woolybanana Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 My old PC hard drive is beginning to grind away like a white van man grinding his teeth in traffic, so I suspect it is time we parted company.Could any of you kind folk advise svp on what is good in mid-range laptops currently; I do not play games on the computer but do a lot of internet and watch TV progs etc online, besides the usual storage of photos etc?Not the cheapest, nor the most expensive, probably not Apple or Dell. Either azerty or qwerty (therefore French or English sourced)( I have been told by the electronics chap in my local Hyper U that electronics stuff coming in for September, after the holidays and for the beginning of the new school year, is 25% more expensive because of the weakness of the euro, so it may pay me to source from UK).Thanks guys. Now back to painting, planting, fitting etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 If you have the recovery disks or you can make them (there is normally a program on the Laptop that allows you to do this, you will need some CD's or a DVD, it will tell you) you could replace the existing HDD possibly with a bigger one. You might also find that because you are clearing out all the 'junk' when you replace the drive the machine may well run quicker. This one is only £40 http://www.amazon.co.uk/367/dp/B007NVGWV0 and if your frightened to have a go yourself then buy the drive and get somebody to fit it for you. I have done this a couple times for friends and they are plesantly supprised afterwards at the price and the speed. PS Don't forget to backup the data whilst it is still working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vette Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 The only advice I can offer relates to the new machine that my good lady bought a few weeks ago. It is an 'Acer Chromebook'. Very nice machine but, you cannot currently get 'Skype' on it. That was something we didn't know until it was too late.Of course, if you have no need of 'Skype' then no worries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 The other issue with Chromebooks is they rely heavily on an Internet connection to run their applications and many will not work without being connected. Acer are good machines in general and Acer make motherboards for many 'named' laptop manufacturers and laser printers (Brother for instance). I have always had Toshiba laptops and they are very good, possibly the best in my opinion. I have also had a Sony which was quite good. Lot of corporate companies buy Toshiba laptops because of their reliability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 Chromebooks are cheap for a reason and I would never advise anyone to buy one.If your budget is tight you'd be better off buying a refurbished branded Windows machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 [quote user="AnOther"]Chromebooks are cheap for a reason and I would never advise anyone to buy one.If your budget is tight you'd be better off buying a refurbished branded Windows machine.[/quote] Agreed. Most computers suffer from mechanical breakdowns such as HDD's and cooling fans. Cooling fans then lead to other electronic component failure due to over heating. If the fans are OK (they start to make a noise before they fail) and the HDD is 'iffy' then as I sugested just replace it which is much the same as what companies do when they refurbish them. Think of what you could do with the money you save. [;-)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suein56 Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 [quote user="Quillan"]I have always had Toshiba laptops and they are very good, possibly the best in my opinion.[/quote]I'll second that; OH had one from 2004 till 2013 even though it had a pentium 4 processor and ran hot (eventually that is what killed it); my Toshiba laptop dates from July 2006 and, even though it is XP, it still steams along nicely, except it could do with a bit more RAM memory - couldn't we all ?I adore the Toshiba keyboards, quite the most comfortable I have found, and I do a fair bit of typing at times. Don't buy too budget a model though as stuff like the hinges and the top/main body can be a bit bendy in the cheapo models.My current main laptop is a Samsung, bought 2nd hand, it is good but suffers from a not-too-brilliant motherboard and the keyboard is only OK; though the whole machine is very robust and the screen/picture quality is excellent.Sue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolybanana Posted July 30, 2015 Author Share Posted July 30, 2015 Thank you for all the good advice; I will cogitate and bring forth in the due time. Very grateful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonzjob Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 We went onto using Macs 5 or so years back and they are still running as new. I'm not trying to sell them to you, just to say how I have managed them. An iMac desktop and a MacBook Pro laptop.The best things I have done is to put larger hybrid disks in them and put the memory up to the max size. Both make them much faster as well as giving more space than you could shake a stick at. It can be done to any machine and it isn't difficult.For the memory I have used this lot http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en .They have a programme that will scan you system and tell you exactly what what type of memory card/s you need and for the SSHDs I got them from Amazon. They are a mix of solid state and revolving disks and a small fraction of the cost of a solid state jobbie.This one is in our MacBook If I remember