Hobby Developer - where to buy new laptop?

Esho

Hi,

I like using SQL and .NET, and want to build a MVC website, Bootstrap etc.
I haven't decided how/where I'll host it or what db I will use yet (I'm thinking MySQL as it is free to use)

I don't want to use my work laptop for this, and want to buy my own.
I don't think I could go back to anything under 8 gb RAM.

Any recommendations on where to buy from and any other specs would be great!

John_Mc

What's your budget? Don't go under 8GB ram anyway

14ned

Esho wrote: »

Any recommendations on where to buy from and any other specs would be great!

Ex-corporate business laptops from eBay US are unquestionably by far the best value. And far, far better value than buying new.

Aim for about US$150 imported. About five years old usually. You'll need to spend another €200 on more RAM, SSD, new battery, possibly a charger brick. But you'll end up with a far better laptop than from any other source.

Niall

Dubba

If you go down the second-hand route, beware of laptops with the RAM soldered to systemboard because it won't be upgradeable. That said 8GB should be fine. Here's one on ebay for peanuts.

Esho

John_Mc wrote: »

What's your budget? Don't go under 8GB ram anyway

I'm looking to spend up to 6-700.

drunkmonkey

Wait for black Friday or the next Amazon warehouse sale and pick up a gaming laptop that'll have the best spec, packed with ram, ssd, gtx graphics card, 120hz screen etc.
Have a search on Amazon UK for ASUS FX503VM-EN184T, if one of them hits the warehouse you could have a serious saving.
Can also do grand theft auto or oculus when your bored.

14ned

Esho wrote: »

I'm looking to spend up to 6-700.

You won't beat an upgraded five year old ex corporate laptop for that sort of money. Need to exceed a grand first, then it's fairly obviously a Dell XPS with infinity 4k screen irrespective.

No point spending 700 when 500 on an ex corporate will be far superior. The build quality difference, alone, is huge. Remember those ex corporates cost nearly three grand when purchased new. They're a whole different class of quality.

If you're really itching to spend 700, simply fit a better and faster SSD and even more RAM

Niall

jester77

Can you buy a laptop from work, all our laptops are sold off every 3 years and they are usually 1k less than their equivalent 2nd hand market price.

John_Mc

14ned wrote: »

Need to exceed a grand first, then it's fairly obviously a Dell XPS with infinity 4k screen irrespective.

Niall

I thought that too and went with an XPS 15 with 4k screen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD etc.

It's not a great laptop as it suffers from thermal throttling. I'll be avoiding Dell from now on I think as the thing cost me €2400

14ned

John_Mc wrote: »

I thought that too and went with an XPS 15 with 4k screen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD etc.

It's not a great laptop as it suffers from thermal throttling. I'll be avoiding Dell from now on I think as the thing cost me €2400

It's easy enough to fix e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/7orxcs/how_to_get_your_xps_15_running_cold/. Another alternative is to adjust the maximum clock speed and voltage used by the hardware, this requires a little bit of BIOS table editing, it's not hard.

But yes I agree that Dell should not ship a laptop costing that much which doesn't work right out of the box. I would say that the XPS 13's don't have those issues (and indeed I'd never buy a 15 inch, too big, not portable). Also, don't buy the top end CPUs!

Niall

Esho

14ned wrote: »

You won't beat an upgraded five year old ex corporate laptop for that sort of money. Need to exceed a grand first, then it's fairly obviously a Dell XPS with infinity 4k screen irrespective.

No point spending 700 when 500 on an ex corporate will be far superior. The build quality difference, alone, is huge. Remember those ex corporates cost nearly three grand when purchased new. They're a whole different class of quality.

If you're really itching to spend 700, simply fit a better and faster SSD and even more RAM

Niall

Thanks Niall.
How do you recognise one of these on eBay?
I had a look but nothing stood out to identify them

14ned

Esho wrote: »

Thanks Niall.
How do you recognise one of these on eBay?
I had a look but nothing stood out to identify them

Key identifiers of ex-corporate laptops are that they'll be a Dell, a HP, or a Lenovo, and they will be missing an operating system due to their hard drives being securely wiped, or they are missing any hard drive at all due to them being crushed. Note that ex-corporates are bulk licenced for their Windows OS, they'll have a sticker with serial on the bottom, or Windows during install will auto-activate because the activation key is hard wired into their BIOS. Generally it'll be Windows 7 though.

There will be a number of vendors on ebay.com who mass recycle ex-corporate laptops. Look for laptops less than $150. You'll eventually bump into someone like https://www.ebay.com/sch/PC-Laptops-Netbooks/177/m.html?item=312267841792&epid=170463668&hash=item48b49d2100%3Ag%3A1TIAAOSwuZpbxfjC%3Ark%3A13%3Apf%3A0&_ssn=e-cyclepro (note they were the first vendor I found, there are many, I have no experience with this specific vendor).

On that vendor listing I can see some amazing value. Haswell CPUs with 8Gb of RAM for $150, Sandy Bridge CPUs with 16Gb of RAM for $110. Just be careful of screen resolutions, many corporate laptops are the lowest possible resolution, and I'd swap a higher resolution for an older CPU any day seeing as CPU performance has barely budged in a decade.

Also watch out for IPS panels vs TN panels. IPS panels have far better colour reproduction.

Finally, if you do go this route, do not under any circumstances use any hard drive or SSD they supply you with. Make sure you ATA secure wipe it, and reinstall your own OS. Some would even say best never use any such drives, as nation state actors proactively target large US multinationals with hard drive firmware worms. That said, most US multinationals have become far better at protecting their networks from that stuff in recent years.

Good luck with your search!

Niall

Esho

That is really brilliant!
Thanks very much Niall.
:-)