Laptop Advice for Home Use

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IndyIan

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My primary uses will be:
Browsing
Netflix
Downloading some stuff on Torrents, but not storing TB's
Perhaps some gaming, Iracing sounds neat.

Its going to stay at home 99.9% of the time, so weight and battery life aren't really a factor.

So I think I want:
17" size for the screen and the larger keyboard
1080p resolution
8GB RAM
Something reasonable for graphics, Iracing requires:
NVidia GeForce 2xx series or better, 1GB+ dedicated video memory, AMD 5xxx series or better, 1GB+ dedicated video memory or better
Integrated Intel HD Graphics 4200+ or better, with 8GB of system RAM
So I'll look for that as a minimum.

For hard drives, I think a 128GB SDD will be annoyingly small, but how much slower is a disk drive?
I'm used to a dell latitude i5 32 bit running windows 7, 4GB RAM, 128GB SDD laptop at work, and it seems fine, not fast, and only slows when I've got 50-100MB of pdf's or excel sheets open.

Don't want a touch screen really.

Am I missing anything? wifi speeds? Windows 10 for home is usable?
Any brands to avoid?

The last time I bought a computer was a desktop in 2002 with winXP on it and my wife has had macs which I'm not interested in.

Doable for $1k?
 
I bought a 17" laptop once, found it to be really big and cumbersome. Consider only 15" or so. I strongly prefer standalone PCs for home use. My cell phone can do anything i need to be very portable.
 
Doable for $1k? I hope you're joking!

I spent $1.2k on a 15.6" Fangbook 4 Skyline i7 quad rig, with a GTX 970 GPU, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD + 1TB HDD, wifi-AC, etc. It's not the greatest, but should play most modern games at mid-high settings.

Geforce 200 series is weak sauce by a large margin.

For a grand you can get a really nice rig for your undemanding requirements. Heck, a decent Skylake (w/ integrated GPU, not dedicated) will work well for you. An i5 Skylake dual-core with a nice screen and a 1TB HDD should work well for you. FYI, I've found that 15.6" laptops are more popular than 17.3", so you might want to check one out and determine if it's good enough.
 
For torrent and network storage get yourself a new router with features. My ASUS router I can plugin 2 USB2 drives and access them via the LAN. There is also a BT sevice built in it can manage the torrents and DL to one of the drives. This frees you from having to have a giant disk or leave the system running to DL BT. The ASUS router is probably less than $200

The computer you buy depends on how much money you spend. Last laptop I bought for the wife with good specs was ~$600 i5 at Costco. Another $200 for a smoking SSD and it works great. and every device can access/share the network storage.
 
Be careful with naming generic specs, guys. A Skylake i5 (6th gen) is much more advanced than a Nehalem i5 (1st gen).
 
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Doable for $1k? I hope you're joking!


If my primary uses will be:
Browsing and Email
Netflix(may be)
No gaming, no heavy download of anything

Its going to stay home 98-99% of the time, so weight and battery life(no less than 1 hour) aren't really a factor.

If my specs are:

15" screen
good resolution
2-4GB RAM
Reasonable graphics
For hard drives, I think more than 10GB will be okay so SSD is good ?

What should I expect to pay for it with a reasonable name brand(Dell, Asus and what else ?) ?
 
You can get a 17.3" HP Probook with the following specs:

Quote:
HP ProBook 470 G3 17.3" Notebook - Intel Core i7 (6th Gen) i7-6500U Dual-core (2 Core) 2.50 GHz - Gravity Black
8 GB DDR4 SDRAM RAM - 1 TB HDD - DVD-Writer - Intel HD Graphics 520 DDR4 SDRAM - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (English) upgradable to Windows 10 Pro - 1920 x 1080 16:9 Display - Bluetooth - English (US) Keyboard - IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wireless LAN - Gigabit Ethernet - Front Camera/Webcam - HDMI - 4 x Total USB Ports - 2 x USB 3.0 Ports - Network (RJ-45) - Headphone/Microphone Combo Port - 4-cell - Lithium Ion (Li-Ion)


for just under $1K CDN FWIW. That help?
 
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Doable for $1k? I hope you're joking!


If my primary uses will be:
Browsing and Email
Netflix(may be)
No gaming, no heavy download of anything

Its going to stay home 98-99% of the time, so weight and battery life(no less than 1 hour) aren't really a factor.