correctly this one is in the iMac.Not a lot of money, but a hell of a lot of difference. As I said, I ain't trying to sell you on Macs, these bits are for M/soft machines too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 Not decrying Macs but you can do exactly the same with a Windows laptop which will of course have cost significantly less in the first place.For example I'm currently experimenting with Windows 10 on my OH's old laptop which was bought in 2010 and it runs it perfectly well without any hardware upgrades at all.Similarly the one she's using now is from 2011 and runs Windows 7 with aplomb, also without any upgrades.The bottom line is that just about any half decent branded laptop (yes or Mac) bought in the last 5 years or so should still work exactly as it did the day it came out of the box, and without a shadow of a doubt better than any NEW Chromebook ever will, hence the advice to buy a refurbished one if the budget won't stretch to new. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 I wouldn't be too down on Chromebooks, they have their place. If you want to save space at home and want a small laptop then they will do most of what you want. Windows is starting to go the same way, having the applications in 'the cloud'. Personally, being a luddite, I don't like having my data in the cloud because it is open to abuse and hacking. So if you have WiFi at home and you don't need much portability then there is nothing really wrong with a Chromebook. If you want to take your laptop out and about and are worried about your data being secure from hacking etc then stick with a conventional laptop. There are plenty of copies of older versions of MS Office around that you can get for nothing if you need MS Word etc and lets be honest very few people use all the Word functions, most use only about 15% of them. Newer versions of Office (365) are being licenced by the year, take you back to the old IBM days when you paid an annual licence for the operating system but never owned it. The only issue you might have with a refurbished laptop is warranty, some only offer six months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sid Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 Which make? 40 years in IT and I've probably tried them all, but I haven't tried MAC simply because of cost. I don't like anything that hasn't got a proper keyboard and I do lots of image editing and logo stuff so I have to have a mouse, not a touchpad. I've always regarded Toshiba as "entry-level". These days I use Dell and have done for the past 15 years. Critics will say that they are not upgradable because a lot of the circuitry is on the motherboard; that's been fine for me as all I've ever done is swapped a HDD occasionally when they've got full or failed (HDDs are made by other well-known manufacturers in any case and you could have the same problem an any machine).I'd second ANOther's comments and use any well-known brand (maybe including Toshiba, but that wouldn't be my choice).You don't need a lot of firepower to write emails and browse the WWW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 They only issue I have had with Dells is not every Dell is the same. Then I rationalised the London museums we needed to put out a tender for a lot of new laptops and desktops, something like 200 laptops and 500 desktops which was just the start. Because we were using a system where you plug in a computer to the network and it would automatically install the operating system and applications you needed every computer of a specific model had to be the same i.e same graphics, network, audio etc chipset so you only used one 'image' for each type of machine. There was also, at the time, a maximum mtbf figure demanded in the tender and the only manufacturer that could not guarantee that the first and last computer of a specific model was the same was Dell. Their mtbf figure, at the time, was higher than Toshiba, HP and Compaq. This is because Dell said they used the best priced components (in other works the cheapest but they would not say that) on the day of manufacture. Having said that I was given a Dell laptop which I had till recently and it worked without a problem for many years. Mrs 'Q' has a desktop from her chambers which she has had for quite a few years (came with Windows XP then upgraded to Vista so gives and idea of its age) and only the mouse and keyboard have ever been replaced. The keyboard mainly because it was cheap and nasty and not having the right 'feel' for her. A lot of corporates use Dells these days so perhaps the early 'problems' have now been addressed. As a home computer there is not much wrong with them. Toshiba used to give a world wide warranty for three years with each machine. I believe it is still available but now you have to pay extra for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 OH current laptop is a Dell and it's been completely trouble free since it's purchase in 2011.It's still on it's original 250gB HD too but with an imaging backup strategy I have no fears for when it fails, as it will do one day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sid Posted July 31, 2015 Share Posted July 31, 2015 I've just retired a Dell laptop that I bought in 2003; it was used until the end of last year for email. I couldn't bear to throw it away so I guess it'll be in the loft until doomsday.You can hear stories about all makes but really what counts is your own experience or people close to you. Same for cars, washing machines... anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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