Hello everyone,
Sorry if I am posting in the wrong section but I did not find any other relevant place.
A girl friend of mine needs a new laptop. She just wants to watch Netflix through a browser and work on MS Office and MS Project. I have no idea when it comes to laptops. Can you please suggest a few? I would like it to have 16 GB of RAM and, I assume, a big screen? Dunno...
Thank you!
Well, if she wants the laptop for portability, she might not want a big screen. Personally, I carry a 13" laptop and connect to a 25" 2560x1440 monitor at home.
Wow, that's a difficult call to make without knowing some more details. There are so many things to take into consideration. Here are just a few:
Is portability important to you?
Is battery life important if you are going to be away from AC power for long periods?
What price range do you have in mind?
How high a quality screen do you need and have your heart set on something high end like a 4k display?
Is expansion important for hooking up a lot of peripherals, external monitors, TV, etc.?
The other thing is that yu are going to find die hard brand loyalists - some will swear by ASUS, others HP, others Dell, etc.
The best I can really do is suggest some practical things to do like these:
1) Determine a budget and then start familiaring yourself with what is generally available in that range.
2) Once you determine a general feature set, start comparing specific machines to compare features and see if anyone has an especially good deal.
3) Find someplace where you can actually try out a machine. You might be able to least take a cursory look at some systems in a brick and mortar store. I always find this very important because small things can make a difference. Some examples:
You might buy a laptop noting that one of the features it has is a backlit keyboard. But the model you are looking at only allows the keyboard to stay lit 10 seconds at a time (which would drive some people nuts).
Maybe the keyboard feels like garbage.
Does the screen look good?
Are the fans crazy loud?
Does the unit feel solid, have creaks or groans when flexed, etc.
etc.
4) Once you've narrowed your selection down to a few models start looking at reviews. Remember, that even the best systems will have some negative reviews, but look for general consenus, known hot issues, etc.
5) Visit the web site of the manufacturer. Look for any product advisories or alerts that could hint at problems you don't want to deal with.
6) While on the web site take note of how easy or difficult it is to find things. Are drivers readily available and easy to access?
7) If the manufacturer has a support forum, go there and look for any known issues with the model you are looking at.
8) Is tech support important to you? You can find reviews and videos (YouTube) where people call computer manufacturers to test their tech support. If support is important to you, that might be something to consider.
Basically, my suggestion would be to do your research. There is areason that so many different models exist: Every user has their own perception of what they want, and how much they are willing to spend. If one size were to fit all then there would be no need for so many different models.
I'm sure that there is more that could be taken into account, that's just a few things that spring to mind immediately.
Hi guys, thank you very much for your answers, forgive me for not being more specific. This laptop is not for me, it is for a friend of mine, a girl. My laptop can be seen in my Specs, I am OK with it.
Now, when it comes to her, I will ask her tomorrow about the important matter of portability = away from AC power. But from what I know she just wants a laptop which will function in a room most of the time, so she will not need to carry it. Also, I do not believe she will ever connect it to any peripherals or any other monitor / screen. Finally, if it was that I would be keen to make an entire research on laptops, I would not be asking here :P
I mean, sorry, but I despise laptops! I really love desktops and I do not mind researching for hours when it comes to motherboards, CPUs, GPUs, hard drives, cases, AIOs, Air Coolers, PSUs, yeah! But I hate laptops!
So, can you please give me a few, like 3 - 4, best options and then, of course, I will research this matter, a bit, for my friend.
So, just a nice laptop to watch Netfilx and work on MS Office + Project. When it comes to budget she did not say but I assume her requirements do not justify an expensive device (she will never play any games), so just a quality laptop will suffice.
Thank you very much!
Generally---unless a budget is of little concern:
Try to avoid more than 8 GB of RAM; she isn't likely to need it unless that Office/Project stuff is heavy duty.
Try to avoid Windows 10 Pro
Try to avoid spinning drives of any type. She may not need more than 256 GB total storage?
Try to stay within the business or corporate line if possible, rather than consumer.
It's been a long time since I've looked at laptops intensively, so some of the above may be difficult.
Ideally, get her to a Best Buy or Costco or somewhere she can actually put her hands on something before committing.
You might get some use from this link:
Choose A Laptop - PCPartPicker
It's a list of laptops filtered by certain criteria. You can change the filters as you wish. You can sort each column.
Some Intel, some AMD. All under $1000. All 8 GB RAM, at least 4 cores, no spinning drives.
28 total laptops meet these arbitrary criteria: 9 Acer, 3 Asus, 1 HP, 5 Lenovo, 8 MSI, 2 Microsoft.
Other brands will pop up as you change the criteria.
Filters I used shown at the top of the partial list below.
Kinda surprised I didn't see any Dell laptops that met the filters. Maybe they insist you get 16 GB of RAM or an HDD?
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