[Closed] Laptop - over spending?

Can't hep with all the technical questions Pete, but I just scrolled past a social media advert for Dell back to school sale on their direct sales website. You might be able to get a decent discount, we got a bit of a bargain from there for a university laptop a couple of months ago.

Cheers Matt, trying to stack discounts as we speak!

Already have 10% NHS code, trying to stack a student code on now.....

Personally, I'd go for as small a screen as possible and use a monitor when needed.

All looks very top end, so possibly a bit over-specced, but if you want it future proof, should be fine, if dear.

IMHO higher resolution is 'nicer'. I've got a 13" Huawei that runs at 2160×1440 and much prefer it to the 1920 that is on my HP work machine (14").

So if you can stand the battery drain, I wouldn't discount the higher resolution personally. Although to run your Flight Stimulator (sic) beyond 1920 you may be beyond the ability of the graphics cards.

Just gone through a similar processes and ended up with an HP Zbook G8 Fury.

It's listed as a "mobile workstation" but carting it around as your only PC would be a chore.

I went for i9 11950, 128GB RAM, RTX5000, 2TB SSD, etc. Again, these are supposed to last at least 5 years and still be highly usable at the end of that period. I did go for the high res screen, but only as it's occasionally useful for displaying large simulations. Most of the time it'll either be ran on a monitor or at 1920*1200.

Am I right in thinking a 1920×1200 screen will be fine for a 15″ machine?

It'll be okay. I find 4k is a bit unusable on a 14" laptop. QHD seems the sweet spot for me.

Better battery life with a FHD screen over 4k though.

Does it need to be portable? Found I could get a much better spec buying a Dell XPS desktop which allows me to process lots of RAW wihtout overheating, and a better graphics card as well. My laptop fans would always go into overdrive when running lightroom and processing RAW as the graphics card was struggling to keep cool.
Can more easily run a multiple monitor set up which is great when editing images and sharing in Lightroom.

Is there anything like a usb c portable desktop? Say I had a usb c display port for work. it'd be great if I could just plug in the cube, whatever it is, instead of the work laptop and and play with the same mouse, monitors, keyboard etc?

Edit: yes, loads.

Just bough an inspiron 15 (7000). Touch screen, 1tb, 16gb RAM, i7 processor, separate graphics card metal body. It was a refurb from the Dell outlet for £800, Had good machines from them in the past. So far I've tested it's capabilities browsing facebook and singletrackworld 😉

Spec looks good OP. Would definitely recommend 16GB ram as an absolute minimum for modern day video editing apps, you might want to stick 32GB in there if your projects increase in complexity.

IMHO you can never overdo it with computer specs because it will become outdated at some point in the future guaranteed. How much you spend now determines how long into the future that will be.

The display resolution issue is a tricky one. Are you going to be using the built in screen exclusively, or is there the option to hook up to a monitor? For video / photo editing, its much better to spend the money on a larger, higher res external monitor because media editing on a relatively tiny laptop screen for long periods isn't ideal. I'd personally skip on the 4K OLED screen and use the money saved to get a decent 32" external LCD with good sRGB levels / a wide colour gamut.

I went for an XPS 17. It far exceeds my needs, but it's a lovely bit of kit.

I do a lot of working from my hotel room/caravan and different office locations, so it's nice to have the screen size.

It fits fine in my Wenger Carbon backpack (the tardis). I have a Surface Pro 7 if I need something more portable

Well, ordered an XPS 15 last night just before the sale ended.....

i7 11800H processor.
16 GB.
1TB SSD.
RTX 3050 Ti.
1920 x 1200 screen.

So saved about £450 with the sale and NHS discount.

Decided against the 4k screen and will spend the difference on a nice monitor instead, using the same logic as devash above!

Many thanks for all your advice, much appreciated.

Ta,
Pete.

That's basically the spec I have and it's a nice bit of kit. Enjoy

I think you've chosen wisely.

One realisation that hit me minutes before I made an expensive mistake was that the bigger screens require more grunt to drive. I'm out of touch with GPU models but that sounds a biggish number. (-:

My work laptop is a Feel XPS13 which is very good, light, powerful, etc but I'm not completely convinced with the 4K screen which doesn't really give much benefit and does have some comparability issues with the CAD software I use. I think the current gen XPS now have the camera at the top of the screen rather than the bottom which allows everyone in my video calls to see up my nose.

New one built, on it's way.

But....the old one.

Hmm.

The idea was to stick a spare drive in and give it to the grand daughter.

So, off to my local IT specialist (Son In Law), dismantle it and replace the drive.

Nowt.

Not.
A.
Sausage.

Give it a good clean, take the RAM out and put it back in again etc.

Hello Polly!?

Nah, landfill.
Unless someone knows of somewhere that will recycle a borked, 7 year old Asus?
Anyone?

It's arrived.
A month early, which is nice.

First impressions?
Doesn't look fancy or flash, just plain silver and black.
The build quality is hugely impressive, no flex anywhere and the areas that some have reported issues with; track pad, scratches and dings etc are all perfect. I think I've got a good one.

Keyboard is lovely, couple of work documents so far, 2000 words each, no fatigue and it seems to flatter my typing. Might not buy a fancy Bluetooth keyboard after all.

The screen is delightful - glad I went with the 1920 x 1200 rather than the 4k. No light bleed, the nicest panel I've seen on a laptop.
Tbh, it's way too bright indoors at 100%, but I think it will do very well in overly bright meeting rooms and lecture theatres.

Battery life of 8 hours on the first charge, BBC Sounds on permanently in the background, 6 or so tabs open. I'm hoping this improves after a couple of charges.

Even the speakers are pleasant.

Signed up to Steam just so I could play Grim Fandango again, ended up with the remastered Portal 1 & 2 as well, so we'll see how that goes tomorrow.

So far, so good.

Battery life of 8 hours on the first charge,

Sounds excellent given the specs!

If you haven't already, sign up to Epic too; they have free games each week (to keep), and the sales are pretty, uh, epic (ugh).