Buying a new laptop

Sangoma

Sangoma

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Steve, Coventry, England
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Yes
Is easy if you want to spend £3500 :)

But what if you dont really want to spend much more than £1000?

I will not buy Lenovo, and I would prefer not to buy Toshiba or Dell, so that basically leaves me with HP.

Closese to what I wiuld like is https://www.hp.com/gb-en/shop/product.aspx?id=8A5X5EA&opt=ABU&sel=NTB however the largest HD they offer is 1TB, which means either external drives, or another +-£80 for a 2TB drive, and possibly invalidating the warranty fitting it..

Speed of the processor (for photo editing) is almost identical to the M2, that means about 3 times as fast as my current laptop.

My current laptop has 3X1TB drives installed, and I was planning to upgrade that to either 5TB or 9TB (or possibly 7TB as I have an idea I won't be able to fit a 15mm drive in the one bay)

That obviously won't make it any faster, just reduce the time taken accessing the NAS boxes, which over wifi is not very fast.

It does mean that with a new laptop I am going to need a new 4 or 6 TB portable drive.

The more I look, the more I feel like staying with what I have!


Any brilliant suggestions? :)
 
Dell XPS served me very well with the same laptop for years before moving to an iMac.
I added SSD's & RAM and 2 x external HD's ... it's in a cabinet drawer now but still works fine!
 
gramps said:
Dell XPS served me very well with the same laptop for years before moving to an iMac.
I added SSD's & RAM and 2 x external HD's ... it's in a cabinet drawer now but still works fine!
Click to expand...
Maybe I should look at Dell.
I didn't because I had attrocius service from then many years ago when we used a lot of their mahines, and I have an i7 Dell laptop I don't use.
 
I got a 17" screen and ssd drive one from PC Specialist during lockdown. It was £852 at the time. It's lasted over two years now but did need a new AC adapter recently as the cable out of it frayed.
 
I'm still using my old HP spectre i7 (11th gen) 13.5" as my little, take with me laptop. Brought it ages ago for a uni course and never had an issue with it. Plugs into my MSI gaming screen and works effortlessly with LR and PS / Affinity. Only has 16gb RAM. Still not upgraded to W11 yet lol (I got a 16" Asus Zenbook duo thingy last year as main laptop).

No issues with HP here
 
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woof woof said:
I got a 17" screen and ssd drive one from PC Specialist during lockdown. It was £852 at the time. It's lasted over two years now but did need a new AC adapter recently as the cable out of it frayed.
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Thanks, just had a look there and it comes out slightly more than the HP but with a slower processor
 
Adamcski said:
I'm still using my old HP spectre i7 (11th gen) 13.5" as my little, take with me laptop. Brought it ages ago for a uni course and never had an issue with it. Plugs into my MSI gaming screen and works effortlessly with LR and PS / Affinity. Only has 16gb RAM. Still not upgraded to W11 yet lol (I got a 16" Asus Zenbook duo thingy last year as main laptop).

No issues with HP here
Click to expand...
I have never had issues with HP, it was all I would buy at work for the last few years. Wife has HP, youngest son has HP, I have two HP laptops and two HP SFF desktops, and there are a couple of other laptops around that still work fine, just the lack of the latest DirectX compatibility stopped things working properly
 
It's a difficult choice when it's your own money and reliability. My favourite laptop has been a Dell XPS, even though the battery and keyboard are weak points (new battery and keyboard needed every 3.5 years roughly). I've owned or used business Apple, Lenovo, HP, Toshiba and Sony in addition to the Dell. HP always seemed a bit fragile.

If I had a grand to spend then I'd look for a Dell outlet XPS.
 
Whats wrong with your current machine?

Do you use the laptop on your lap or in fixed places around your home?

