'New' laptop advice

[Hoodie Sleeves]

I was going to post this on Tom's Hardware, or one of those sites, but I figured I'd get a more reasonable response on here.

I currently have a Dell E6420 (i5-2540 dual core + HT) with 4 gigs of ram - speed-wise it's been fine. I use it a lot as a couch-workstation - working in Visual Studio, or dealing with client issues while watching TV when I absolutely need to get out of my home office. Occasionally do some very non-ambitious gaming (PCSX2, Kerbal Space Program, stuff like that). The e6420 has an Nvidia Quadro NVS-4200M - so it's been a bit stronger in that department than on-board would be.

A lot of my clients have decided to go to conflicting VPN solutions so I've needed to start using virtual machines to deal with connecting to their systems, and I definitely need more ram. My first thought was to just spend $75, drop 16GB of ram in the machine, and call it a day.

Complicating things - when it comes to electronics, my wife is basically a gremlin. Her laptop is held together with duct tape, the tabs are broken off the battery, keys are missing, etc - so I'm gonna need to replace that, and I'm not spending any real money getting her a new laptop. Won't do it again. (hers is a core 2 duo based system, so it's past time)

Was thinking of buying myself a bit newer machine and handing down my current machine to her - money is tight right now though (had a long layoff), so I have to be frugal - and I'm having a hard time making sense of all the nonsense that is Intel's product nomenclature.

I keep running into situations where I'm asking questions like "Would I be better off with a 2nd generation i7, or an 3rd generation i5?" and so on - are there any chips/configurations that are clear winners at a reasonable pricepoint? Part of me thinks that an older i7 quad core might be a better option because of the need for multiple VMs, but I may be overthinking things.

Any advice?

 

[bohous]

I think this might be what you are looking for.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net

 

[Couperin47]

Question #1 - Is battery life important to you ? If you mostly use the laptop in situations where it's always plugged into power, then you can consider a 4 core i7, though I don't think it will actually improve your experience that much, it will guarantee very short sessions on battery. Overall, a current i5 dual core is probably more than good enough. Unless you are a great believer in The Cloud and are content to keep most files and media up there, I prefer a laptop that includes both an SSD boot drive and a decent size secondary conventional HD. Thinkpads are more rugged than the average offering from Dell or HP.

Having an SSD boot drive will impact your experience more than any other factor, after you make sure you have at least 8 Gig of RAM. The Lenovo Outlet is pretty bare atm, but offers a 'brand new' experience at serious discounts. The average i5 machine there can be found, often for under $500. If it's the right model, many will offer the chance to add an M.2 2242 SSD aftermarket (128 Gig for under $80 @ Amazon) and most come with only 4 Gig ram leaving an open slot you can add an 8 Gig sodimm to give you 12. This results in a damn powerful laptop for under $800 total.

 

[Max Power]

If you're running multiple VMs on a laptop, then you shouldn't use a conventional hard drive at all. Disk access will be terribly slow. The good news is that 500GB SSDs are under $200 these days. Whatever laptop you get, replace the drive that comes with it with one of those. The extra CPU cores will help with performance on the VMs as well. The improvements in the latest Intel chips have mostly been in battery life, so if that's not a huge concern for you, a last generation chip would be just fine.

 

[Hoodie Sleeves]

Thanks guys - the backlight on my current machine's lcd went over thanksgiving - so I ended up on ebay. Found a used Dell Precision m4600 for just over $200 - and managed to get 16gb (2x8gb) of Crucial ram off of amazon Friday for $60. It's got a i7-2760QM, and a Firepro M5950 graphics card in it. The 2760 isn't the fastest chip in the world, but it's only about 10% slower than the 4720HQ, and I think it'll do the job fine. Most of the work I'm doing (outside of visual studio) I'm essentially using my VMs to open an RDP session to a server and working on that server - so I don't need a ton of horsepower - just enough to run the OS and RDP in each VM. I think 16gb of ram will do it - but it's got 4 slots if I need to go to 32. I've got a SSD for it already - wouldn't use anything else.

I'm usually tethered, so battery life isn't a big deal to me.

It'll do for a while, and give me some time to fix the LCD on the e6420 and give that to my wife - her laptop is C2D based - so it should be a big upgrade for her.

 

[Monbo Jumbo]

I need a new device.

I suppose I need two new devices, a new tablet, and a new laptop. So there are these hybrids out there.

The Google Pixel C seems like a great tablet, but doesn't really cut it as productivity device/laptop. Though it sounds like with Nougat, it's a much better experience with multiple (well two) window capability.

The Surface Pro 4 sounds like a great laptop, but a crappy tablet, a little too big and Win 10 isn't a great tablet experience.

I suppose I end up with one of each eventually, though if I get a Surface, I'd get a cheaper 9 or 10 inch Android tablet instead of the pricey Pixel.

But two devices aren't in the budget now.

Anyone have any info to push me one way or the other? Surface 4 owners, do you use it as a tablet?

Any Pixel C owners out there?

thanks

 

[IpswichSox]

I have a Surface Pro 4, but I never use it as a tablet. For me, it's great as a highly mobile, powerful laptop (though the battery is a little underwhelming). But when I'm around the house surfing or checking emails or buying stuff on Amazon, I use my iPad, which is significantly lighter, better sized for a tablet IMO, is instant-on, and is more stable.

If I didn't have an iPad, I suppose I would use the Surface as a tablet and probably just get used to it but it would be less than ideal.

 

[saintnick912]

Maybe look at the Surface Book? It is a better laptop than the Surface Pro, and still features a dockable tablet.

I don't think the Pixel C is the thing, I've seen a couple and the people who had them said they rarely used them in practice. Chromebooks getting Android apps (on a couple of devices now, coming to more later this year) is an interesting development. But I really think the interesting devices will be next year.

 

[Monbo Jumbo]

Thanks for the input. I'm going to pull the trigger on the Pixel C. My primary need is a larger tablet, and some light-duty laptop stuff. I'll look at getting adding a Surface 5 (if it's out) in about 9 months for a true laptop.

 

[bosox4283]

My wife and I need a new laptop. We previously had a MacBook Pro and used only a fraction of its capabilities, so we have no interest in spending more than $1,000 on another laptop.

I have a work iPhone, iPad, and Dell laptop. As a result, this new laptop will be primarily for web browsing, Gmail, Google Drive, and photos.

I need to stress the photo part. We really need to do a better job of backing up our photos, and the first step is having a reliable laptop. Then, we'll move to an external hardrive and/or a cloud-based service.

So, cheap laptops. What do you suggest?

I was looking at the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series.