Another ‘What laptop’ thread, sorry.

[Captain Raymond Holt]

Hi all,

Mrs Holt currently uses an old MacBook for some home study type stuff. Uses office 365, Teams for calls and general internet stuff. Nothing intensive at all.

The Mac seems to be slow to the point of being prohibitive when it comes to some work.

I’d like a Windows machine as I know how they work!

Max of say £500? She uses it for about a day a week and I have my own kit so I’m not wanting to put ££ into it.



Is this type of thing better/same/worse?

Cheers,
A Luddite.

[colin79666]

Honestly, just pay up for a new MacBook Air. It will probably last twice as long as any Windows laptop, especially in the sub £1000 price range and you will spare your other half the huge pain of moving from MacOS to Windows.

The M2 can be had new for £800 at John Lewis.

[captain_cynic]

Captain Raymond Holt said:

Hi all,

I’d like a Windows machine as I know how they work!

Max of say £500? She uses it for about a day a week and I have my own kit so I’m not wanting to put ££ into it.

Is this type of thing better/same/worse?

Cheers,
A Luddite.

For that money you can do way better. the i3 Processor will be a bit lacking.

I recommend Asus but full disclosure, I'm an Asus fanboy (typing this post on one). They're generally light, powerful and have a decent amount of ports for a competitive price. Other brands are available of course.

I'd go with something like this:
https://www.johnlewis.com/asus-vivobook-15-laptop-...
i5, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD. Ideal as a web and email machine.

If you want to spend the whole 500 squid, something like this:
https://www.johnlewis.com/asus-vivobook-15-laptop-...
i7 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, this will dominate the Zoom meeting.

For work stuff, I usually recommend a Dell as they've good warranty support. I've never had to return any of my Asus laptops so I'm not sure how their support is.

For a new laptop, I'd say get an Intel i5 CPU with 8 GB of RAM as a minimum. However the big stumbling block will be the wife... If she doesn't want it there's not point in buying it. Maybe worth dragging her to a Curry's or JL store to look at some in the metal as it were.

Captain Raymond Holt said:

Mrs Holt

You mean Kevin

[OutInTheShed]

Captain Raymond Holt said:

Hi all,

Mrs Holt currently uses an old MacBook for some home study type stuff. Uses office 365, Teams for calls and general internet stuff. Nothing intensive at all.

The Mac seems to be slow to the point of being prohibitive when it comes to some work.

I’d like a Windows machine as I know how they work!

Max of say £500? She uses it for about a day a week and I have my own kit so I’m not wanting to put ££ into it.



Is this type of thing better/same/worse?

Cheers,
A Luddite.

My partner does all that with a Thinkpad G500 i3, which must be about 10 years old now.
It's not intensive stuff.
We upgraded it to Win10 some years ago, pretty sure it was win8 when new.
It's also been used for watching films etc.

Are you happy paying a 365 subscrition?
I was looking at used machines, nearly bought one with Office included, but I wanted more RAM and graphics for CAD work.
Also I like a big HD screen for spreadsheets, but I'm happy to plug in a monitor for that.
And small laptops without a numeric keypad are not my favourite!

[Mont Blanc]

colin79666 said:

Honestly, just pay up for a new MacBook Air. It will probably last twice as long as any Windows laptop, especially in the sub £1000 price range and you will spare your other half the huge pain of moving from MacOS to Windows.

The M2 can be had new for £800 at John Lewis.

This.

Any of the M-chip MacBook Air's will be rocket fast and don't seem to slow down over time unlike the old Intel Macs.

A MacBook Air is honestly a total bargain in computing terms. I wouldn't buy anything else personally if I was just doing the usual stuff such as Office, web browsing, photos, etc.

[SteveKTMer]

Mont Blanc said:

colin79666 said:

Honestly, just pay up for a new MacBook Air. It will probably last twice as long as any Windows laptop, especially in the sub £1000 price range and you will spare your other half the huge pain of moving from MacOS to Windows.

The M2 can be had new for £800 at John Lewis.

This.

Any of the M-chip MacBook Air's will be rocket fast and don't seem to slow down over time unlike the old Intel Macs.

A MacBook Air is honestly a total bargain in computing terms. I wouldn't buy anything else personally if I was just doing the usual stuff such as Office, web browsing, photos, etc.

This.

I bought a Macbook Air M3 a few weeks ago and even despite being an Apple fan, I'm really impressed. It's so fast, it has got 16GB memory and a 512GB disk, but it's clearly faster for general tasks than my Macbook Pro M1 pro I bought in 2021. Both are really fast, very useable and the M1 pro hasn't slowed down or changed in any way despite being upgrade with each new OS release from Apple.

When you take into account the fact that a Macbook air will just keep on gong for ever, they are a bargain. And if you only buy the M1 version, that's still fast. My Mac Mini M1 is still fast with daily tasks, faster than the Intel HP laptops I have to buy for work !

[OutInTheShed]

SteveKTMer said:

This.

I bought a Macbook Air M3 a few weeks ago and even despite being an Apple fan, I'm really impressed. It's so fast, it has got 16GB memory and a 512GB disk, but it's clearly faster for general tasks than my Macbook Pro M1 pro I bought in 2021. Both are really fast, very useable and the M1 pro hasn't slowed down or changed in any way despite being upgrade with each new OS release from Apple.

