Specs of laptop for 11 year old.

davemckenna25

Hi all. Looking for advice.
I'm looking at a laptop for my son. He's buying it from his money. Wants something for games. Minecraft and BT battles.
I'm looking at one
HP elite book workstation 8560w.
2.6ghz i5 2540m processor
320gb HD
16gb ram
15.7 inch LCD screen
Nvidea quadro 1000m with 4gb ram, 2gb dedicated.
On windows 10.
It's 2nd hand but from an online shop.
Anyone got any opinions for me.
Thanks.

mordeith

I wouldn't buy that laptop. The graphics card is not optimized for gaming and the CPU is years old

Edit: What's the budget?

davemckenna25

mordeith wrote: »

I wouldn't buy that laptop. The graphics card is not optimized for gaming and the CPU is years old

Edit: What's the budget?

Hi. The budget is only 300 to 350 so very limited.
Any recommendations or advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

davemckenna25

Getting the one above for 300.

mordeith

davemckenna25 wrote: »

Getting the one above for 300.

I doubt it will work for Minecraft. That GPU is not intended for gaming.

Seller claims its top of the range. Laptop was released in 2011

davemckenna25

Is it possible to get what he's after within his price range?
Thanks.

deandean

Does it have to be a laptop? You'll get far better value with desktop PCs.

davemckenna25

deandean wrote: »

Does it have to be a laptop? You'll get far better value with desktop PCs.

Hi. Thanks.
It does need to be laptop as he will be using it for coder dojo as well.

Alanstrainor

I would echo what others have said here. Not too much point buying a 5 year old laptop at this point, it just won't last that long imo, and is not good value at 300.

The good news is that minecraft will run on almost anything. It's requirements are extremely minimal. I think this machine represents good value and it will run Minecraft well:

http://www.harveynorman.ie/computing/laptops/lenovo-110-15isk-15.6-core-i3-4gb-1tb.html

I know we're over budget here, but this is a good deal for the price. I looked around a good bit and what I was looking for was:

Processor: Intel Core i3 or better (this is a 6th generation processor which is a plus)
RAM: 4GB minimum, in an ideal world that would be 8GB.
Storage: You'll either get 500GB or 1TB, both fine.

I looked on saveonlaptops.co.uk, laptopsdirect.co.uk, dell.ie, pcworld.ie and then harvey norman. This was the only system I saw with a Core i3 for this price.

mordeith

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I would echo what others have said here. Not too much point buying a 5 year old laptop at this point, it just won't last that long imo, and is not good value at 300.

The good news is that minecraft will run on almost anything. It's requirements are extremely minimal. I think this machine represents good value and it will run Minecraft well:

http://www.harveynorman.ie/computing/laptops/lenovo-110-15isk-15.6-core-i3-4gb-1tb.html

I know we're over budget here, but this is a good deal for the price. I looked around a good bit and what I was looking for was:

Processor: Intel Core i3 or better (this is a 6th generation processor which is a plus)
RAM: 4GB minimum, in an ideal world that would be 8GB.
Storage: You'll either get 500GB or 1TB, both fine.

I looked on saveonlaptops.co.uk, laptopsdirect.co.uk, dell.ie, pcworld.ie and then harvey norman. This was the only system I saw with a Core i3 for this price.

Good advice above. Here is Minecraft being played on a similar spec machine (albeit a better processor)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXSimQ1EZIM

TerrorFirmer

The i3-6100U will run the base game pretty well but just be warned if he's looking to play with loads of mods or shaders, performance may not be great.

€399 is a very good price for the laptop from a retail store.

davemckenna25

If over the next few months I was to upgrade the ram to 8gb would it make much difference?
Thanks for all the help people.

the_syco

Going forward, remove the DVD drive, put in something like this (check height of DVD drive before you do), and get a small SSD drive as the main drive.

mordeith

davemckenna25 wrote: »

If over the next few months I was to upgrade the ram to 8gb would it make much difference?
Thanks for all the help people.

Maybe with loading times but I doubt it would have much of an impact on the actual gaming

davemckenna25

Hi folks. That's for all your help.
The 2 of us went to the credit union then up to Harvey Norman's yesterday. Only to be told that laptop isn't available. Was sold out 2 months ago and shouldn't be still on the website?
Sorry to be a pain but would youse have any other suggestions?
Thanks.
Need to sort out a dissapointed boy by Tuesday.

sullivlo

davemckenna25 wrote: »

Hi folks. That's for all your help.
The 2 of us went to the credit union then up to Harvey Norman's yesterday. Only to be told that laptop isn't available. Was sold out 2 months ago and shouldn't be still on the website?
Sorry to be a pain but would youse have any other suggestions?
Thanks.
Need to sort out a dissapointed boy by Tuesday.

