need laptop rec.
- Thread starter cromag27
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OP
OP
oops sorry, forgot to mention that for this laptop it has to be windows due to certain programs i have to run. have a macbook pro already!
i would actually look at a gaming lap top. Windows architecture does not run adobe that well and the enhanced graphics memory of a gaming pc will help with the slower performance. Save often the main reason publishing sectors use OS is stability. My 11 year old mac desktop has never randomly needed to be restarted. My year old HP has at least once a month. The disk drive did finally fail on my mac lol. No idea when tbh someone randomly wanted a disk of their wedding photos last year. Years ago switched to thumb drives lol.
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You can probably get Digital Storm to build one to your specs for cheaper than you can buy one off the shelf. Tell them we sent you if you do. (There might be a discount for referral)
I'm fond of my Dell G7. Great screen, SSD's, Intel Core I7, 16gb ram, under 800.
Look into lenovo laptops. Great specs without the added cost of the name game hype(Dell, HP, macbook, etc).
christopher wainright
Active Member
Great computer ideas have already been mentioned but what's the budget? And would you like a laptop with a GPU for gaming as Gareth mentioned above? If so and your looking for a cheaper budget gamer check out the Acer nitro line. Good CPU Intel i5, memory and a decent GPU for the money. May want a bigger hard drive than comes installed though.
Waters
"...in perfect isolation, here behind my wall."
To be honest....any of the brands would be fine. Most of them all use the same internals anyways. Just buy based on processor, drive, and memory.....and video card if needed. My job is deploying, repairing, imaging, supporting laptops......I find no one brand to be better than another (unless you are ripping it apart to replace defective components...then I vote Dell lol).
GlassMunky
2500 Club Member
Why not just windows on your mac for those programs that need it?
Saves you buying another computer
This is exactly what I was getting at with my comment about buying into the name brand game. Thank you @Waters , you said it much better then I did.
If I was laptop shopping for myself, I'd likely review Lenovo for some of their Thinkpad line as I am a FreeBSD user which usually has better support there too and like the keyboard/mouse on them better. As a technician, I've seen plenty of stupid things from Lenovo like structural screws that easily fall out of the bottom panel leading to hinges breaking the laptop and proprietary video drivers that when automatically replaced by Windows updates (and not just Windows 10) leads to a fully dimmed screen until reinstalling the Lenovo released driver again.
I find HP easy to get parts direct from HP for and for a while on many computers with service manuals usually (but check first a snot always) available right from the product webpages which shows how to tear it down and has part #s. With units that require removing adhesively attached feet and replacing the keyboard requires removing the motherboard among other parts from the palmrest assembly I normally crosos those off the list from any manufacturer.
Dell is often a bit more of a messy journey of hunting for proprietary parts on desktops but the laptop world considers that stuff common anyways. Service manuals rarely easily available on public pages but parts do normally have a Dell part# right on them.
Fujitsu is one of the few companies I've seen do useful things like 1-2 screws to remove an expansion panel door that exposes a removable fan for cleaning/replacement. Can't remember but I think Panasonic Toughbook 'may' be similar but I've seen too few. Toughbooks are generally well built but replacemets and some basic upgrades become too pricey as they find ways to do more things in a proprietary way and the base computing power is usually pretty weak for a top price computer.
MSI higher end laptops seem nearly impossible to get service documentation nor do I know of a good way to do part lookups and once known parts are still usually quite hard to come by for proprietary things like motherboard or a panel of outer casing.
From a hardware design quality/durability alone I would not consider Apple laptops during shopping myself for various things like failing nonreplaceable keyboards (due to defect, not abuse) that will likely need another class action lawsuit to get Apple to try to acknowledge to nonupgradeable anything with hardware that is OSX compatible only and if the motherboard dies due to for example a basic thunderbolt electrical connector issue will lead to complete board failure/shutdown as a response due to no isolation (and a failed board on a modern Apple means hard drive completely inaccessible until repaired.
Personally I require a removable battery as they will fail and swelling is a common defect/age failure to see. Internal batteries normally do not have room allocated to swell without putting excessive stress on casing and components though some have pinhole ability to disconnect an internal at least for when 'remove power' is a required step to fix unusual glitches. I require the computer to also have a way to open for maintenance as blowing out the cooling system from the outside isn't good enough long term. I prefer upgradeable hard drive and RAM instead of being soldered to the motherboard and prefer an optical drive though an external can usually suffice for my needs anymore.
If wanting a higher power laptop for CPU and/or GPU then some look into desktop replacements; Clevo/Sager has units which go as far as offering desktop Intel processors and GPU on a removable card. You just hit expensive+large+heavy computers at that point and removable doesn't mean upgradeable as a BIOS update likely required for different generation CPU and GPU of a different generation may need electrical modification despite using the same plug in socket for its card. You also would want to make sure you get the computer from a supplier that sets you up on a route to have Prema BIOS as a choice. Now you have a computer with clock speeds like 4.4+GHz from a socketed CPU (normally laptops are lower speeds like 2.xGHz last I looked, fewer cores, no easy delidding to fix crappy Intel compounds, and modern AMD+Intel chips are not all defect free coming out of the factory) on a leading desktop CPU and a powerful but weaker than equivalent sounding desktop GPU in a size where cooling can be provided to run the components like that.
Not sure of any AMD option for a removable CPU or Prema type of BIOS quality but I'd expand my shopping to hunt that out at least for consideration in the current market of chips. If your mulitimedia software has any decent designs to it, it should benefit nicely from higher core count CPUs.
