Toshiba Tecra Z50 Laptop and Windows these days?

ondablade

Hi all. I've had several Macs after years on Windows, but after a bad support experience want to switch back to the latter.
It's very hard to find consistent reliability data, but it seems that stepping up to a business class laptop like the Toshiba Tecra Z50 while not cheap is maybe a decent bet. Occasional video watching and photo editing are about the heaviest work I do, after that it's mostly e-mail and Office.
The ThinkPad T560 looks sound too, but I've been put off by stories describing serious support issues.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on a few questions:
1. Is the Tecra likely to be reliable, and is it a good machine generally?
2. Is Windows 10 solid? Does it still have the problems of 10 years ago - especially slowing down and getting buggy after a year or so? Plus all the irritating redundancies and blingy graphics that clutter up the look?
3. What's Toshiba support like here? How is it accessed?
4. What's the best way to buy Toshiba here? Local, or from the UK? UK prices and warranties look better unless there's discounting here?
5. Does choice of supplier influence warranty or access to service?
6. Do anti virus packages work/truly leave your data safe these days? Recommendations?

Thanks in advance...

Alanstrainor

Where have you found this laptop for sale? Everything I can find on it shows it to be a 2 year old machine, and it definitely looks like a 2 year old machine.

I was never wild on the Toshiba lineup, I've had experience with their mid range laptops, and although they're fine they were never the best in terms of build quality.

As for your concerns about Windows, I would forget about them for the most part. Windows is a very slick and fast OS. It is largely secure, and even with it's built in virus protection you should be more than safe.

I would check out some of the offerings from Dell, there are a lot of models with varying price ranges. You should decide on what size laptop you want, generally that means 17", 15", or 13". I would also look for a full HD screen (1080p or more) at least.

ondablade

The Tecra is in various places, most particularly on Toshiba's website. It's I think been updated recently, but for sure it's in basic form been around for a while and is a fairly conservative looking model as seems to be typical of business class models. They tend to focus on connectivity, reliability, upgradability, good battery life and the like in a reasonably light and compact but definitely not slimline package (the latter entails compromises due to the tight packaging) if what's coming up is to be believed.

The screens are high res, but not the absolute ultimate in what's available.

Bottom line they don't seem to be built to tick all the boxes in terms of the latest and greatest, but (?) they may have subtler strengths. This may or may not be the case in reality, feedback appreciated.

A 15in is the target, with as you suggest the best resolution screen I can get.

I've just been through a less than encouraging episode (which looks to be sorted now) with Dell sales and support as result of an order that misfired, not sure I want to go there again. Open to opinion though - and their Latitude business machines may likewise be more solid than consumer machines....

It sounds like the latest Windows should be pretty comparable to OSX? Last time I used it was over 10 years ago, back then it wasn't as stable and needed a fair amount of maintenance to keep it running right as it tended to slow down.

Alanstrainor

You'll find lots of opinions on both OS's. I would think that Win10 is a much more modern OS when compared to OSX. But you may think differently! All I will say is that it will take some getting used to, and there will be a transition period required.

The Dell XPS line, and specifically the XPS15 are highly regarded these days. The 15 offers a slim 15" model, with up to 4k screen and it is also highly upgradeable. It's worth researching at the very least.

ondablade

Thanks A...

ED E

Regarding 6. you should cut off enough of your budget and put it aside so that you can subscribe to an off site backup service with differentials like Crashplan/Backblaze/Carbonite. AV isnt foolproof and if you own the laptop for 3yrs theres a ~5% chance your drive will just die. Thats the same for Mac or Windows.

Unless you buy Dell Business I'me yet to see an OEM that offers aftercare that can compete with Apple, but obviously you pay for it with both.

ondablade

Thanks ED. I'd wondered about the anti virus situation - in that I'd had a sales person claim that the inbuilt AV in Windows 10 is good enough to require no separate AV package.
I'm presuming you mean the drive may die for wear and tear related reasons, and not because of a virus. I'm guessing too that SSDs may be different to the older mech type HDD.
I've always backed up on to a remote SSD in recent years. I'm not familiar with the 'differentials' you mention. Does that mean that a virus can get to the remote/back up drive too?
Interesting that Dell business support is significantly better, my recent experience with the consumer end of it in the context of a return required as a result of a sales error wasn't good.
I'm switching back to Windows precisely because I'm unhappy with Apple support - the current IMac seemingly had a progressively worsening problem from about year 2 caused by an incompatability between the graphcs card and the later versions of OSX. Trouble is the service centres either didn't know/didn't care/avoided getting on the hook to deliver a fix so I ended up spending a lot of money on useless 'going through the motions' service visits over about 4 years. It finally emerged that there was an option to escalate to take it up directly with Apple. Lots of awfully nice words, but in the end no action. If it's 3 yrs plus old it feels like you're supposed dump it...

Alanstrainor

The in built anti-virus on Windows 10 is adequate to protect you. And I wouldn't worry about a virus causing data loss. That would be incredibly rare.

You should have 2 types of backups at least. On-site local backup to an external hard drive, and external off-site backup to "the cloud". This means that you pay for a service which will backup all (or a subset) or you data online, to a secure account. In a situation where your computer explodes, and your house burns to the ground taking all data with it, you will still have an off-site backup of your stuff.

Also, you mention that you have a backup SSD device. I would be wary about using an SSD as a purely backup device. SSD's have a tendency to completely fail with no chance of recovering data. The main advantage of an SSD is the incredibly fast read/write speeds, which although would be handy for an initial backup, it's hardly required. An old style usb HDD would be better for backup purposes for your usage.

I've had plenty of good experience with Dell support, if you can include an extended warranty in your budget it would be worth it.

ondablade

Thanks Alan, nice to know about Dell and the back up options. All makes sense.

The Dell people I had contacts with in India (mostly) couldn't have been nicer or more polite - just that the system didn't function very well. Like if you sent an e-mail it just sat in a queue. Hard to get a steer from anybody on what to do next too - there seemed to be a tendency to avoid taking on responsibility.

A very nice lady took pity on me in the end and got me sorted.

Sounds like going business class buys higher level service...

ED E

Alanstrainor wrote: »

The in built anti-virus on Windows 10 is adequate to protect you. And I wouldn't worry about a virus causing data loss. That would be incredibly rare.

Totally disagree there Alan. Crytolocker/cryptowall etc are rampant and effectively cause data loss.

ondablade

Suppose one way or the other the message is that some sort of off machine/remote drive back up is advisable. Although that in the end is probably subject to various sorts of (hopefully low probability) hazards too - meaning that redundancy/multiple back up locations are probably a good idea....