Laptop advice

[terrym]

My 17yr old daughter is off to University in September and her laptop is in rough shape, in fact she's kind of hard on them. She wants nothing to do with Apple. Not much of a gamer so schoolwork, social media, music, Skype, Netflix that type of thing. The Samsung she has now hasn't been bad but its in rough shape. Any advice on brands to look for or avoid? I use a work supplied Dell and it's a decent machine but I'm not hard on it. Our desktop is an HP and has been dependable.

[Dythbringer]

Where is TurkeyRookie? He is the man for this type of question.

[terrym]

TR was instrumental in helping me spec and buy my HP desktop. Great guy and very knowledgeable. Unfortunately I think he has moved on. Our loss.

[skypilot]

Consider i5 or i7, SSD rather than HD in brands like HP, Acer, Lenova, Asus. Staples has really good refurbished(speed,features, etc) for really good prices.
Same with best buy.

[terrym]

Consider i5 or i7, SSD rather than HD in brands like HP, Acer, Lenova, Asus. Staples has really good refurbished(speed,features, etc) for really good prices.
Same with best buy.

She likes 15". I don't think she needs i7 for her basic uses how much would an i3 limit her? have been looking a bit and don't see many with SSD? Must be an expensive upgrade? Are Asus and Acer decent products? They bought my wife a refurb at work and it wasn't a good experience, what do you think of them?
the problem is what is advertised are promo price point pkgs. wish I could build from scratch with what is useful for her. I used to work with a guy who built desktops from scratch but he's out of it now.

[Dakota Creek]

Just picked up an ASUS 15.6 and am liking it so far. Had an old HP that appeared to be on it's last legs at this time last year. Bought a Lenovo .... never again! After six months of fighting with them, I am finally getting my money back. I believe Staples still has a bundle package on right now for laptop and software.

And still on sale -
http://www.staples.ca/en/ASUS-Vivobo...7_2-CA_1_20001

[mosquito]

I have been abusing my Acer (to and from work, working all day ....) and it has worked good. The last Dell I had died shortly after the warranty period... (Thank goodness for external backup drives.), the Lenovo I wouldn't touch (comes with built in hacks).

I took a QUICK look and if I was buying one today based on what you want (and 2 minutes search) it would be probably this one or something comparable. It is a newer version of the one I use essentially and have had for probably 2 years now.
http://www.staples.ca/en/Acer-F5-573...0_2-CA_1_20001

The external drive I would recommend is also on sale.
http://www.staples.ca/en/ADATA-DashD...7_2-CA_1_20001

If you have several machines then a multiuser McAfee is the way I would go on security.


** Supplemental
Lenovo has once again been caught installing spyware on its laptops and workstations without the user's permission or knowledge. (3rd time, right from factory)
http://thehackernews.com/2015/09/len...top-virus.html

[skypilot]

She likes 15". I don't think she needs i7 for her basic uses how much would an i3 limit her? have been looking a bit and don't see many with SSD? Must be an expensive upgrade? Are Asus and Acer decent products? They bought my wife a refurb at work and it wasn't a good experience, what do you think of them?
the problem is what is advertised are promo price point pkgs. wish I could build from scratch with what is useful for her. I used to work with a guy who built desktops from scratch but he's out of it now.

For school work most any processor will suffice.

Also look at cleafance laptops. I have one from 6 years ago(open box) HP that seved me well.

I hear good things about Acer, Asus, Lenova. I hear HP has slipped some with issues around overheating but you know how word of mouth and reviews can be.

If just for NOW(school) I see no issue with less processor, a non solid state drive, lower memory and lower HD space. When you do that you drop retail significantly. I also would go Win 10 even though I dread going to it. Of corse be sure whatever you pick has the usual ports , web cam, wifi, etc., etc.

[Snowwalker]

You can switch out the HDD for SSD in any "LAPTOP". Watch out for the "notebook" style laptop. The hard drives are soldered in and you'll have to send it to a guy like me to do the switch.

If your going to run Widuu's first thing you HAVE to do is create a recovery disk, and use a SSD external drive to store her work. Don't keep the work only on the internal. Every day she just copies her Document directory on the internal to the document directoy on the external.

Now if she wants to run Linux( has all the software she needs for free) I can send you a copy or you can download and burn the iso for the install disk to a 4.7G DVD( The same one you copy your movies to).

Acer is what karen is getting for Xmas...We will see how long she takes before she ripps winduu's out by it's bits and installs Ubuntu...

[Snowwalker]

Ok I should say... I would not go with anything less then an I5 or equal AMD processor.

It also may seem like a small thing but get a laptop that uses DDR4 memory. You can buy a laptop with 8G memory now and then upgrade to 16G or more later to improve the laptop's performance. Ask how much memory the board can access. That mean if you put in a full 32G( yup DDR4 comes that big) how much can the computer see and use. All DDR4 machines can use 8 to 16G, but beyond that not all can use all the memory.

Then you end up doing things like creating swap drives out of memory to speed up performance...