Laptop bargain

Hazel123 said:

They were about £600 new just over a year ago.

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That in fact is 708 Euros. I paid 599 Euros (£507.63) new just over a year and a half ago (December 30th, 2020). Next, on Cyber Moday last year I got a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro at just 229 Euros (£194.07) new. And about a week later, 2×8GB G.Skill Ripjaws 3200 MHz at 57.86 Euros (£49.04) new.

Don't get me wrong... I always liked the color of the Bin Laden too: Why Criminals and Smugglers Love the 500 Euro Bill

Hazel123 said:

Yep that may be it - or perhaps the listing wasn't strong enough to attract enough attention. Or - maybe the hot weather! People are outside having barbeques instead of on that site :)

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The calm before the storm. Wait until the kids are close to going back to school and then check the prices.

Hazel123 said:

All I need now is some spare screws for my original one!

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Try a local repair shop, ebay or Amazon.

Hazel123 said:

And yes I might end up changing the drive - I don't quite trust the Optane enough to leave files on it.

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Now that you have hands on experience it should be much easier to do. :)

hdmi said:

That in fact is 708 Euros. I paid 599 Euros (£507.63) new just over a year and a half ago (December 30th, 2020). Next, on Cyber Moday last year I got a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro at just 229 Euros (£194.07) new. And about a week later, 2×8GB G.Skill Ripjaws 3200 MHz at 57.86 Euros (£49.04) new.

Don't get me wrong... I always liked the color of the Bin Laden too: Why Criminals and Smugglers Love the 500 Euro Bill

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Sounds good I still think it was a good bargain - £255 for a one year old Core i5 laptop - particularly the model I wanted. When I think I paid £250 for a brand new Eee PC 701 about 12 or 13 years ago! With an atom drive (mind you they were great with XP on).

Winuser said:

Try a local repair shop, ebay or Amazon.

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Thanks - it's knowing which screws . Although I have a heck of a lot of old laptop screws in a tin so something might fit.

Winuser said:

Now that you have hands on experience it should be much easier to do. :)

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It was as simple as just swapping the drives and doing a clean install. The issue last time was not being able to instal an image on the new drive (because Optane was part of the image). Clean install is the way to go.

Hazel123 said:

Sounds good :) I still think it was a good bargain - £255 for a one year old Core i5 laptop - particularly the model I wanted. When I think I paid £250 for a brand new Eee PC 701 about 12 or 13 years ago! With an atom drive (mind you they were great with XP on).

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I don't do games either BTW, but like I said the integrated graphics (iGPU) performance still matters nevertheless, for those specific apps that benefit from hardware acceleration, or the GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) concept. Video encoding is only one example of why this can be rather important, as the time it takes to encode the video footage with Adobe Premiere or similar type of software tends to be very heavily impacted by Intel QuickSync. You sacrifice some video quality if QuickSync is enabled, but the whole point is that there can be situations where this sacrifice is well worth making, as the quality doesn't really suffer that much, whereas the difference in the encoding time can be extremely huge. And like I said this Intel-specific feature is only one example of why iGPU performance does matter outside of gaming.

That said, if you really think that the 1-inch difference in screen size and the purple color are worth all these sacrifices, like, having to buy used instead of buying new with a 3-year warranty period, waiting half a year longer than me before you could buy it, 24 percent slower CPU and worsened from being held back by single channel RAM and by mediocre RAM clock speed, other things like having a total of only three USB ports whereas my laptop has four of 'em, you know... the list goes on, and on it goes. It all stacks up. Again, the bottom line is, if you really think that's worth. Personally, I, would go bonkers each time when that cooling fan spins up due to having not enough headroom as for the CPU power that it has on tap. On my old Core i5-7200U, that would happen multiple times per day when doing nothing besides browsing certain websites that require browser scripting to be left enabled to work. So, I threw Slobo onto my pile of retired laptops about a whole year ago. lol

Hi there.

@hdmi
Nobody can say that your argument has no merit - of course it does : But :

As always it depends on what the user / OP wants to do with the machine -- this would make a really good cheap NAS apart from other things and most "Officy" type stuff doesn't need mega fast CPU or graphics. If into CAD, video editing of large files at high resolution, complex spread sheets with analytical formula of a "What If" type of query with a load of independent variables, complex mathematical modelling, hosting MySQL type databases with loads of tables and complex queries, hosting website(s) with loads of users etc then you are right -- but for probably 90% of users out there that laptop would easily fit the bill for what they have to do.

