-12-2015, 16:23

Laptop buying advice required

Seems like good spec but is perhaps needlessly huge for a laptop. You should carry it around in the shop or test out using it on your lap... if they will let you.

Perhaps better to go for slightly lower spec but in a more compact format.

This looks like a good piece of kit if you can live with a 128GB hard drive (which I can, but not everybody can):

http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-u31-...701?colour=Red

Upside is that it is an SSD hard drive, which is like the difference between night and day when it comes to computer speed.

**Ginger Yellow** · 28-12-2015, 00:42

Laptop buying advice required

i7 is totally unnecessary too. i5 is fine for all but the most CPU intensive purposes, and you can probably get away with an i3 if you're going budget laptop.

**Femme Folle** · 28-12-2015, 00:58

Laptop buying advice required

I'm on an ASUS X553M laptop right now and I also have an ASUS desktop. They're good value for money computers.

**anton pulisov** · 28-12-2015, 01:36

Laptop buying advice required

What Ginger Yellow says.

I've found that an SSD hard drive is the most important thing for snappy speed in everyday use. An i7 chip is only going to help you if you are doing serious number crunching like running model simulations for weather predictions or something like that.

**Stumpy Pepys** · 28-12-2015, 20:59

Laptop buying advice required

It's kind of pointless asking if any PC brand is any good, as all manufacturers make computers at all price points. Generally you get what you pay for; if you want something decent, be prepared to pay at least �600.

Depends what you need as well. At work, I have a Dell i7 ultrabook, with SSD and a very high-resolution screen, as I do desktop publishing and video editing.

At home, I use a Chromebox, because it's quick, secure and boots up in five seconds. Go figure.

**Stumpy Pepys** · 28-12-2015, 21:06

Laptop buying advice required

Also the days of ever-expanding hard-drives are over. Which is why you're now getting the option of 256 and 512 GB SSDs, when previously you got 512 GB HDDs.

Storage is moving to NAS drives or the cloud. Or, in the case of music, to streaming services.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 28-12-2015, 21:56

Laptop buying advice required

Anyway. I got the Asus and so far.....? It's pretty decent. Yeah, it's way above what I actually need, but I have no complaints. Yet.

**anton pulisov** · 29-12-2015, 13:54

Laptop buying advice required

Congratulations, I'm sure it will make a great paperweight.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 29-12-2015, 14:02

Laptop buying advice required

Heh. It's fine. For what I'm going to use it for, it will do, and it's not going to be carried anywhere because I have far more portable options available.

It's pretty much a desktop replacement, albeit a bit friendlier to our current arrangements (the spare room is very much TLMG's office space, as she works from home a lot).

Undoubtedly the buyer's remorse will come, but for the meantime I'm pretty fine with it.

**anton pulisov** · 29-12-2015, 14:44

Laptop buying advice required

With the specs it has it should be a well future-proofed paperweight

**Toby Gymshorts** · 29-12-2015, 14:48

Laptop buying advice required

You can't see me, but rest assured I'm flicking the V's at my monitor right now.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 09-01-2016, 19:10

Laptop buying advice required

Anyway. Revisiting this thread for some advice.

The HD in my old Win XP desktop has a huge amount of music on it which I'd like to transfer across to the new laptop. Is there a simple way of doing this, perhaps with a hard drive caddy?

Cheers in advance, etc.

**Ginger Yellow** · 09-01-2016, 19:21

Laptop buying advice required

Easiest way would be just to connect both computers to the network, preferably via ethernet, and copy them across.

But, yes, a drive caddy would work.You can get a decent one for about �25.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 09-01-2016, 19:31

Laptop buying advice required

Cheers, GY.

**Ginger Yellow** · 09-01-2016, 20:20

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If you do go the drive caddy route, make sure it's USB 3. Transfer speeds are much faster than 2.

**Toby Gymshorts** · 09-01-2016, 20:48

Laptop buying advice required

Will do, ta muchly.

**beak** · 03-06-2016, 17:51

Laptop buying advice required

Reviving this one for a blast at Asus: my previous one of theirs lasted the guts of five years' heavy use, my new one has something that feels terminal after four months of mostly watching films.

And I just know any sort of repair/replacement process will be a painful experience given I bought it in the UK.

**My Name Is Ian** · 03-06-2016, 19:06

Laptop buying advice required

What's the problem with it, and which OS are you on?

Four months is awfully early for it to be starting to lag. It's possible that it could be a virus of some sort, so running Malwarebytes might be a good place to start.

Windows 8 and 8.1 have excellent options for fixing OS errors, and I can't believe that these would have been dumped for W10.

**beak** · 03-06-2016, 22:44

Laptop buying advice required

Am on Windows 10, but believe it's a hardware issue: some fan somewhere started making an almighty whining a day or so ago, and now the odd thing is freezing it - as I say, have been watching a lot of films lately (down HDMI), so am tentatively thinking the video card might be suffering a bit.

[Edit: As regards malware, I run a tight ship in that regard, check frequently and keep all my shit up to date etc., and haven't had a problem basically ever.]

I've been out all evening drinking beer, smoking dope, and having a wild old time to Bongripper live at the Patronaat in Haarlem, so probably shouldn't be poking about, but as I type the Windows Event Viewer is suggesting a whole bunch of page/checksum errors possibly due to "faulty hardware", so maybe my hard disk is fucked.

What joys. I'm off to bed before it explodes.

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