Powerful Laptop recommendations

[PoshTiger]

Well the world has moved on dude - Sony's have a rep for being awful..

There are budget Dells, and premium ones - huge difference between them

 

[Edwin]

Dell was cheap crap last time I bought it... 15 years ago. Best laptop brand I've had... More then once... Is Sony. Working well after 5 years with no effort or trouble. 10 years some of them

Sony exited the PC market last year.
http://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/computers/vaio-laptops

 

[Admin]

Yeah Edwin...i remember that now. Shame... Partners current 6 year old Sony vaio has been and is faultless... My New Asus is crap. I just want an off the shelf quality, Reliable laptop. It doesn't have to be the fastest
..Just reliable and non crashy

 

[max99x]

Don't write off Dell, I've many friends who had cheap ones and yes they are crap, but spend some money and they are decent

I've got a Dell XPS 15 , it's few years old now but it's been really decent (minus a few battery issues), it happily runs Chrome (with 15 tabs), photoshop, FTP programs, multiple folders, etc

It's spec:

Though I'm looking to switch to a Macbook Pro more for portability and battery life than anything, surprised to see Dell's holding value bit more, saw my model going for £220-300 on eBay. Which will be nice to go towards the Mac

 

[murph]

Go for a Dell XPS 15 - I've had one for 6 months and loved it, just swapped it for a Surface Book though..

The 2015 version with infinity screen is amazing... Loving mine!

 

[max99x]

The 2015 version with infinity screen is amazing... Loving mine!

Tempted with this but ultimately a MacBook is more reliable with better battery life and similar price, plus can go to a Apple store with it if something goes wrong

But yeh it looks great and not much in it

 

[Edwin]

Related aside: does nobody rate desktops any more? Even a fairly modest spec desktop will run rings around a high end laptop - there's only so much power saving technology can do for a CPU and graphics card...

 

[max99x]

Related aside: does nobody rate desktops any more? Even a fairly modest spec desktop will run rings around a high end laptop - there's only so much power saving technology can do for a CPU and graphics card...

Would be totally impractical for me personally, I work from various locations and run my businesses so they can be worked on remotely anywhere with internet. If I had a desktop would have to also have a laptop that could do everything that does too

 

[PoshTiger]

Edwin is correct, desktops are generally much faster.

I use both, a monster PC at home and a powerful surface now. If you implement cloud technology correctly, it doesn't pose a problem working from multiple computers.

 

[max99x]

Edwin is correct, desktops are generally much faster.

I use both, a monster PC at home and a powerful surface now. If you implement cloud technology correctly, it doesn't pose a problem working from multiple computers.

It does if you need to run powerful programs on the go

 

[bonusmedia]

Just bought a HP elitebook from Ballicomm - maybe not an upgrade for you but a good supplier.

https://www.ballicom.co.uk/h9w23eaa...essional-downgraded-to-windows-.p1123226.html

I work about 50-50 laptop and desktop though and tend to do the resource intensive stuff on the desktop, which is a beast set up on one of these:
http://obutto.com/ergonomic-workstations-2/r3volution-workstation/
highly recommend them, 3 screens is great for productivity

If you implement cloud technology correctly, it doesn't pose a problem working from multiple computers.

So - how do you implement cloud tech correctly?

I've got dropbox and skype, what else do I need?

I'd like to better sync my desktop, laptop, tablet, phone and staff could do with the same. I figure it's maybe time to get our own VPS if the costs stack up.

 

[Admin]

OK, so what about OS? What's the latest opinion on Windows 10? Anyone running it..?

 

[Adam H]

OK, so what about OS? What's the latest opinion on Windows 10? Anyone running it..?

Liked Windows 8 , Love Windows 10. In my opinion one of the best operating systems since XP.

Not had a single issue from the day of the update on my Vaio.........Will be looking for a new laptop myself soon now Vaio's are no longer made.

Pretty sure there was a thread a month or two ago which i replied to about laptops where I think Skinner had recommended a couple of good options.