What is the new budget?

davemckenna25

400 to 450 would be the budget now. Thanks.

TerrorFirmer

If you buy online you would get a decent i3 laptop for that but buying in-store, and you said you need it by Tuesday, you don't have many options.

Something like this or this.

By going cheaper, you might save €50-60 but end up with a laptop 50% slower.

davemckenna25

I'd be willing to buy online. Just promised the young lad I'd sort him out by Tuesday.
If that's even buying online and waiting for delivery he would be ok.
He's just dissapointed after thinking he was getting it yesterday.
Thanks.

davemckenna25

Hi.
I've been looking at
http://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/laptops/inspiron-15-3000/spd/inspiron-15-3567-laptop/cn35607

Any one got opinions. When I start to look its just like a mountain of stuff to look through and I get confused at the selection available on laptopsdirect.co.uk and just get confused.
Thanks

TerrorFirmer

Yes, that is very good value at €399 from Dell considering it's an i3 and has 8GB of ram - although it comes with Linux so you would have to install Windows yourself (this is very easy to do from a USB stick using Microsoft's Media Creation Tool and requires no technical know-how).

The one for €479 is the one you need if you are not willing to do that though.

Or else something like this - this one has a full HD screen which the Dell does not.

Mountainsandh

Just to say you probably dodged a bullet with the Lenovo 110 ideapad. Got this at a very good price for daughter over the summer, so on one hand can't complain too much, on the other, it was a big disappointment.
Minecraft is not the issue, she's playing away no bother, she even has Sims 4 on it and it's grand...
... But overall it is slow, and although I thought 4 GB ram would help I can't put it in as the laptop is in one piece, would need to open the entire shell to do so as far as my untrained eye can tell. Since they made it awkward that way I am not even sure they'd have the slot for more RAM ?
There is no dvd player (we didn't check beforehand so our bad).
With Windows 10 it gets stuck in a loop of forever upgrading and takes ages to start. I fiddled around with the limited settings and start up options yesterday and improved that a bit, but I guess with W10 it will just be another delay to bear with.

Any advice on the machine and how there might be possibility for upgrades is very welcome, as I said I don't know much, but in contrast with 2 Fujitsu laptops in the house and a third for work, the ideapad is a closed machine, and seems to be designed in a way to prevent upgrades.

davemckenna25

Thanks TerrorFirmer.

I was looking at a business Dell one till I found out it didn't include vat.

davemckenna25

HI Does it cost to use the windows media creation tool to install windows 10 on the laptop? Thanks

davemckenna25

Hi.
Sorry to be posting again.
I could stretch to this one, its an i5 7th generation processor.
http://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/laptops/inspiron-15-3000/spd/inspiron-15-3567-laptop/cn35608
Works out at 459 inc vat.
Just it comes with Ubuntu Linux 16.04 SP1, I don't mind installing windows 10 on it after as TerrorFirmer said, just wondering is there a cost associated with getting the windows 10 that I need to factor in?
Thanks all and sorry if I'm wrecking your heads.

TerrorFirmer

Nope, you can use trial Windows 10 forever, all you have is a little watermark in the bottom right corner but it's 100% functional and always will be. I've never paid for Win10, I just use the free version.

How it works is, you take a 4GB+ USB stick, put it into another PC or Laptop, and download the Windows Media Creation tool. All you have to do is run it and it basically does everything itself, creates a bootable Win10 install.

Then plug the USB key into the new laptop and on bootup, usually it's something like F8, F11 or F12 key to enter bootup menu. Just select USB and you're done.

Win10 also installs all it's own drivers, so you literally have nothing to do, once it's installed you'll have a fresh install of Win10 without all the bloated crap that usually comes with laptops and ready to go.

davemckenna25

Is it worth the extra 60 euro for the i5 7th gen instead of i3 6th gen and the 620 instead 520 graphics card?
Thanks.

TerrorFirmer

For the sake of €60 I would. The CPU and graphics are faster - not much, but they are faster and with lower end laptops every little helps when you will be doing light gaming.

Just as long as you know this isn't a 'gaming' laptop, and if he suddenly decides he wants to play some of the bigger modern games it's not going to run them well, if at all. It will be perfectly good for Minecraft though.