Laptop for Digital Marketer

cogra10

Hi all,

I was looking for some recommendations for what to look for in getting a new laptop such as what processor and RAM would be needed?

I currently have a laptop that a few years old.Its Acer Aspire 5733, 6GB Ram, Intel Core I3 CPU m379@2.40GHz 2.40GHz.

I was wondering could my current laptop be upgraded or is it best to buy a refurbished or new laptop?

I work in Digital Marketing and will be starting to do an Msc in Digital Marketing soon and looking for something mainly to help me do the Msc Online and the coursework involved and then maybe using it to go freelance into digital marketing and create video/image content etc..

If you could give me some tips as to if I could upgrade my existing laptop or what to look for in a new laptop would be much appreciated!

Budget: €250-500

Intended use: college work, internet, e-mail, Word processing, maybe use it for video & image editing for shotcut or gimp editors.

Mobility: Not Hugely important, but something to be able to pack away and bring from home to work.

Warranty: Is a warranty important? Ideally at least a year but I know some refurbs are only 6 months.
What Operating System do you use? Windows

GarIT

Old laptops can't really be upgraded. You can add more ram but it won't help much.

You'll want to be looking for things people don't normally look for in a laptop so can be difficult to find. A real life colour accurate screen is probably the most important. Many laptops colours are off what would come out in print. So keep an eye out for laptops mentioned as having 100% sRGB coverage.

Are you doing any graphic design or image editing? because that hugely changes what you need to look for if it's not just word documents and emails that you're working with.

EDIT: I didn't read the creating content bit until the second time around. You need a colour accurate screen and if doing video editing a good graphics card

It might be worth saving and waiting a while. You won't get something better than what you have for less the 3-400 so it wouldn't be much of an upgrade. There was a great (not great for video editing) Lenovo laptop going around recently for 490 in bargain alerts.

Doing freelance work throws a spanner in the works. A professional level laptop for graphic design or video editing would start at €1k for a cheap one and the good ones sitting between €2-3k. I have friends that have spent €5-10k. You can write some of it off your tax bill though.

the one big upgrade that you could do is to put an ssd drive into that laptop if you haven't already which will speed it up HUGELY over the old spinning HDD

this is a good one. Kingdian are well respected in terms of making ssds

https://www.amazon.co.uk/KingDian-Cache-SATAIII-Solid-State/dp/B01B2OR2TY/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=kingdian%2Bssd&qid=1599133885&s=computers&sr=1-3&th=1

reinstall windows clean off a usb stick (google how) is the best way imo to go once you have installed the new drive (very easy to do)

otherwise the honor magicbook 14 / matebook d 14 is £500 (was £450 but gone) is the best value - from amazon uk or hihonor.com -> see other threads for details

oopsies

Interested in this too. Let me know what you buy.. so much choice out there.

bobbyy gee

i would wait until the new cpus are out
there's a shortage of laptops due to back to school. companies seem to be selling 2-3 years outif date computers for full price dmssd and memory prices are dropping and so should gpu cards soon..i think your budget is a bit low.
you could back up windows and install new copy .add ssd drive and more memory
your budget should be 600-700
https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nb&sort=r&hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=pl&hloc=uk&hloc=eu&v=e

cogra10

oopsies wrote: »

Interested in this too. Let me know what you buy.. so much choice out there.

Thanks for your all your feedback and help.

But I decided to upgrade my current laptop to an SSD drive and also upgrade to 8GB of RAM, to see how I go with that short-term as money a bit tight at the moment. And try and save up the money for a performance laptop in the future.

cogra10

It looks like I have run into problems with the laptop upgrade. I was attending Zoom lectures and once the lecturer would share his screen for a powerpoint the screen would freeze while he be going onto the next slides and also the video of the lecturer would get a bit streched out. I did get a error about the graphics cards, see attachment. I was wondering would anyone have any advice if this can be fixed?

go to device mgr and uninstall whatever is in display adaptors and reboot

might help