On Sat, Jun 26, 2021 at 12:38:16AM +0100, Michael Goddard wrote:
If you were in the market for a laptop, which make, model, size etc would it be, and why?
I purchased myself this laptop a few months ago:
https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/lenovo-thinkpad-p14s-gen1-amd-ryzen-7-pro-47...
I went for a Thinkpad as even though they are not what they were in the past they still provide a Trackpoint which I prefer over a Trackpad, the Ryzen 4750U is a fast CPU and I get a 3 year warranty. 14" laptop is the sweet spot really for general use, if it was my main computing device I would go for a 15", if it was something that I was on the road with all the time and I was using a desktop for primary use at home I would have considered a 13".
£700 for a well built fast machine that will continue to get firmware updates and support for around 5-7 years seems good value to me. Although, I did immediately upgrade the RAM with an 8GB stick for a total of 16GB and replaced the 256GB SSD with a 1TB SSD which was about £50 for the RAM and about £95 for the SSD. Probably also worth mentioning that Lenovo do support Linux and have options in the firmware and released a firmware update to fix a bug that affects Linux users recently.
I expect to be using this as my main laptop for around 5 years after purchase, although I said that when I got my previous Thinkpad, a W530 workstation in September 2013. The only reason I got this as a replacement was that the W530 was getting a bit slow with some tasks, the keyboard and case were getting a bit grotty and recently it would do a few random reboots every couple of weeks although I suspect it just needs the motherboard replacing (I do have the spare but it's a 3 hour job to replace), and the battery got tired.
I would also avoid buying any "home" grade laptop, typically they have very poor cases and hinges and fall to bits quite quickly. There's a reason they are cheap to buy, I'd always be looking at HP/Lenovo/Dell business class laptops.
Adam