Your set up (3 1TB drives) in a laptop I’ve never seen before and quite unusual to me

Id start from what is the end goal and work backwards

You could get some performance increases with other upgrades (powerline adapters, mesh networks etc for less money)

There isnt really any value cost wise for me anyway in high capacity laptops unless there is a stong reason to do so
 
Hi
For what it is worth I have for the past twenty years had my PC's built by PC Specialist, I create my own specs in accordance with my needs, far less today now that I am retired, but I have never had a problem with them, and as far as help and support is concerned they are absolutely first class, as a newbie to the forum I am afraid that I am as yet unable to post a link, but if you Google PC Specialist their site will come up, it may also be of interest to look at the PC Specialist forum too, always a helpful visit as you may find some questions are relevant to what you are looking for.
 
ancient_mariner said:
It's a difficult choice when it's your own money and reliability. My favourite laptop has been a Dell XPS, even though the battery and keyboard are weak points (new battery and keyboard needed every 3.5 years roughly). I've owned or used business Apple, Lenovo, HP, Toshiba and Sony in addition to the Dell. HP always seemed a bit fragile.

If I had a grand to spend then I'd look for a Dell outlet XPS.
Click to expand...
I am going to look at them and see what they have to offer.
The only "fragile" ones I have found were the Toshiba from about 2003 on, the power sockets used to break off the main board in a classroom environment.
 
acrobatic_Citron said:
Whats wrong with your current machine?

Do you use the laptop on your lap or in fixed places around your home?

Your set up (3 1TB drives) in a laptop I’ve never seen before and quite unusual to me

Id start from what is the end goal and work backwards

You could get some performance increases with other upgrades (powerline adapters, mesh networks etc for less money)

There isnt really any value cost wise for me anyway in high capacity laptops unless there is a stong reason to do so
Click to expand...

The only problem with the current machine is speed, and perhaps a better bigger screen would be nice.

Yes there are things I could do to speed up the connection to the NAS boxes.

3 hard drives may be unusual, and would not be possible on the new slimline laptops, but the main problem to adding hard drives to laptops in the past has been the typical lack of knowledge from the clowns in retail outlets.

High capacity to me greatly simplifies back up. I sync to a USB drive, then from there to a media PC with 4TB USB drives, then to two NAS boxes and to a HP mini server with raid.
Although the syncing can take time, the actual time I have to spend on the process is very little.
 
I recently scored a decent deal on a refurbished Dell 15 XPS. Previously an Asus ROG which suffered a screen failure after 3 years and ASUS weren't helpful or friendly in helping me get it repaired. If I didn't need software that can't run on Macs, I'd have gone back to Apple.
 
andrewc said:
I recently scored a decent deal on a refurbished Dell 15 XPS. Previously an Asus ROG which suffered a screen failure after 3 years and ASUS weren't helpful or friendly in helping me get it repaired. If I didn't need software that can't run on Macs, I'd have gone back to Apple.
Click to expand...
Strange.
When my daughter was studying at uni, she wanted a new laptop with a 17" screen.
Bought an Asus, and the screen was faulty, sent it back and got a replacement. Also faulty screen. Got it replaced again.
Third one the screen to my mind is rubbish, but it has kept working.
In her final year and since, she has used an ipad pro, on nher second one now, and it does all she wants (except being able to copy data off)
 
When I bought my XPS I also bought a 3 year next business day on-site warranty because it was a work machine. It was wonderful, after my previous experience with a MacBook (£300 apple care was rtb only, where a sarky 'genius' would tell me that they would have to charge me £69 if they couldn't find a fault after I demonstrated the fault in the store. And the machine was away for a WEEK!). The guy just turned up next business day, confirmed what the problem was, fixed it with parts he brought (keyboard replacement) and was really nice about the work.

My budget was £600 this time round, or I'd have bought another XPS.
 
Mehal said:
Hi
For what it is worth I have for the past twenty years had my PC's built by PC Specialist, I create my own specs in accordance with my needs, far less today now that I am retired, but I have never had a problem with them, and as far as help and support is concerned they are absolutely first class, as a newbie to the forum I am afraid that I am as yet unable to post a link, but if you Google PC Specialist their site will come up, it may also be of interest to look at the PC Specialist forum too, always a helpful visit as you may find some questions are relevant to what you are looking for.
Click to expand...