If my specs are:

15" screen
good resolution
2-4GB RAM
Reasonable graphics
For hard drives, I think more than 10GB will be okay so SSD is good ?

What should I expect to pay for it with a reasonable name brand(Dell, Asus and what else ?) ?


A few hundred to $500. Keep an eye on sites like dealnews.com and slickdeals.com, as they list deals on various things, including laptops, often. I kept an eye on prices and waited for over a year to get the laptop I have at the price I was willing to pay.

Honestly, you sound like the ideal candidate for a Chromebook.
 
Originally Posted By: CT8
Buy a lower end machine so you can replace it often.


For most people, this is the perfect strategy. Just keep an external hard drive backup, so replacement isn't so painful. For me, a cheap laptop barely cut it initially and became unbearably slow (for productivity and gaming) quickly. After almost 5 years I'd had enough and bought what I should have.

For comparison, my 5 year-old mid-high level PC issue still going strong with only a GPU upgrade, an AC wireless card, and some new storage. I hope it will give me at least a few more years of service before any other repairs/upgrades are needed/warranted.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
You can get a 17.3" HP Probook with the following specs:


978182.jpg


You see how the trackpad sits way over to the left of center ? They don't make a mind altering drug powerful enough to help me deal with that.
crazy2.gif
 
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Originally Posted By: CT8
Buy a lower end machine so you can replace it often.


For most people, this is the perfect strategy. Just keep an external hard drive backup, so replacement isn't so painful. For me, a cheap laptop barely cut it initially and became unbearably slow (for productivity and gaming) quickly. After almost 5 years I'd had enough and bought what I should have.

For comparison, my 5 year-old mid-high level PC issue still going strong with only a GPU upgrade, an AC wireless card, and some new storage. I hope it will give me at least a few more years of service before any other repairs/upgrades are needed/warranted.


Agreed. I have a low end dell from their refurb webpage it was less than $200. Runs windows 10 acceptably on only 4gb ram and a base intel processor, with spinning HDD.

Windows 10 is very efficient and runs decent with less.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
You can get a 17.3" HP Probook with the following specs:

Quote:
HP ProBook 470 G3 17.3" Notebook - Intel Core i7 (6th Gen) i7-6500U Dual-core (2 Core) 2.50 GHz - Gravity Black
8 GB DDR4 SDRAM RAM - 1 TB HDD - DVD-Writer - Intel HD Graphics 520 DDR4 SDRAM - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (English) upgradable to Windows 10 Pro - 1920 x 1080 16:9 Display - Bluetooth - English (US) Keyboard - IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wireless LAN - Gigabit Ethernet - Front Camera/Webcam - HDMI - 4 x Total USB Ports - 2 x USB 3.0 Ports - Network (RJ-45) - Headphone/Microphone Combo Port - 4-cell - Lithium Ion (Li-Ion)


for just under $1K CDN FWIW. That help?

That sounds pretty good, all those specs look decent to you?
Also where are you finding it for under $1k? newegg has i5 versions under $1k, and tiger direct has it for $1080.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
You can get a 17.3" HP Probook with the following specs:

Quote:
HP ProBook 470 G3 17.3" Notebook - Intel Core i7 (6th Gen) i7-6500U Dual-core (2 Core) 2.50 GHz - Gravity Black
8 GB DDR4 SDRAM RAM - 1 TB HDD - DVD-Writer - Intel HD Graphics 520 DDR4 SDRAM - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (English) upgradable to Windows 10 Pro - 1920 x 1080 16:9 Display - Bluetooth - English (US) Keyboard - IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wireless LAN - Gigabit Ethernet - Front Camera/Webcam - HDMI - 4 x Total USB Ports - 2 x USB 3.0 Ports - Network (RJ-45) - Headphone/Microphone Combo Port - 4-cell - Lithium Ion (Li-Ion)


for just under $1K CDN FWIW. That help?

That sounds pretty good, all those specs look decent to you?
Also where are you finding it for under $1k? newegg has i5 versions under $1k, and tiger direct has it for $1080.


Send me a PM bud
smile.gif
 
I'll suggest buying an reconditioned business laptop like Lenovo thinkpad.

Generally more rugged and serviceable than a 'made to throw away' home model.

Corporations rotate hardware not because they don't run the current software, but because they are no longer covered by a warranty.
 
Last edited:
Also nvidia and amd are releasing new graphics chips so you might want to wait for laptops to come with one of the new mobile graphics chips.
 
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