Laptop Choice?

I haven't ordered a laptop direct, but did just order 2 custom desktop builds. I found their side is fine, but they used a company called Syncreon for delivery to get it over from Poland to the UK, they were absolutely useless, couldn't tell me anything etc. it was only after I found out that you could take their tracking number put some numbers in front of it and use it on DHL that I found out where my parcels were.

I had no issue.

trustpilot is a scam, they make companies pay if they want good reviews (afaik)

Ryzen 3500U + 8GB should do everything a teenager needs for 3 or 4 years shouldn't it? Namely excessive number of chrome tabs, MS Teams, fortnite on very average settings, youtube/netflix etc.

I can stretch to some models that have 4500U + 8GB but none that have 16GB or expandable ram which is a bit crap, when did they start soldering a single slot so much?

Looking at Huwaei Matebook/Honor Magicbook 14" which seems to offer best bang for buck in terms of IPS screen, backlit keyboard, metal body, reasonable battery

I'm after a laptop generally for fairly light use - web browsing, emails, word processing, viewing PDFs... That sort of thing. Ultra portability is not really required as it will mostly be used at home, and screen doesn't have to be super high Res. Budget around £2-300, what should I be looking at?

I haven't bought a laptop or computer in over 10 years so I'm a little behind on current tech!

Thanks hive mind!

Can I get a better laptop than an XLS 13 for less than a grand?

Love the new MacBook airs but won't touch them until Linux is running on M1.

Trying to decide between a Surface Laptop 3 and an XPS13 but wanted to see if I was overlooking another option.

Wife needs a new laptop to replace ancient Sony.

It’s primarily for working from home, so office apps and lots of stuff running at once, but nothing taxing. It would be nice if it could do a bit of a photoshop as she’s into her photography too.

Any ideas? Was looking at Ryzen 3500 laptops?

I've just bought a Dell Inspiron 15 7501. My usage profile is very similar to what you describe for your wife.

With discount codes etc I got the i5 model for about £550. I spent another £50 sticking an extra 8GB of RAM in.

I'm extremely pleased with it. For the money I can't imagine you can do better. Eats up my spreadsheets and docs. Performance is very good for day to day stuff. Screen is more than adequate in terms of brightness for indoor use.

Worth a look.

If you wanted to spend a little more you'll get a better brighter screen. Take a look at Huawei Matebook 14 and Pro X. Outstanding machines for the money, have 3k screens and a more business appropriate aspect ratio.

Also consider refurbished machines (eg via the bay) - I have in the past got x230 thinkpads w/ 16GB RAM and i5 (or better) processors for under 200 quid.... That was 3-4 years ago (at least) and they're still going strong! Extra money could be used to buy an external monitor so you have a big screen, plus keyboard/mouse (obvs much cheaper) - and then you have a good home set-up that is also very portable.

NB, other thought is to stick linux on it - very powerful, does all that you require; I used darktable for photo processing and it's very powerful with lots and lots of features.

Speaking of Linux, I've got two NVME SSDs in my Inspiron 7501. Dual booting with Windows and Ubuntu 20.

So impressed by Dell's Linux support. You can really tell that they put time and money into their relationship with Ubuntu.

I recently bought a Lenovo Ideapad with 11th gen i5 processor for £550 - speed/power is very impressive (noticeably faster than my work laptop). Built in screen is quite rubbish though, I imagine if you wanted to be working on visual stuff you'd probably want it plugging into a monitor.

Went for an Inspiron with an i5 they had an offer of.

I’m going to upgrade the storage immediately to save fading later transferring data, what’s the deal these days with windows? I presume I’ll have to create an installer usb key but then how do you verify windows, will it come with a code with the laptop?

I’m a Mac w*nker and it’s been so long since I’ve actually installed windows on a machine I’ve no idea how Microsoft deals with this anymore..

If you have a usb caddy, and buy a Crucial SSD, you can download Acronis which will clone the existing to the new drive

Did you get the extra 8% off with vouchercodes8? If not, maybe not too late to cancel and reorder?

Pretty sure the machine knows which OEM license it came with now so you don't need to bother with codes. If it asks then the code will be on a sticker on the underside of the laptop.

So go to
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

and follow the instructions - it'll put the install media on a USB key. Boot off that, click next a dozen times and about 10mins later you'll have a fresh copy of Win10 Home.

It's extremely simple now

To be honest, it might be easier to do that than clone the drive. And you'd sidestep all of Dell's bloatware by doing so...

Just in case it makes things easier for you, the Inspiron 7501 has 2 SSD slots so you could just stick a 2nd drive in.

Coolio thanks all.

I just checked and that code didn’t work with the model I ordered - it already had £90 off so I think that’s why. We tried a load of my wife’s NHS discount codes and they didn’t work either. Did get a 27” monitor for £85 though, down to £100 for buying it with the laptop and 15% off NHS discount. 👍🏻

Nice. Codes are a bit random aren't they!

I’m convinced half the time they just get put about to rope people in and don’t even work..

XPS 13 vs. MBP at £1500?

respectively:
i7-1185G7 / m1
16gb ram / 8gb
3456 x 2160 OLED / 2560 x 1600
52w/h / 58 w/h battery
1.27kg / 1.4kg
Thunderbolt 4 / 3

XPS 13 vs. MBP at £1500?

Do you prefer Windows or MacOS?

The rest of the specs are plenty good enough

I am a huge fan of the xp13 and xps15. Screen quality is epic. I like the fact you can have two ssds in the xps15 and dual boot them. Best windows laptops hands down.

I have nothing against the MBP but I use a lot of specialist windows only software.

Why choose? Get an older MBP (pre M chip) and dual boot it.

oops this was a reply to Duncs.

I guess that is what ultimately decides it since they're both really nice otherwise - I already use windows on desktop, and I don't want to complicate things by chopping and changing with MacOS

XPS are great machines. I'm far more adept on Windows than I am MacOS and unless I particularly needed to learn MacOS then I'd get an XPS.

Exact same argument for the MBP though if you're used to that. You can't really go wrong with either.

I'd disagree with benjam about getting an older Intel MBP though. Apple are clearly going for their own silicon and bootcamp will be less of a priority for them in future when they're not on Intel chips. So it feels like you're getting a compromise both ways

XPS is great but super sensitive as most slim laptops are.

Still reeling after a small liquid spill has left me with a very expensive paperweight that is going to cost a fair bit to fix.