Hello and welcome Michael.

I have a 17" laptop from PC specialist. It does everything I want with the only issues being that the cable coming out of the AC adapter frayed and a few of the letters on the keyboard are worn. They are very helpful though.
 
Just looked at the XPS. Nearly double the price of the same spec HP !
 
I can't speak for Dell now. For the simple fact that my XPS dates back to 2011, and is still going strong. So, I'd recommend them for their longevity, if nothing else. :D
 
Sangoma said:
It's in the first post

Click to expand...

Ah, in the context it seemed that you were suggesting you'd posted a link to the Dell outlet.

The HP had good 'headline' bits, 13th gen i7, 32GB/1TB, but the RAM is DDR4 instead of DDR5, no Gen is given for the 1TB NVME in the HP (Gen 3?) but the Dell is Gen 4, Graphics HP 2GB MX550 vs 8GB RTX4060, 1080P 300nits screen vs 3840X2400 500nits touch screen, HP41WHr battery vs Dell 97WHr battery. And then there's the case design and materials.

So sure, the dell costs twice as much, but it's much higher spec'd in all but the headline parts which is probably why we're still using these things when they're 10 years old.

£2196 https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdfb1&l=en&s=dfb&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw/PR7UdZDUdV3csnS4meQeYJ50vwnve5H6Tf4h0nl6HV5MoL1A7g5SyS4ihkB/CWx2g6TdmkCU9/55J79DoAgL/6/Z0ucDfnRAhBWIQzMuafHwvf0pQjISMYUsPKWHVc+qPLhmGmIip0JSKzp8XE0qYhPWMrFGDvOuSpoYUYnSRPKG2CkXpUVisR1Oija9bN4ILW2KaWIJnRnplTl8cZGuTEBV0yIOuKHaKSNvacRYdfBLit5P6tknhh2z12Q=

If the raw horsepower of the HP does what you need and you don't mind a mediocre screen, small battery and weak graphics processor then it represents EXTREMELY good value by comparison.
 
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I'm going to be one of the annoying ones, get the M1 mac air or wait for the M2 and it hopefully will be a grand (without factchecking I would assume its still best £1000 laptop avaible for power vs speed etc), then look at optimising your backup nas workflow, I think from what you have said, can still achieve what you currently have without the high capacity laptop, effectively move a backup from the local machine to another cluster - overnight jobs and the command line will automate it all

Bon chance!
 
acrobatic_Citron said:
I'm going to be one of the annoying ones, get the M1 mac air or wait for the M2 and it hopefully will be a grand (without factchecking I would assume its still best £1000 laptop avaible for power vs speed etc), then look at optimising your backup nas workflow, I think from what you have said, can still achieve what you currently have without the high capacity laptop, effectively move a backup from the local machine to another cluster - overnight jobs and the command line will automate it all

Bon chance!
Click to expand...

But it's still a Mac and therefore there is no upgrade path, plus there's no 17" screen.
 
I bought THIS yesterday, arrived today. Haven't fully set it up yet but it seems fine to me -- £699. First thing I do is reset a PC and copy new Windows down and that gets rid of all the bloatware that normally comes with a PC. In fairness to Dell, the only software it came with is McAfee anti-virus as I subscribe to Malwarebytes for mine but nevertheless, I am still resetting the PC to a clean start.
 
acrobatic_Citron said:
I'm going to be one of the annoying ones, get the M1 mac air or wait for the M2 and it hopefully will be a grand (without factchecking I would assume its still best £1000 laptop avaible for power vs speed etc), then look at optimising your backup nas workflow, I think from what you have said, can still achieve what you currently have without the high capacity laptop, effectively move a backup from the local machine to another cluster - overnight jobs and the command line will automate it all

Bon chance!
Click to expand...
But why do I want to optimise something that is so little effort already?