For many the purchase of a brand spanking new top of the range laptop just isn't a priority any more with so many other basic costs rising daily.

In fact just visit some research depts of well known universities and it's amazing the research they get through successfully often with quite primitive equipment.

Cheers
jimbo

Who does Adobe Premiere on a £250 laptop? That cost as much a year as licence fees? It is also a very specific tool. For quick personal video editing and re-encoding almost anything is good enough.

A cheap laptop for the majority of people needs only enough RAM to do basic stuff like writing texts, browsing the web, big and fast enough storage to keep windows fluent and have room for some personal data and a fast enough GPU to keep Windows display acceleration on and being able to decode videos in real time at the devices native display resolution.

@jimbo45
Of course it depends. That in fact was my whole point, but if all you want is to turn it into a cheap NAS, then no, sorry, cheaper options can be had in this regard by going for a 15″ instead, which should be plenty obvious by now. As for your argument re complex type stuff, please read my post. I was talking about simple and common tasks like video encoding and web surfing, and about forcing the cooling fan to stay silent without letting the laptop run hot as a result. I do this by disabling Turbo Boost in ThrottleStop each time when I need silence, e.g. for background music listening whilst surfing on specific websites that need to run heavy scripts to work. The number of websites and apps that run sluggish when Turbo Boost is disabled on the type of CPUs that already are slow to begin with is forever growing. This is an ongoing evolution, one that cannot be stopped. So, it isn't just about what the laptop in question can do. Rather, it is also about what it can do a few years from now, compared to what will be out there on the internet, and how various apps will perform after they received updates.

Personally, I don't want to break the bank to grab the latest and greatest. It doesn't have to be the fastest CPU. But there are limitations to what I find to be acceptable, for me. That 14″ HP laptop is not just noticeably slower, it also was 15 percent more expensive if you had to buy it new, and that was only a year ago whereas mine is already half a year older than that. Just because it is a used laptop, doesn't also mean that you can't find a used laptop that is both cheaper and faster than it. Especially if you are willing to let go of that 14″ requirement, that is. But this isn't for me to decide, as this isn't my laptop we're talking about. Instead, I am only making comparisons to clarify that this 1-inch difference in size comes at a sacrifice, and comes at a sacrifice regardless of whether someone wants to try to downplay this sacrifice by making poor excuses.

SlicEnDicE said:

Who does Adobe Premiere on a £250 laptop? That cost as much a year as licence fees? It is also a very specific tool. For quick personal video editing and re-encoding almost anything is good enough.

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Simpler tools like Handbrake are capable to use Intel QuickSync too, BTW. There's nothing new or groundbreaking to this, just some basic old fact.

SlicEnDicE said:

A cheap laptop for the majority of people needs only enough RAM to do basic stuff like writing texts, browsing the web, big and fast enough storage to keep windows fluent and have room for some personal data and a fast enough GPU to keep Windows display acceleration on and being able to decode videos in real time at the devices native display resolution.

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I never said anything about how much RAM the majority of people need, nor about what storage has to be inside. Video editing usually requires encoding, and, I can give you a very long list of other, additional, reasons why too much skimping on hardware performance is usually a bad idea. For one, affordable laptops already are much slower than similar priced desktop PCs, anyway in the first place. A little over 12 years ago, I had both a normal laptop and a small netbook. The latter had an Intel Atom N270, I bought it new at 249 Euros back then and yes, that one was very, VERY slow indeed... lol

hdmi said:

Simpler tools like Handbrake are capable to use Intel QuickSync too, BTW. There's nothing new or groundbreaking to this, just some basic old fact.

I never said anything about how much RAM the majority of people need, nor about what storage has to be inside. Video editing usually requires encoding, and, I can give you a very long list of other, additional, reasons why too much skimping on hardware performance is usually a bad idea. For one, affordable laptops already are much slower than similar priced desktop PCs, anyway in the first place. A little over 12 years ago, I had both a normal laptop and a small netbook. The latter had an Intel Atom N270, I bought it new at 249 Euros back then and yes, that one was very, VERY slow indeed... lol

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Actually often the best value for money in desktop type computers is to go for something like a Microserver rather than a typical consumer grade desktop. These are robustly built, designed to run 24/7 and highly configurable.

Things like Handbrake can consume a load of resources for video conversions etc -- often other "converters" are available - but beware of "Sneakerware" -- I.E great Free program but as soon as you want to use any of the real facilities you have to "Go Pro" i.e pay.

However very few go down this route of looking at microservers or server systems (hardware) in general. Often good value for money - especially when businesses are "upgrading" so you can get really good cheap bargains.