When you take into account the fact that a Macbook air will just keep on gong for ever, they are a bargain. And if you only buy the M1 version, that's still fast. My Mac Mini M1 is still fast with daily tasks, faster than the Intel HP laptops I have to buy for work !

The fact that you perceive your 3 year old 'pro' as notceably slower perhaps says something about Apple stuff?

I think it's great when reasonably new, but shows its age by maybe 4 years old, and wants to be in the bin by 8 years old.
True of everything to some extent, but I think windows stuff is OK to use for longer and Anroid stuff it's usually moot because it's broken before then anyway.
Like buying a car, you need to buy this stuff with a view to replacing it in due course.

[Mont Blanc]

SteveKTMer said:

This.

I bought a Macbook Air M3 a few weeks ago and even despite being an Apple fan, I'm really impressed. It's so fast, it has got 16GB memory and a 512GB disk, but it's clearly faster for general tasks than my Macbook Pro M1 pro I bought in 2021. Both are really fast, very useable and the M1 pro hasn't slowed down or changed in any way despite being upgrade with each new OS release from Apple.

When you take into account the fact that a Macbook air will just keep on gong for ever, they are a bargain. And if you only buy the M1 version, that's still fast. My Mac Mini M1 is still fast with daily tasks, faster than the Intel HP laptops I have to buy for work !

Yep.

My heavily used M1 Air is 3 years old now, is still absolutely bloody fast at everything, including using Lightroom etc. Battery life is still over 10 hours (down from 15 when new).

Paid £899 for it from Amazon. It's been the best computer I have ever owned, ever, and stupidly good value.

[SteveKTMer]

OutInTheShed said:

SteveKTMer said:

This.

I bought a Macbook Air M3 a few weeks ago and even despite being an Apple fan, I'm really impressed. It's so fast, it has got 16GB memory and a 512GB disk, but it's clearly faster for general tasks than my Macbook Pro M1 pro I bought in 2021. Both are really fast, very useable and the M1 pro hasn't slowed down or changed in any way despite being upgrade with each new OS release from Apple.

When you take into account the fact that a Macbook air will just keep on gong for ever, they are a bargain. And if you only buy the M1 version, that's still fast. My Mac Mini M1 is still fast with daily tasks, faster than the Intel HP laptops I have to buy for work !

The fact that you perceive your 3 year old 'pro' as notceably slower perhaps says something about Apple stuff?

I think it's great when reasonably new, but shows its age by maybe 4 years old, and wants to be in the bin by 8 years old.
True of everything to some extent, but I think windows stuff is OK to use for longer and Anroid stuff it's usually moot because it's broken before then anyway.
Like buying a car, you need to buy this stuff with a view to replacing it in due course.

You're serious ?

The M3 processor is noticeably faster than the M1. That's all there is to it. M1 was faster than any i7 in 2020/21, M2 faster than M1, M3 faster than M2 and M4 faster than M3. The M3 is seriously impressive and if it wasn't faster than the M1 I'd be very surprised.

[Captain Raymond Holt]

Thanks all.

Afraid it won’t be another Apple for wife Kevin reasons.

@Cynic, thanks for the post - really useful stuff, hadn’t seen the ones you’re suggesting. Will take a look. I did assume I’d just get the same as my work laptop however I looked it up and found it’s a couple of grand I assumed thinkpads were cheap!

[robsa]

I was watching a YouTube video the other day talking about modern Windows laptops, and the guy basically said that the new SoCs are so good that it makes all the cheap laptops look like bad value. So you should either lash out on a £1000+ laptop with the new chips, or if you must buy a cheap laptop then the M1 MacBook Air is now the best budget laptop. Which I guess is not something most people would imagine.
Apple are selling refurbed ones for £689 currently.

[captain_cynic]

Captain Raymond Holt said:

Thanks all.

Afraid it won’t be another Apple for wife Kevin reasons.

@Cynic, thanks for the post - really useful stuff, hadn’t seen the ones you’re suggesting. Will take a look. I did assume I’d just get the same as my work laptop however I looked it up and found it’s a couple of grand I assumed thinkpads were cheap!

Sadly any mention of Apple brings out the cult members.

They just can't accept they arent as good as a laptop less than half the price.

If you've any questions post them. Believe it or not there are a few people who know about computers on here.

[sideways sid]

For the usage, how about a Chromebook?

[richhead]

Ive said this before, but ive got a lenovo ideapad, cost about £150 2 years ago, and way faster than my £1200 work laptop.
it will go all day on the battery, not much storage and isnt going to play games or do cad work, but for email/surfing its brilliant, and at that price almost disposable, something like this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fusion5-A90B-128GB-Window...

[SteveKTMer]

captain_cynic said:

Sadly any mention of Apple brings out the cult members.

They just can't accept they arent as good as a laptop less than half the price.

If you've any questions post them. Believe it or not there are a few people who know about computers on here.

[robsa]

captain_cynic said:

Sadly any mention of Apple brings out the cult members.

They just can't accept they arent as good as a laptop less than half the price.

If you've any questions post them. Believe it or not there are a few people who know about computers on here.

Comedy gold.