It is not the backing up that creates any issue.
 
Sangoma said:
It is not the backing up that creates any issue.
Click to expand...

Maybe I’ve misunderstood but from what I’ve read to get the best speed improvement (primary goal) for the budget you have the mac air m1 or more is the way to go but will have to forgo the large drives on the laptop so I thought you could move them to somewhere else along the chain.

I bow out of this now and wish you the best in your search!
 
The OP has already got a PC laptop
also was given a macbook
and has a M3 Mac mini

I cannot understand why he wants something else, seems to be throwing money away.
 
acrobatic_Citron said:
Maybe I’ve misunderstood but from what I’ve read to get the best speed improvement (primary goal) for the budget you have the mac air m1 or more is the way to go but will have to forgo the large drives on the laptop so I thought you could move them to somewhere else along the chain.

I bow out of this now and wish you the best in your search!
Click to expand...
It is the access to the data when using it that is a possible issue, not the backing up.
 
Nikon f1.8 said:
The OP has already got a PC laptop
also was given a macbook
and has a M3 Mac mini

I cannot understand why he wants something else, seems to be throwing money away.
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Yes, I have a windows laptop, I would like better performance.
Yes, I bought a macbook pro from my son as he bought an 16" M3max to replace it. My daughter now has the macbook pro :)
M3 mac mini? I must have lost that one, don't even remember having one!

Throwing money away??? You don't seem to have read my posts :)
 
woof woof said:
I got a 17" screen and ssd drive one from PC Specialist during lockdown. It was £852 at the time. It's lasted over two years now but did need a new AC adapter recently as the cable out of it frayed.
Click to expand...


Spent a good few hours this morning making detailed comparison, and I am now seeing the PCspecialist option as being the best.

Reasons are that I have a better choice of CPU, memory and SSDs
Their laptops also seem to be more configurable, and don't have soldered in memory or CPUs

Just want to read some reviews now, as I haven't heard of the make before. (doesn't mean much, I have been out of it for 5 years now :) )
 
Sangoma said:
Spent a good few hours this morning making detailed comparison, and I am now seeing the PCspecialist option as being the best.

Reasons are that I have a better choice of CPU, memory and SSDs
Their laptops also seem to be more configurable, and don't have soldered in memory or CPUs

Just want to read some reviews now, as I haven't heard of the make before. (doesn't mean much, I have been out of it for 5 years now :) )
Click to expand...

Good call with PC Specialist. Not one I've heard of before, but they are now on my radar.
 
Back again

I have been following the thread since I made my comments regarding the option of PC Specialist as a means of moving forward, it may help if I offer you my means of using my highly specced laptop, which I have now owned for almost 18 months since I chose to upgrade from desktop PC's to a laptop.
My main interests besides photography is historical research and to this end I have a vast archive of over 2TB, I have my laptop sitting on my desktop on a stand, and this connected to an elevated iiyama 28 inch monitor and I use a separate cherry keyboard. My laptop’s internal 500GB SSD drive only holds my system file (Windows 11) and other programmes, I have 2 external 4TB Seagate HDD, these are where all my photographs and historical archive are stored, the 2 HDD are mirrored using a programme I have used for years called SYNCHBACK, this is available as a free download, though I use the SE paid for version (my choice), I have used this programme for years and never had any problems whatever, all this equipment is connected via an ANKER 8 Port USB hub, the 2 HDD's are synchronised to mirror one another daily, this can be set up in SYNCHBACK to work automatically on an hourly, daily, weekly or even monthly basis. Having once many year ago used a NAS system, and having suffered a catastrophic failure, is the reason that I moved to the option for saving my files that I now use, of course this is entirely what suits my way of working and also my needs, but may not be ideal for others who read this, and may I please add that I am in no way attempting to sway anyone, but just offering an insight into my way of doing things, finally I have a Samsung 4TB SSD that once a month I mirror from my up to date SEAGATE HDD, and this is kept away from my Laptop set up in safe place in another part of my house.
 
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