If money was no object, which Laptop would you buy?

me_right_one

Hi all. My current laptop is 10 years old and is starting to give blue screen errors - I think its time for a new one.

So, I want to buy something that will still be usable in another 10 years. This is a Toshiba Satellite A-200, it was fairly high spec when I bought it, and I believe that is why its still just about operational. (Are Toshiba's still about, never see them in PC world?)If money was no object, what would you buy now to withstand the test of time?

siobhan08

I go with a Mac. Currently have one 6 years and have had next to no trouble with. Odd things like the Optical drive failing but that could happen to any laptop. I have made some some upgrades to it over the year like a solid state hard drive and an increase in RAM. Couldn't fault it at all will easily get another 4 years ore even more out of it. Provided I don't drop it or anything like that. I'm currently doing a masters but when I end up in full time employment I intend to upgrade another Mac and keep this one as back up.
Goog thing about a Mac is that when I do upgrade, I could sell my current Mac and still make some money even after 7 or 8 years as his hold their value pretty well

thenightrider

http://www.razerzone.com/project-valerie

This is what i would buy if money was no object

Featuring three stunning high resolution 17.3 inch 4K screens, Project Valerie provides the most expansive viewing experience in a notebook. Powered by an NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 GPU, and natively supporting NVIDIA Surround View with a whopping resolution of 11520 x 2160.

Sounds nice :cool:

_Kaiser_

In my experience business grade machines offer the best value if you're not a gamer. The last few DELL Latitude's for example go on forever and come with 3 Year Onsite warranty in most cases (I've bought several second hand for myself as well as in work).

The problem though with the newer Ultrabooks that most of the manufacturers are rushing to put out now, is compromises are made on performance to keep the heat down in the smaller chassis, or they can suffer from heat-related issues like overheating, fan noise etc.

Get yourself something with a 4th gen i7, 1080p/Full HD resolution and 16GB RAM with a 256/512GB SSD and you'll be set for years IMO.

eoinzy2000

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

In my experience business grade machines offer the best value if you're not a gamer. The last few DELL Latitude's for example go on forever and come with 3 Year Onsite warranty in most cases (I've bought several second hand for myself as well as in work).

The problem though with the newer Ultrabooks that most of the manufacturers are rushing to put out now, is compromises are made on performance to keep the heat down in the smaller chassis, or they can suffer from heat-related issues like overheating, fan noise etc.

Get yourself something with a 4th gen i7, 1080p/Full HD resolution and 16GB RAM with a 256/512GB SSD and you'll be set for years IMO.

Solid Advice

TheBully

I bought my other half a MacBook Pro 13 with Retina display and she hates it,
She finds it hard to use and gets frustrated by it because she's not very inteerested in technology.
If your in the same boat then stay away from mac. In my opinion they are a great laptop, battery life is great and they are very wuick and reliable.
The lack of Flash annoys me though.
It's up to you, but if your used of a toshiba, just know that mac is a completely different op system and u will need time to get to know it.

me_right_one

I'd prefer a Toshiba alright. Apart from being reliable computing-wise, they just seem to be indestructible. I know a few people who had Dells, Lenovas, Asus etc. and they all has cracked screens and dodgy USB ports after 2 or 3 years. Anyone I know with a Toshiba has them for 5 years plus! I know mine suffered knocks and falls, cups of coffee on the keyboard, kids mashing playdough into the vents etc., never a bother on it!

Are they still available though? I never see them in any of the main stream shops?

AMKC

An Asus laptop. They are fantastic computers very reliable and nice to use to. You pay a bit more than other makes but they are worth it. I had one for over 10years.

TheBully

I thought toshiba stopped selling laptops in Europe in the first quarter of last year though. I had a HP for years with no issues, it went extremely slow after I stopped using it and left it sitting for 2 years.

Alanstrainor

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

In my experience business grade machines offer the best value if you're not a gamer. The last few DELL Latitude's for example go on forever and come with 3 Year Onsite warranty in most cases (I've bought several second hand for myself as well as in work).

The problem though with the newer Ultrabooks that most of the manufacturers are rushing to put out now, is compromises are made on performance to keep the heat down in the smaller chassis, or they can suffer from heat-related issues like overheating, fan noise etc.

Get yourself something with a 4th gen i7, 1080p/Full HD resolution and 16GB RAM with a 256/512GB SSD and you'll be set for years IMO.

Great post. Another point to consider is that a lot of laptops (ultrabooks in particular) come with non-replaceable parts. RAM is commonly fixed to the main board along with the CPU. I believe that for the most part SSDs are user serviceable but this isn't universally true any more. I would want the laptop to be as serviceable as possible to ensure a long service life.

Expecting to get 10 years from a laptop is pushing things quite a lot, given that laptops typically lead tougher lives than desktops since they are moved around often.

I think those suggesting Macs might have once had a point, but the latest generation Macbook does not seem the best longevity. Non user replaceable parts across the board, even the disk is not replaceable without replacing the whole logic board.

A Dell XPS 15 is what I would be looking at. Very high performance machine, good screen, small in size, and replaceable parts and option for warranty.