Dual XEON CPU system with 64 GB RAM and availble 4 bay HDD system (you have to populate the HDD's yourself and supply the OS) I got for 380 EUR and its been running 24/7 for over 12 months without any problem whatsoever. Add your own video if required.

Even this type of thing will blow most domestic desktop machines out of the water : Even though it's old !!!!


I think we agree on about 90% of the issues discussed here though.

Cheers
jimbo

SlicEnDicE said:

You might have misunderstood what a laptop is...it is a portable computing device you put on TOP of your LAP

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I know you're teasing, but I have a student with an old hand injury who can't easily use his laptop keyboard. I use a Logitech Wave wireless keyboard. I suggested he try mine out on his laptop. It works for him with just enough angle to help with his typing.

Wynona said:

I know you're teasing, but I have a student with an old hand injury who can't easily use his laptop keyboard. I use a Logitech Wave wireless keyboard. I suggested he try mine out on his laptop. It works for him with just enough angle to help with his typing.

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Also Audio input is possible too -- OK not practicable in public places but for people at home etc.

Computing probably has enabled more disabled or people recovering from injury unable to use the machines in the conventional way to communicate and gain paid employment than any other industry.

Whatever an individuals special needs are - there's always hardware around to help them.

The I.T folks should stand with their heads held high on this score even if other failures occur -- which is usually in poorly designed apps sanctioned or released by hideously poor non technical management who haven't a clue about decent QC rather than with the Geeks and Hardware engineers.

Cheers
jimbo

I know there are much better laptops :). For me the priorites are - keyboard and ergonomics for typing. When I find one with a good keyboard I stick to it. It just happens to be purple! Which yes I quite like but didn't get it because it was purple. It's a one off business version of the HP pavilion 14 which also has a slightly smaller touchpad than the usual version - which I also prefer. Ergonomics again. I've also had wrist issues and RSI so ergonomics and keyboard is really important. And I type a lot.

Along with that I also want a half decent processor (that core i5 is supposed to be pretty much mid range and there are a lot worse!). 8gb ram is fine for now - maybe there is better ram but it does the job for me - and it's upgradeable to a 16gb stick.

Screen is nothing special but ok. Yes the fan comes on a fair bit - especially with a Samsung Evo 970 plus ssd in it which gets warmer than the previous one. I don't care lol.

I really enjoy using it - it's fast enough. Does what I want. Way better than anything I've had before - so it's all relative. Apart from the HP Spectre X360 which is better all round (but that's not actually mine) and I don't like typing on it.

So to find an identical 1 year old model for £225 - which is £100 less than I paid for the one I currently have, and it's newer - is a bargain to me! It's just a bog standard laptop but it's no slouch.

It was kind of a joke when I said - and it's purple. That was not the reason for choosing it. There are better, more expensive laptops, which I don't find functional for daily typing. I have Capture One Pro installed which works very well for my photo editing. The Core i5 is enough.

And yes there are all kinds of things you can use for video editing now - Windows even has an editor built in which is good for trimming clips. But don't really do much video editing. I also have Powerdirector 14 which also works fine on i5 but don't really use it these days.

Don't like photoshop.

Wynona said:

I know you're teasing, but...

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A very valid point.

I've never used quicksync in my life, except for testing purposes.

I use my mobile phone for video capturing and editing. Even 8k video. It's more powerful than many laptops.

SlicEnDicE said:

I've never used quicksync in my life, except for testing purposes.

I use my mobile phone for video capturing and editing. Even 8k video. It's more powerful than many laptops.

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The CPU and Video in a lot of mobile phones these days just blows a lot of computers away !!! -- Not a valid comparison.

I still don't think I could produce an A3+ or A2 or even A1 size image of a "Cinema poster" or exhibition full size professional image at pro quality using any sort of mobile phone no matter how good the graphics are or the speed of the CPU. Economies of scale doesn't work at this scale for both large and small objects.

!!! For video editing who can better a nice 62 inch large 4 or even 8K UHD monitor. (OK cost permitting but that's another issue).

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

For video editing who can better a nice 62 inch large 4 or even 8K UHD monitor.

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I've found my 32" 1440p @10bit color depth is sufficient. 4k would be even better. (mind you...still on my phone or just quckly slap something together in Windows default apps on my laptop or desktop PC)

Don't re-encode your videos unless you absolutely must. As fast as copy/paste a file. But even re-encoding does not take that long on any of my devices. Heck even the laptop is AMD so no quicksync to be found.