 

[bonusmedia]

Been running 10 for about 2 weeks, I like it - and I wasn't a fan of 8.
It feels like a combination of the best of 7 and 8

No issues yet which is a pleasant surprise

 

[Skinner]

I think you're a little out of touch Edwin.

Modern high laptops are running desktop processors like the skylake 6700K, desktop graphics cards (the 2000 core nvidia gtx 980 is now in MXM form), they take up to 64gb ram, you can run Raid 0 PCIe 4x SSD (thats over 4000MBps/3000mbps read/write).

Related aside: does nobody rate desktops any more? Even a fairly modest spec desktop will run rings around a high end laptop - there's only so much power saving technology can do for a CPU and graphics card...

 

[Edwin]

Not in the price bracket admin was asking about, they're not...

 

[bonusmedia]

You'd probably pay double for a laptop equivalent of a high end desktop.

No laptop could match my desktop, there just isn't room for all the bits

 

[Skinner]

Just for fun, I thought I would pick the highest desktop PC World did the Acer Predator...

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compu...r-predator-g6-710-gaming-pc-10137780-pdt.html

This set the budget at £2,000+Screen, I'm aware that thats £500 over admins budget, but its the top PC that pc world has and high end were the term used.

I'm going to buy from MySN/Schenker, mysn offer 2 yrs standard warranty, so I'm going to discount about £150 for that, so my top budget is £2150.

I've chosen this base model...

http://mysn.co.uk/shop/xmg-u706-gaminglaptop.html

My Spec is...
1080 17" IPS Screen g-sync screen
GTX 980 with 8gb vRam
i7 Skylake 6700K
32gb Hyper-X 2133mhz ram
256gb SM951 PCIe 4x SSD
2tb Samsung SpinPoint
Atheros Killer AC + Bluetooth
Bluray Burner
£2175 - ops I'm £25 over budget :/

The predator has half the vram, but 25% more cores in the gtx 980, personally double the vram is more appealing to me.

The predator has the same processor.

The predator has half the ram, and is likely cheap trash ram, again I'd go for double the ram.

The predator has a standard 128gb SSD which would MAX out at 500mbps, the SM951 is double the size and THREE times faster on pcie 4x.

The predator has 2tb more storage, but I could pick up a 2tb hard drive cheaply and have room to install it.

The mysn has a bluray writer and killer wifi, the former the predator doesn't have.

I'd say toe to toe there isn't a while lot of distance between those two ?

 

[accelerator]

One thing I will say, is that I am also been a bit frustrated by Windows laptop reliability in general over the years. I think this is one of the major selling points of Apple, at least they are relatively reliable and they have the Apple Store if you need it fixed. Whilst I have had a few reliable Dells, I've also had Samsung, Toshiba and Dell laptops that have failed. When you try and evaluate reliability for a Windows laptop, it's pretty difficult, because all models are put together for a short sales period, then they change. It can be frustrating. The good thing is that Microsoft has started building laptops, so maybe they will be able to offer a similar kind of reliability as Apple, as Windows PCs are certainly behind in this respect at the moment. In general though, I think Microsoft and Windows are very much on the rise again.

 

[Adam H]

One thing I will say, is that I am also been a bit frustrated by Windows laptop reliability in general over the years. I think this is one of the major selling points of Apple, at least they are relatively reliable and they have the Apple Store if you need it fixed. Whilst I have had a few reliable Dells, I've also had Samsung, Toshiba and Dell laptops that have failed. When you try and evaluate reliability for a Windows laptop, it's pretty difficult, because all models are put together for a short sales period, then they change. It can be frustrating. The good thing is that Microsoft has started building laptops, so maybe they will be able to offer a similar kind of reliability as Apple, as Windows PCs are certainly behind in this respect at the moment. In general though, I think Microsoft and Windows are very much on the rise again.

I think in your case its probably a matter of the age old technicians term "PEBKAC"

*Problem exists between keyboard and chair.*