Laptop with Office installed?

Tigerandahalf

Where could I get one. Bluetooth hdmi wifi and webcam. Decent performance but not for gaming. Good battery life.

Thanks

Torqay

Pretty much any laptop comes with a 60-days trial of MS Office 2010 pre-installed. You can buy a license online and activate it. Home/Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) should be less than €100, Professional Plus is significantly dearer, so it depends on the package you want, check the comparison table of MSO 2010 editions here.

You'll find Ivy Bridge Core i5 laptops for less than €500 now. If you want extreme battery life, you'll be better off with an ULV processor.

Tigerandahalf

3 or 4 hrs battery life would be fine. Seen an offer for a Pentium Dual Core, webcam, bluetooth and hdmi for under 500 with a local dealer with office fully installed. 300G would be plenty for me as I am not going to be storing a huge amount. Would 2G of RAM be ok for having Word and Internet open with a live video stream playing in background?
Does the webcam need to be so many pixels to be good for skype etc?

Thanks

Torqay

3-4 hrs is standard today.

2 GB RAM is nowhere near enough today.

A 0.3 MP webcam is rather cr@p, for good quality look for 1.3 or 2 MP.

Stay clear of Pentium processors. If you want decent performance and a processor that can keep up with future stuff, don't settle for anything less than a Core i5 of the current generation. And be careful with claims such as "office fully installed".

MS Office 2010 Home/Student, 3 user license and free upgrade to MS Office 2013 (which is just around the corner), 111 yoyos at dabs.

In case you're not aware of it, there are a few very good free alternatives to MS Office (depending on the degree of compatibility to MSO you require), Softmaker, LibreOffice, Kingsoft Office, they all can handle and save various MS document formats.

Tigerandahalf

What is a core i5? Do you mean it is over 2 times as fast as a Dual Core? Why the need for anything faster than that if you are only using Word and Internet browsing?
Why would 2GB of RAM not be sufficient?

Torqay

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

What is a core i5? Do you mean it is over 2 times as fast as a Dual Core?

That's pretty much the size of it, yes.

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Why the need for anything faster than that if you are only using Word and Internet browsing?

Because many web sites and services are getting more and more demanding.

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Why would 2GB of RAM not be sufficient?

2 GB is the absolute minimum requirement for 64-bit Windows 7, you won't be able to run much else.

Tigerandahalf

Ok thanks.
I am still unsure about what to get. The current laptop I have is a Dell Inspiron 1300. I have it 6 years now and have got great service out of it. However the battery has been gone with years and think I need an upgrade.
Are these super fast processors really needed unless you are doing gaming which I am not.
I think I might buy from my local if the license for Office is on it. At 480 it is good value.

Torqay

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

At 480 it is good value.

Even if if this is a full version of Microsoft Office (Home/Student, 3 users license, free upgrade to Office 2013) bundled with a Pentium laptop, it is not particularly good value. If you subtract the value of this MS Office edition, you'll find a Core i3 laptop for €370 and buy office separately.

You say, you bought your last laptop 6 years ago, now you got a seriously good ride out of it. If you buy a laptop, the most important component is the processor because you will be stuck with it forever. Memory and hard drive are easily updated later, but a Pentium processor is already outdated before you even sign the cheque.

And again you should ask yourself, "Do I need Microsoft Office"? Is this a work related computer and do you need to create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations 100% compatible with Microsoft document formats. Because if you don't and you just need an office suite for personal use, then any of the above alternatives will do serve the purpose and save you a lot of money. Just because they're free, it does not mean they're of no use. They are largely compatible to MS formats, issues may arise with complex tables in text documents or formulas in spreadsheets if they need to be exchanged with others who are using MS Office exclusively.

Tigerandahalf

I need Office for work stuff.
My current laptop has a Celeron M processor and I had no real issues with it. Dell has sold lots of those laptops and I never heard too much negativity about them.
I can see what you are saying about the processor though especially if changes come down the line. I was lucky when I bought the laptop 6 years ago that wireless was available on it. It would be no good to me now without it.
Is Windows 8 coming out soon? A Mac is way out of my range at over a grand.

Tigerandahalf

Can anyone tell me is the processor speed what you need to look at in terms of processor or are there others factors. My current Inspiron has a 1.7GHz processor which seems decent even though 6 years old as some laptops selling now are only 1.6. Some of the current Pentiums are over 2.0.
Having 4 or 5 open on a browser with Word open and a stream in the bckground what processor speed is adequate to good?

Thanks

GarIT

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Can anyone tell me is the processor speed what you need to look at in terms of processor or are there others factors. My current Inspiron has a 1.7GHz processor which seems decent even though 6 years old as some laptops selling now are only 1.6. Some of the current Pentiums are over 2.0.
Having 4 or 5 open on a browser with Word open and a stream in the bckground what processor speed is adequate to good?

Thanks

No, there are lots of other factors which even most IT people don't understand, we can only really use benchmarks to compare one processor to another. Go here if you want to compare processing power http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

areyawell

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

3 or 4 hrs battery life would be fine. Seen an offer for a Pentium Dual Core, webcam, bluetooth and hdmi for under 500 with a local dealer with office fully installed. 300G would be plenty for me as I am not going to be storing a huge amount. Would 2G of RAM be ok for having Word and Internet open with a live video stream playing in background?
Does the webcam need to be so many pixels to be good for skype etc?

Thanks

2GB of ram is not enough today and youtube videos would stutter with a couple of things open and laptop would freeze for a few seconds switching between applications. Would definitly need 4GB of ram.

If your budget is 500 I would go for this. It has i5 and 6GB of Ram. Laptop is 480
http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/5086878/Trail/searchtext%3ELAPTOP.htm

If you need microsoft office within the 500 budget I would go for this one. I3 and 4GB of Ram. Laptop is 400 euro.
http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/5087042/Trail/searchtext%3ELAPTOP.htm

Tigerandahalf

That first one doesn't have bluetooth.
Is it important?
I thought before I would need it for wireless printing but it turns out that wireless printing is done through the wifi.

Tigerandahalf

GarIT wrote: »

No, there are lots of other factors which even most IT people don't understand, we can only really use benchmarks to compare one processor to another. Go here if you want to compare processing power http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

That's true. I'm after looking at a few of those laptops in the Argos catalogue and it is very confusing. One laptop is 1.4GHz and 500G and is €600 something. It seems it is an i3. But very hard to know why it is so special.
Another laptop for €500 is 2GHz and 750G. Very confusing.

areyawell

Laptop prices are all over the place in Argos. Some are ultrabooks which means there very light and hence dearer but the specs are rubbish.

An i3 or i5 processor would be the best thing to get and 4GB to 6GB of Ram. The reason been is that there speed is around 2.3 Ghz, dual core and also contain 3MB of Cache(one of the most important things in a processor which constantly gets overlooked). Most other processors have 1MB of cache.

Bluetooth is not needed anymore on laptops. All Usb and Wifi.

I think the laptop for 500 you were going to buy is way overpriced and looks like the spec of a laptop from two or three or years ago.