Gradually realising that I'm really out of the loop on such topics these days. Before I default to a Dell, can anyone give a recommendation on a decent laptop for use by my other half at uni for a year before embarking on a primary school teaching career?
Basicas desirs of said machine include:
Touchpad with actual buttons
No separate number keypad (just to help reduce size)
Offline based working, will be using Office 365 mostly
Not a Mac
Quick loading
Any thoughts? Or they much of a muchness these days?
This is still a thing then....
I recently acquired an Asus Quad Turbo for less than £400. Does everything I need and has a remarkable battery.
We've had a Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, does all of the above and been faultless for the past 6 years.
Starting to slow down now and would happily get same.
I have two daughters at uni.... One has Google (chrome) Pixelbook, the other a Dell XPS 13.
They both say that their laptops are perfect for what they're doing (business).
(Actually I have a third daughter at uni with a MacBook Pro and she says she doesn't need a Mac at all.)
One has Google (chrome) Pixelbook
This is the one we're probably most unsure about - do you know if the Office Apps are as good as the desktop versions these days? Thinking more Word and Powerpoint and less Excel.... hopefully
The startup time and battery life definitely appeal
Just bought a Dell Inspiron 2 in 1 for the daughter after a bit of research. They were doing a decent discount a few weeks ago, might be worth checking - worthgetting a reasonable spec i5, decent ssd etc. that'll do you for a while. Touchsreen too worth considering.
The foldable laptops are good if it needs to double as a mini tv for youtube etc.
I'd go for something around costing at least 500-600, with a smaller screen. And get a second monitor+keyboard+mouse for using at home. My reasoning being it'll be lighter and a lot nicer to move around, and go any cheaper and the quality is noticeably worse.
At that price the Huawei Matebook D14/D15 get good reviews, nice 14" screen, look fairly smart. So one of them.
Based on your requirements, anything with an SSD in it.
I have three Dell laptops on my desk here. One is twelve years old and brilliant. The second is a shovelware piece of garbage. The third is, well, it's OK.
Based on your requirements, anything with an SSD in it.
Can you still get laptops without SSDs?
refurb t-series thinkpad. They're pcs with a build quality that's extremely high, that are fairly expensive and tend to spend their life on the desk of some corporate worker. at 2 years old you get great spec, and great build quality. I've an old T430 as a home laptop that's still going strong at ~12 years old
Can't help with most, but I would avoid a Chromebook. I have one and whilst it's great for many things, if you're using MS packages a lot then you want a proper laptop.
Something with a touchscreen let's you draw and handwrite stuff.
After a year of watching terrible It skills of lecturers online the best ones were using graphics pads or toy screens.
I appreciate that's a bit different to primary school teaching but I bet it's a useful thing even if it's just to get them used to illegible comments.
Bear in mind as a student she may be able to get hefty discounts. You defo can with dell.
Secondary school teacher. +1 for touchscreen and pen. It's transformative for planning, notes etc with OneNote. Marking work online is so much easier. Appreciate primary is different in many ways, but once you've annotated some policy or other in OneNote you'll never again print, annotation, file, lose.
Kids use touchscreens all the time so I'd definitely go down that route. I have a non-touch Dell and use a tablet to draw on. #1 son just writes on the screen and it's ace. His is one of those you can fold backwards and use as a tablet as well. Spendy but nice.
FWIW I think my Dell is pretty poor in terms of build. Lenovo for me seem better quality. We also have his HP which seems somewhere in the middle.
Offline based working, will be using Office 365 mostly
Sorry, when I said a Chromebook would be good I read this as online based working.
You sure about that? All three of my daughters work is office 365 but using the online apps.
In which case anything with a browser would do.
Just posted this in the pupil focussed thread about the same topic, but It sounds like the functional recommendations are similar. Decent discount on some nice touch screen, 14" refurbs.
https://www.dellrefurbished.co.uk/laptops?model_f []=Latitude%207490
SSD 256gb minimum
RAM 8 minimum
Intel i5 AMD equivalent minimum
Whatever touch screen you can get.
Most brands are fine nowadays.
I have Acer but no touch screen and I think I bought mine for £450 or less.
As the screen is the thing I am looking at all day I put high importance on it.
Just got (free via work) a Lenovo C630 with a 15" 4K touch screen and love it. Battery lasts about 7 hours even with that big screen and it does everything as quickly as a Chromebook would.
Also well built in aluminium but not cheap (for a Chromebook)