AMKC wrote: »

An Asus laptop. They are fantastic computers very reliable and nice to use to. You pay a bit more than other makes but they are worth it. I had one for over 10years.

Asus are a good brand, I've had mine 4 years now and it's been reliable. Keep in mind that they sell a wide selection of machines, their cheaper models may not stand up as well as their mid-high ranges.

Germancarfan

TheBully wrote: »

I thought toshiba stopped selling laptops in Europe in the first quarter of last year though. I had a HP for years with no issues, it went extremely slow after I stopped using it and left it sitting for 2 years.

Not at all , the company I work in sell Toshiba's all the time.
Only sent out 5 last week.

The one thing I will say is that their aftersales in Ireland is very poor. They have assigned repairs to an IT company and my experience of it is poor. We were 30 days waiting on a motherboard that never arrived. Parts are hard got.

Germancarfan

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

In my experience business grade machines offer the best value if you're not a gamer. The last few DELL Latitude's for example go on forever and come with 3 Year Onsite warranty in most cases (I've bought several second hand for myself as well as in work).

The problem though with the newer Ultrabooks that most of the manufacturers are rushing to put out now, is compromises are made on performance to keep the heat down in the smaller chassis, or they can suffer from heat-related issues like overheating, fan noise etc.

Get yourself something with a 4th gen i7, 1080p/Full HD resolution and 16GB RAM with a 256/512GB SSD and you'll be set for years IMO.

Excellent advice, this spec in a Dell E7000 series latitude or XPS15 would be my choice. Depends what size screen you want.

For Forks Sake

Germancarfan wrote: »

Not at all , the company I work in sell Toshiba's all the time.
Only sent out 5 last week.

The one thing I will say is that their aftersales in Ireland is very poor. They have assigned repairs to an IT company and my experience of it is poor. We were 30 days waiting on a motherboard that never arrived. Parts are hard got.

Toshiba stopped selling consumer notebooks in Europe in the first half of last year, their commercial products are still on sale

eoinzy2000

I hot an inspirin 5000 lappy with i7 and 8gb ram recently. Bought a HDCaddy and replaced the cd drive with caddy and existing 1tb Hd and installed 256 Ssd in slot.

_Kaiser_

Germancarfan wrote: »

Excellent advice, this spec in a Dell E7000 series latitude or XPS15 would be my choice. Depends what size screen you want.

In my case it's a E7450 with a 5th gen Core i5, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD and a 14" Full HD touchscreen

I'd originally bought a 2nd hand E7440, but it kept blowing its speakers. After transferring the warranty, and several service calls (next day onsite - no posting away nonsense!) they replaced it with the then brand new model.

It's been grand since Laptops will go wrong at some point, but you can't get that level of service with a consumer grade warranty/machine.

GarIT

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Get yourself something with a 4th gen i7

Is that a typo, and if not why a 3-year-old 4th gen over a 7th gen?

_Kaiser_

GarIT wrote: »

Is that a typo, and if not why a 3-year-old 4th gen over a 7th gen?

Because most of the newer variants seem to compromise on performance in the drive to smaller chassis and energy efficiency (newer gens aren't necessarily faster/better in real world use than the "older" variant they replaced) and/or the chipset they come embedded in may not support your choice of OS - every 3 year old machine will run Win 10 comfortably for example, however many newer models won't fully Win 7 if that's what you prefer.

Plus as noted above, it was around the last 2 gens that manufacturers also started soldering RAM to the boards and otherwise restricting user serviceability. Compare say a Latitude E6440 to the E5470 and you'll find the former is far easier to work on and upgrade if you need to.

I suggested a 4th gen i7 as one of the last machines that probably still allowed you full ability to upgrade RAM, drives etc and OS of choice support while still being more than sufficient for most tasks - we have 3rd gen i5's that are still working perfectly well in the office with only a RAM bump to 8GB needed in the last 2 years. I don't see any current need to replace these unless they die which hasn't happen yet.. whereas we've had a lot more issues with some of the newest models (overheating, not performing as well, component failures etc).

GarIT

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Because most of the newer variants seem to compromise on performance in the drive to smaller chassis and energy efficiency (newer gens aren't necessarily faster/better in real world use than the "older" variant they replaced) and/or the chipset they come embedded in may not support your choice of OS - every 3 year old machine will run Win 10 comfortably for example, however many newer models won't fully Win 7 if that's what you prefer.

Plus as noted above, it was around the last 2 gens that manufacturers also started soldering RAM to the boards and otherwise restricting user serviceability. Compare say a Latitude E6440 to the E5470 and you'll find the former is far easier to work on and upgrade if you need to.

I suggested a 4th gen i7 as one of the last machines that probably still allowed you full ability to upgrade RAM, drives etc and OS of choice support while still being more than sufficient for most tasks - we have 3rd gen i5's that are still working perfectly well in the office with only a RAM bump to 8GB needed in the last 2 years. I don't see any current need to replace these unless they die which hasn't happen yet.. whereas we've had a lot more issues with some of the newest models (overheating, not performing as well, component failures etc).

Thanks for the detailed response.