Laptop Recommendations

[Drezha]

Looking for a portable laptop with reasonable battery life. Normally, I’d head straight to the Apple, but I’ll see what else is out there first. By portable, I mean no bigger than a 13″ screen and preferably the lighter the better. When I started my new role in Manchester at the start of the month, I was provided with a PC Specliast Genesis 15.6″. Decent enough laptop, but a bloody pain to carry around and there’s FA chance I’m going to be able to work on that on the train when I go to meetings in London. I think a 13″ would struggle to fit on the trays tables, let along a 15.6″. Likewise, I was going to carry there’s around and I could use it at cadets as well (a previous firm gave me a Dell that was of a reasonable size).

I’ve a X220 (which doesn’t really function as a laptop anymore as the battery is knackered and there’s a crack in the screen now as well) and I’ve a HP Stream, which is just painful when it runs Windows and unfortunately, I need Windows as Open Office just doesn’t cut it when it comes to work templates or any cadet templates.

So I’ve been looking around and my options appear to be:

Asus Zenbooks

HP Spectre

Dell Inspiron 5000 or XPS

 

Am I missing any? I did consider the Surface, but I’m unsure on a straight tablet. I can’t really use it on my lap if needed. At the minute, I’m just pricing up options and trying to decided if I want to bite the bullet on anything.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Ed P]

The budget is of course important, SWMBO has similar requirements and would like a HP Spectre 2 detachable even if it is second-hand.  (I think that it is the looks).  I’m hoping price plus availability will push her towards an HP x210!  I’m keeping a low profile for now – I dare not push as she would probably dig her heels in!

[edit] Having looked with her my personal impression is that convertibles leave me cold, extra complication for marginal convenience. Detachables are a much better form factor even if I can see plug-in accidents waiting to happen!

[Dave Rice]

I think you have the short list right.

From what I’ve seen of the Surface with the keyboards they are nicely made and worth considering.

[Drezha]

The budget played second fiddle to actually getting the right laptop in this case I think.

That HP you linked puts me off as it’s an Atom CPU and eMMc storage – both of which my HP Stream 11 has and concerns me. The PC is slow – and something may be the bottle neck or the whole might just be treacle. Either way, willing to pay more for the right one I.e. One that will last for a while, be lightweight ish but small and compact.

I notice that SaveOnLaptops have a Thinkpad in and a pricer ones with more RAM and storage space that might well be a contender as the X220 is good but is one it’s way out now

 

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

I got the charity a couple of Asus Transformers T100TA-DK066H Atom Z3775 (1.5 to 2.4Ghz) Quad Core Processor, 10.1″ HD Touch Screen, Microsoft Windows 8.1, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 32GB SSD + 500GB HDD.

The HDD is in the keyboard so not available in tablet mode, but it has an SD card slot in the screen. You could not call it a performer but for some quick office work it’s OK. They really wanted a tablet like device to take into council meetings that could access the council’s sharepoint servers, so it sort of chose itself give the budget they don’t have. It would drive you nuts.

Personally I still think Lenovo make the best “road warrior” machines. If you want flash get the Zenbook, Spectre or Macbook.

[Drezha]

I went via the Lenovo site and managed to pick up the Ideapad 710S which looks to tick all my boxes. Looking at the website now however, it says Sold Out, so I’m hoping it went through fine.

Only thing at it I might like to improve is running Windows 10 Pro instead so I can install Bitlocker on the machine and have it encrypted for travelling. I best check when it arrives though that it’s got a TPM, though from a quick google and looking here, it appears it doesn’t so I can wont be able to do full disk encryption.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

I think it may have review and review

Security
The IdeaPad 710S Plus offers a TPM 2.0 chip, and a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner for security-conscious and mobile users.

Likes: Light and slim, solid, very wellbuilt casing, stylishlooking surfaces, fingerprint resistant, good input devices, TPM, fingerprint scanner, bright and highcontrast screen with lots of elbowroom, no PWM, GeForce 940MX with GDDR5, good WiFi performance,

[The Duke]

My sister in law just got an lenovo yoga from work, (teacher), and it’s very nice indeed. They have come on a lot since my son had one for 4 hours and returned it. But so has the price probably.

