Laptop advice

[JDR13]

I'm looking at getting a new laptop. Anything I should avoid? I've never been a big laptop guy and probably never will be, but I need something for when I travel. I won't be doing much, if any, gaming on it. It'll mostly be for work stuff and watching movies.

What brands would you recommend? My last laptop was an Asus which was slow as hell (despite having an i7) and preloaded with a bunch of bloatware. The HD died at about the 4 year mark despite me barely using the thing, so I doubt I'd go with them again.

 

[skinnychicken]

Notebookcheck.net is a good resource for reviews and research. Unfortunately, it seems every brand has good and bad models. Probably best to set a budget and go from there. If it's for work and travel, something like a 14" with a good battery life would be my priority. I personally would go with Intel to have Thunderbolt connectivity if that's important.

And there's always the Macbook Air option.

Hope this helps a little, there's just so many choices.

 

[JDR13]

Definitely no Macbooks. I'm a PC guy 100%

I'm not very familiar with Thunderbolt. It's only available with Intel mobos?

 

[skinnychicken]

Definitely no Macbooks. I'm a PC guy 100%

I'm not very familiar with Thunderbolt. It's only available with Intel mobos?

I'm in agreement with you on Macbooks, just mentioned as a possibility because some people swear by them and they have really good battery life.

The Thunderbolt standard/interface is technically only on Intel platforms (and Mac). It gets overly complicated and I wouldn't worry too much about it. In general, it helps with external connectivity and maybe some future-proofing. As long as the laptop has fairly modern USB-C ports and such you should be fine.

Laptop shopping/research can become such a huge rabbit-hole. (ask me how I know)

 

[Stingray]

Thunderbolt is usually used for advanced docks. You can run PCIe over Thunderbolt, so the docks can have the same sort of hardware inside of them that you might normally install as an expansion card on a desktop PC. You can even do an external video card over Thunderbolt.

If you don't care about gaming, I'd look at the Dell XPS 13. Current model would be the XPS 13 9315, or the XPS 13 9320 if you don't mind its funky top keyboard row. It's generally been considered the best all-around Windows laptop for most of the last decade or so.

 

[Redglyph]

I'm looking at getting a new laptop. Anything I should avoid? I've never been a big laptop guy and probably never will be, but I need something for when I travel. I won't be doing much, if any, gaming on it. It'll mostly be for work stuff and watching movies.

What brands would you recommend? My last laptop was an Asus which was slow as hell (despite having an i7) and preloaded with a bunch of bloatware. The HD died at about the 4 year mark despite me barely using the thing, so I doubt I'd go with them again.

I'm usually happy with Dell Latitude series, I've bought a 5510 2 years ago and it's powerful enough without being noisy, and it's robust. At work we only buy Dell Latitude too.

There were issues with the order back then (something bugged with their portal for the payment), and the contact with the support was so slow that I ordered a Lenovo Thinkbook 15 instead. Then finally the Dell order went through and I got to compare both. The Lenovo wasn't bad but it was definitely not the same level and quite noisy, far from their good quality a few years back so I returned it and kept the Dell. Besides the support is much worse and it's Chinese. I personally wouldn't recommend Lenovo but I've heard people who were still happy with that these days (for gaming, maybe another series).

 

[Ripper]

I have one of those Dell XPS 13s. You do pay a premium for the 'Ultrabook' format, but since I had a Macbook Air years ago, I don't want to go back lugging a paving slab around. Dell also supports Linux well, and you can buy them with Linux installed.

 

[Redglyph]

Dell also supports Linux well, and you can buy them with Linux installed.

You're lucky, here it's impossible not to buy the Windows licence with Dell, small country and all that. But they run perfectly well with Linux indeed.

 

[Ripper]

Yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about that - the first thing I do is install a new distro anyway. It's just nice that they do put the effort into the driver support and so on, so things tend to go very smoothly.

 

[JDR13]

Those Dell XPS's do look nice, but you're not kidding about the premium. I'm not sure I need to spend that much for what I'll be using it for. Also, for those prices, I'd at least expect a bigger screen.

 

[Redglyph]

That's why I prefer the Latitude. And there's the connectivity too, you won't find an Ethernet connector on XPS laptops, for example, and barely one USB connector (probably shared with something else), so you'll need a hub of some kind. Not a problem if you're only using WiFi and the mousepad.

It's probably a good idea to check the battery capacity too, when I was looking for a laptop, the Latitude could last much longer (but it's slightly bigger).

 

[Stingray]

Latitude pricing is pretty terrible if you don’t have a Dell business account. Unless that’s changed recently.

There is an XPS 15 if you want a bigger screen and it’s pretty good as well, but not as legendary as the XPS 13.

 

[Gorath]

Last notebook I purchased was a used Lenovo Thinkpad with a very small screen. 13" or so. Cheap, but professional grade product. Perfect flexibility in components, repairs routinely possible. It was the right choice for me. I wanted something easy to carry, silent and "fast enough" for my office work. When I'm at home I plug it into a 27" TFT. It even has a small 2nd battery, which is extremely useful because I don't have to power down when I want to take out the main battery and use a power cord. I couldn't refuse to buy it for 200€ incl. a Win10 license and shipping.

TL;DR:
Think carefully about your needs. Decide for professional or consumer grade product.

Fast notebooks are a difficult topic. Bad cooling is a wide spread problem.

 

[Stingray]

Yeah, I rarely run across anyone who wants a laptop with a larger screen than the XPS 13 nowadays. Occasionally they think they do, but once they use a laptop like an XPS 13, they change their mind after realizing that size/weight is actually far more important than a couple inches of extra screen. Everyone attaches them to a dock with external monitors anyway, when at home or work.

If you plan on using the laptop a lot while not at home or work, then the calculations could be different, but most people who travel a lot want the smallest/lightest laptop possible too, because they have to carry it around so much.

 

[Redglyph]

The XPS are actually more expensive, at least when comparing 15" laptops. Not the same CPU so maybe that's partly why, and the one in the XPS is consuming much more (with a lower battery capacity...). It's probably better if you need to do intensive tasks and if you don't need to stay on battery for a long time. Though I find the Latitude perfectly adequate for a range of development tasks.

It's personal but I feel that 13" is either uncomfortable for my eyes with tiny fonts, or it's too small to display what I need. If you have a very good sight though, it's unimportant - as long as it lasts. I believe there's no keypad either on those 13", but in the US you have QWERTY keyboards so it probably doesn't matter as much.

 

[Stingray]

The 15" equivalents (ie: XPS 15 and its brother the Precision 5570) don't have a numeric keypad either, those were done away with a while back.

 

[Carnifex]

I had a laptop some years back yet I don't think I'd ever go back to that model. Always having to worry about cooling and such, maybe that's different these days yet I find a desktop totally covers my needs.

 

[notdart]

I had a laptop some years back yet I don't think I'd ever go back to that model. Always having to worry about cooling and such, maybe that's different these days yet I find a desktop totally covers my needs.

There are a wide variance here from high end gaming laptops that are over clocked with high end gpu and run fairly hot and yes cooling can be a problem with some of them; to run of the mill laptops that never get warm. The best way is to pick a type you want - wait till it been out for 6 months and check reviews. dell laptops are pretty awesome in terms of being light weight and well made with acceptable battery life; but there are alternatives from the usual vendors. I'd stick with a mainstream vendor - oh heck - esp without extra gpu i'd just go dell - i suppose there are 2 or 3 other vendors with pretty good laptops but i can't recall the one i was thinking of and the differences between them tend to be minor.