Need a "new" laptop

[Brons2]

The original Space Shuttle computers were 32 bit machines running about 1/2 million instructions per second with KB of RAM memory, later upgraded to about 1MB and doubling the speed - your old laptop is far faster, with more RAM and is more than capable of launching the Space Shuttle!

the biggest issue I've found with older computers, besides Win11 requiring a TPM, is the mechanical hard drives. I have an 18 year old desktop with an Intel E2200 and it was almost unusable with the traditional hard drive, works fine with an SSD for web surfing and other general Internet use.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

Dell Refurbished. I've bought 3 here.

https://www.dellrefurbished.com/category/store-nb-std/laptops/standard-laptops/1.html

The A condition computers look brand new. Good luck installing another browser. Microsoft wants owners to use their Edge browser and has installed software to defeat almost any attempt to install another browser. Go for it cowboy.

https://www.dellrefurbished.com/category/store-nb-std/laptops/standard-laptops/1.html

 

[mrsilv04]

The A condition computers look brand new. Good luck installing another browser. Microsoft wants owners to use their Edge browser and has installed software to defeat almost any attempt to install another browser. Go for it cowboy.

The last two "A" condition laptops that I bought had to be new, or had only been used very little. I wonder if some of them are laptops that had some sort of issue after assembly or failed testing and had to be repaired... and then are sold as refurbished.

I've installed both Chrome and Firefox on all three laptops with no issue at all. I've never used Edge, never will. When they killed off IE, they lost me forever.

 

[PandaBear]

I always look on BestBuy and see what is on sale. Previously I have bought a Lenovo 17" i3 laptop for mom and an HP Ryzen desktop for dad. Both work well for a good deal (it was just $450 back then for the desktop and $300 for the laptop). I always just buy the more recent model with less RAM (1 empty dimm slot so I can add more later), smallish SSD and keep my videos on external HDD or SSD, and a lower clock fewer core CPU.

Reason being that I likely can get a more recent CPU with newer instruction set (most CPU obsolete due to instruction set or generation, security etc, than being too slow these days) for the same price than a business retired or refurb, and I can typically buy a stick of ram at much cheaper price than with the computer when new. I think last time I got an identical matching stick on ebay from someone who upgrade his NEW computer and put his old one up for $20 shipped. $80 savings instantly. So far the way I buy them most of them actually stay the same price for 1 year after I buy them new, and during covid my dad's machine actually went up in value.

I don't do Mac. I don't like them gouging on ram price and I don't like them soldering everything to the board and not letting me upgrade anything. Good for you if you like them, but that's a deal breaker to me.

 

[PandaBear]

The A condition computers look brand new. Good luck installing another browser. Microsoft wants owners to use their Edge browser and has installed software to defeat almost any attempt to install another browser. Go for it cowboy.

I have always been able to install Chrome unless the company IT blocked it (ours do). BTW Edge is not that bad to be honest. I have been forced to use it at work for 2 years and so far so good.

 

[Brons2]

The A condition computers look brand new. Good luck installing another browser. Microsoft wants owners to use their Edge browser and has installed software to defeat almost any attempt to install another browser. Go for it cowboy.

This is 100% not true. You can install other browsers as easily as ever. Turn off S mode and you will be able to install apps outside of the Microsoft Store.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-4f56d9be-99ec-6983-119f-031bfb28a307

 

[Brons2]

I always look on BestBuy and see what is on sale. Previously I have bought a Lenovo 17" i3 laptop for mom and an HP Ryzen desktop for dad. Both work well for a good deal (it was just $450 back then for the desktop and $300 for the laptop). I always just buy the more recent model with less RAM (1 empty dimm slot so I can add more later), smallish SSD and keep my videos on external HDD or SSD, and a lower clock fewer core CPU.

Reason being that I likely can get a more recent CPU with newer instruction set (most CPU obsolete due to instruction set or generation, security etc, than being too slow these days) for the same price than a business retired or refurb, and I can typically buy a stick of ram at much cheaper price than with the computer when new. I think last time I got an identical matching stick on ebay from someone who upgrade his NEW computer and put his old one up for $20 shipped. $80 savings instantly. So far the way I buy them most of them actually stay the same price for 1 year after I buy them new, and during covid my dad's machine actually went up in value.

I don't do Mac. I don't like them gouging on ram price and I don't like them soldering everything to the board and not letting me upgrade anything. Good for you if you like them, but that's a deal breaker to me.

I haven't been super thrilled with the Ryzens for battery usage, my wife's laptop sucks down the juice bigtime. Maybe the newer ones are better, hers is about 3 years old. I will give it credit for one thing, it is a lot faster than my i3 laptop.

Intel is better, but what I really want for long battery life is one of the Snapdragon X Elite ARM processors. Unfortunately any Windows laptop that features the Snapdragon X Elite seems to be really expensive. I've never spent more than $500 for a personal laptop, and my current 15.6 i3, I spent $249 for.

Now on the other hand, I don't know what my work laptop cost but it had to be pretty expensive. 10 core i7, 64GB RAM, 2K monitor with touchscreen, discreet Nvidia graphics, 2TB SSD, yada yada. The battery life is...not great, but, I use it plugged in 95% of the time. Runs 2-3 VMs no problem.

 

[PandaBear]

I haven't been super thrilled with the Ryzens for battery usage, my wife's laptop sucks down the juice bigtime. Maybe the newer ones are better, hers is about 3 years old. I will give it credit for one thing, it is a lot faster than my i3 laptop.

Intel is better, but what I really want for long battery life is one of the Snapdragon X Elite ARM processors. Unfortunately any Windows laptop that features the Snapdragon X Elite seems to be really expensive. I've never spent more than $500 for a personal laptop, and my current 15.6 i3, I spent $249 for.

Now on the other hand, I don't know what my work laptop cost but it had to be pretty expensive. 10 core i7, 64GB RAM, 2K monitor with touchscreen, discreet Nvidia graphics, 2TB SSD, yada yada. The battery life is...not great, but, I use it plugged in 95% of the time. Runs 2-3 VMs no problem.

Both our laptop and desktop are permanent plug in. It was a laptop to save space only and that's why we were getting 17". I don't think we would go ARM laptop because of backward compatibility (need to run Office 2007 they were used to), otherwise a Chromebook would be enough for them.

Work laptop? We are using 11th gen i7, but only 16GB ram. I don't think we need that much processing power but they get it because of standardization. I would keep this laptop forever because we need the intel network port. We are running some custom stuff that only support Intel NIC and the only alternative would be an external GPU enclosure to put an Intel PCIe NIC in there that cost $400 total and bulky. We have been fighting IT to not mess around "upgrading" our stuff. Will hold out for as long as we can.