Dell xps 13, is what I’d buy still if I needed a real portable  laptop. It’s just stunning and brilliant. But not cheap at around £800 for the entry one. Which would be fine for almost anyone.

Lenovo thinkpad graphite is good to.

My list is all expensive, but as you mentioned apple is your fall back, probably all the above are about 50 to 30% cheaper.

Then again with apples brexit tax, they are probably £1k cheaper lol

[Dave Rice]

I think you’ll be surprised Steve. Apple MacBook Air Intel Core i5 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM + 128GB Flash, 13.3″ LED + WIFI, Bluetooth + Webcam £881

Intel Core i5 Dual Core 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM + 256GB Flash, 11.6″ Display + Intel Iris 6000, Webcam + Bluetooth 4.0 £929

Compare that to this list of Ultrabooks on E-Buyer and the Macs seem good value.

[The Duke]

I thought the air had shot up to about £1300? With their net book being their cheapest offering at around a grand.

So I’m quite surprised at them prices. I’d still get the Dell xps13 though.

But if you like osx then the Air would win on them prices. I dont have enough experience  with osx to have an opinion whether i like it or not, other than its reminds me of Mint, when ever I’m on my lads.

Btw ape is slowly invading my house. We now have 2 imacs and an Air, plus the God dam ipad 2 that refuses to die. It’s going to outlive me that thing.

[Drezha]

I think direct from Apple it’s £900 or so for the base model of the Air and then £1200 starting for the MacBook.

I am a fan of the Apple, but I think Windows is needed at the minute really. The Mac versions of Word/Excel are OK and seem to do while, but I have come across some minor niggles where document templates don’t work 100%.

We’ll see how this Lenovo works out anyhow :good:

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Ed P]

I think the “OK” verdict for the Macbook is about right. My No.1 son is an Apple Fanbois through and through but he is getting to the point where is he is thoroughly frustrated with Apple. I think he is driven towards that by his desktop workstation and its carp lack of internal upgrading capabilities. He is actually thinking of dropping Apple and moving back to windows.

Apple’s walled garden is starting to become a real source of frustration to some players.

[Drezha]

Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good programs on macOS – Ulysses I use a lot, though it seems that the list of macOS software I use exclusively is getting less. I do prefer Pages to Word though for general day to day use and for some things, I find Numbers better than Excel (my personal finance spreadsheet for example where I have multiple table dotted around not following the standard grid layout, such as in the attached).

Any ideas on the best method to upgrade to Windows Pro if the laptop has the TPM? Could I buy something like this and enter it as an upgrade code? Or involve a whole reinstall of Windows?

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

You can’t upgrade to Pro, it’s a complete reinstallation.

[Drezha]

Dave Rice wrote:

You can’t upgrade to Pro, it’s a complete reinstallation.

Microsoft suggests otheriwse?

Either way, once I start the machine and activate Windows 10 Home, my understanding is that I’ll be able to install Windows 10 Pro using a key and if it doesn’t work, then I can reinstall Windows 10 Home and it’ll pick up the digital entitlement anyhow?

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

Well you learn something every day. I must have had the Enterprise version in mind from my old job.

If activated I would expect the Pro to overwrite the Home other wise you would be really pissed off if a reset took you back from Pro to Home.

[Drezha]

Paid £3.99 for a Pro code on eBay, followed those instructions from MS and an just under an hour later I had Microsoft Pro installed and was encrypting the hard drive with Bitlocker  :good:

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[The Duke]

I thought since vista you have been able to upgrade Windows on the fly. There was built in menu. The upgrade was very expensive back then. Though I’ve ways got pro, so it only ever offed me ultimate as a path, and that was eye watering.

So I thought its been  possible for 10 years or more. Can’t recall the age of vista.

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