Reply With QuoteI recently bought a T460 Lenovo from the bay and as you say, bombproof - but now chinese of course.
mine is I5 with a 250 Gig Solid state drive - all that i ever need for business.
B
My son was made redundant last month so is giving it a go on his own. Currently he is using my wife’s MacBook Pro but needs a laptop of his own. The last laptop I bought was a Thinkpad which was bomb proof, are they still as good as they used to be or can anyone recommend a well built/specced laptop for under a grand that doesn’t come bloated with loads of crap? I used to be into computers but since retiring I have no interest in them at all and especially hate the Metro interface which has put me off upgrading my own.
Last edited by Maris; 19th August 2020 at 11:30.
I recently bought a T460 Lenovo from the bay and as you say, bombproof - but now chinese of course.
mine is I5 with a 250 Gig Solid state drive - all that i ever need for business.
B
I used to recommend Dell but recent experience has stopped me doing so.
If money is tight he could do worse than look at the refurb stuff from Morgan Computers, I've had three machines from them now and am very happy.
What are the requirements, what's he going to be doing with it?
Lenovo’s are pretty bomb proof, like the previous poster Dell laptops are very good but I worked for a customer recently where new out the box laptops had to have their motherboards changed. It seemed like a known issue with micro fractures in the motherboard caused during transit
Why not have your son buy it? He's going to be running his own company so will have the best idea about necessary specs etc?
The Upgrade point about the Metro interface is a bit mute. You can run it like Windows 7 with just a normal Windows interface. I think after Windows 8 or 8.1 they changed it so you have the choice of how it look's.
Or if you want you can buy Stardocks Start 10. I think it's about $10.00 but worth it. Although not really necessary these days.
Sent from my SM-N960F using TZ-UK mobile app
No need to get involved with Metro interface.
What does he want to do on the laptop? The software he needs to run will govern the spec. I used to work on bridge design software which needed a really powerful laptop to run it. I now work on warehouse management software which doesn’t. My current work laptop cost a 1/4 of my old one and does the job it needs to really well.
A used ex-business thinkpad for a few hundred off ebay.
They have great keyboards.
Computers are so reliable you dont need to buy new ones at all.
I run a Dell Latitude E6230 worth about £70 24 / 7 and never bother to turn it off. Its about 7 years old and never broken down even once.
It has been a long time since I've had my own Windows laptop, but I always hear good things about the Dell XPSes, both 13 and 15. I know some of the other posters have criticised Dell's quality of late and I have no experience with that unfortunately. Those I know who have an XPS, seem really pleased though.
I have an old Dell Studio XPS which is my 'roving' computer and still gets used on occasions and it is still going strong after 10(?ish) years.Originally Posted by SuperVM
It has had to have a new battery and I replaced the hard drive after it was dropped, but other than that it has been pretty good. It runs very hot though if used on your lap.
I’ve only ever bought IBM/Lenovo for the last 20yrs, and when you go for a decent-spec’d one - they are bombproof.
I retired my W520 a couple of years ago, but it is still going on Win7 with a new HDD and the best thing about that model and ones of the same spec - was that many items were modular (keyboard, slot in DVD burner/addl HDD). It is now around 9yrs old!
Newest one is a P51, and again - solidly built with great after sales service.
Even on the 9yr old W520 there is no backlash in the screen hinge.
Keyboards on their ‘professional’ models are great for touch-typists too.
There is a train of thought that says instead of buying a (say) £2,000 Thinkpad - buy a new £500 machine every 18-24 months and clone the drive to the new one. But, that £500 machine will have a cheaper keyboard, cheaper battery - but if you are prepared for that - sure, it can make business sense.
My new work Dell Latitude E5500 (not sure exact model) is a great laptop for Office 365 and teams. I use it with the USB3 docking station to drive 2 extra monitors.
This ^^^^^^^^^? We ran our Dell XPS 15 for over 10 years. In that time only thing we did was buy a new battery. Never let us down, got me through my teaching qualification . Only retired it because we moved over to Apple. Also ran it with a spare screen off an older PC. That enabled Excel on one screen and Word or t’ internet on the other.
In all fairness it was a better machine than the Mac that replaced it.
Last edited by higham5; 19th August 2020 at 12:27.
If you're erring towards a 2nd hand Lenovo, the one model I'd avoid is the X270. There is a design flaw with the chassis if it flexes - we stopped issuing them to field locations in the Middle East because of this and went for the large L470. The current X390 is our workhorse and seems to be rather good for the money.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Cheers for all the advice, after looking at used/refurb Lenovos on eBay I’m tempted to pick one up for myself, he will be buying his and only needs it for office type stuff so a Thinkpad should do the trick.
Buy something with a nice screen. It makes a huge difference.
I’ve switched both my machines to MS Surface now and they are excellent.
I have a surface go and a surface pro 7.
The Pro 7 particularly is a mega bit of kit. Super powerful, fanless, as mobile as a tablet and I plug it into an external 4K screen when at my desk.
Surface is the Mac/MacBook Pro of windows machines in terms of design and hardware support
I picked up a Ryzen 3 APU 15" Lenovo with 8 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD and Windows 10 for my kids from ebuyer for £350. They had a FreeDOS version with the same hardware for £299, but while I pondered it overnight, the price went back up to the same amount as the Windows 10 version. Anyway, we're very happy with it for the money.
Another vote for Morgan.
Good service and perfectly usable tech for peanuts.
M
Sent from my ASUS_X00PD using Tapatalk
Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
Posting Permissions