When you open system section of event viewer and see "WHEA hardware error"s on "PCI Express Root HUB" and you can try/check that you updated BIOS, drivers, OS and are not overclocked then you need to send your laptop to the manufacturer as there is a defect such as CPU not receiving a high enough voltage. Motherboard or CPU defect on nonsocketed hardware is fixed by replacing the combination hardware as a whole. and that error state is far too common and connected to laptops with often some of the more strange errors that you should never have to experience whether rare or frequent.
For graphics work you want an IPS panel for better color representation htough I find lightbleed issues on the edges much more common for those in laptops. Of course review the physical design for things like extra short right shift key, placement of slashes and other symbols, is there pause and scroll lock keys (Dell=no usually). New laptop should have at least 1 USB-C port. I prefer the power button not be on the side of the case where I will bump it while holding/toching the side to move the computer a bit or even bump while connecting an accessory to a side port. Once that sillyness is straightened out you can modify Windows settings to stop treating the power button as the sleep button.
If you review desired programs, you can see what is required by them (look at recommended as a minimum and ignore actual minimum requirements unless trying to stretch the use of an existing underpowered machine to this purpose with bad experience expected). Multimedia usually wants hardware to throw at the problem so you should have not been shopping for the 'cute' small laptops. If you want a good experience and don't need portability then I recommend a desktop anyway.
I find HP easy to get parts direct from HP for and for a while on many computers with service manuals usually (but check first a snot always) available right from the product webpages which shows how to tear it down and has part #s. With units that require removing adhesively attached feet and replacing the keyboard requires removing the motherboard among other parts from the palmrest assembly I normally crosos those off the list from any manufacturer.
Dell is often a bit more of a messy journey of hunting for proprietary parts on desktops but the laptop world considers that stuff common anyways. Service manuals rarely easily available on public pages but parts do normally have a Dell part# right on them.
Fujitsu is one of the few companies I've seen do useful things like 1-2 screws to remove an expansion panel door that exposes a removable fan for cleaning/replacement. Can't remember but I think Panasonic Toughbook 'may' be similar but I've seen too few. Toughbooks are generally well built but replacemets and some basic upgrades become too pricey as they find ways to do more things in a proprietary way and the base computing power is usually pretty weak for a top price computer.
MSI higher end laptops seem nearly impossible to get service documentation nor do I know of a good way to do part lookups and once known parts are still usually quite hard to come by for proprietary things like motherboard or a panel of outer casing.
From a hardware design quality/durability alone I would not consider Apple laptops during shopping myself for various things like failing nonreplaceable keyboards (due to defect, not abuse) that will likely need another class action lawsuit to get Apple to try to acknowledge to nonupgradeable anything with hardware that is OSX compatible only and if the motherboard dies due to for example a basic thunderbolt electrical connector issue will lead to complete board failure/shutdown as a response due to no isolation (and a failed board on a modern Apple means hard drive completely inaccessible until repaired.
Personally I require a removable battery as they will fail and swelling is a common defect/age failure to see. Internal batteries normally do not have room allocated to swell without putting excessive stress on casing and components though some have pinhole ability to disconnect an internal at least for when 'remove power' is a required step to fix unusual glitches. I require the computer to also have a way to open for maintenance as blowing out the cooling system from the outside isn't good enough long term. I prefer upgradeable hard drive and RAM instead of being soldered to the motherboard and prefer an optical drive though an external can usually suffice for my needs anymore.
If wanting a higher power laptop for CPU and/or GPU then some look into desktop replacements; Clevo/Sager has units which go as far as offering desktop Intel processors and GPU on a removable card. You just hit expensive+large+heavy computers at that point and removable doesn't mean upgradeable as a BIOS update likely required for different generation CPU and GPU of a different generation may need electrical modification despite using the same plug in socket for its card. You also would want to make sure you get the computer from a supplier that sets you up on a route to have Prema BIOS as a choice. Now you have a computer with clock speeds like 4.4+GHz from a socketed CPU (normally laptops are lower speeds like 2.xGHz last I looked, fewer cores, no easy delidding to fix crappy Intel compounds, and modern AMD+Intel chips are not all defect free coming out of the factory) on a leading desktop CPU and a powerful but weaker than equivalent sounding desktop GPU in a size where cooling can be provided to run the components like that.
Not sure of any AMD option for a removable CPU or Prema type of BIOS quality but I'd expand my shopping to hunt that out at least for consideration in the current market of chips. If your mulitimedia software has any decent designs to it, it should benefit nicely from higher core count CPUs.
When you open system section of event viewer and see "WHEA hardware error"s on "PCI Express Root HUB" and you can try/check that you updated BIOS, drivers, OS and are not overclocked then you need to send your laptop to the manufacturer as there is a defect such as CPU not receiving a high enough voltage. Motherboard or CPU defect on nonsocketed hardware is fixed by replacing the combination hardware as a whole. and that error state is far too common and connected to laptops with often some of the more strange errors that you should never have to experience whether rare or frequent.
For graphics work you want an IPS panel for better color representation htough I find lightbleed issues on the edges much more common for those in laptops. Of course review the physical design for things like extra short right shift key, placement of slashes and other symbols, is there pause and scroll lock keys (Dell=no usually). New laptop should have at least 1 USB-C port. I prefer the power button not be on the side of the case where I will bump it while holding/toching the side to move the computer a bit or even bump while connecting an accessory to a side port. Once that sillyness is straightened out you can modify Windows settings to stop treating the power button as the sleep button.
If you review desired programs, you can see what is required by them (look at recommended as a minimum and ignore actual minimum requirements unless trying to stretch the use of an existing underpowered machine to this purpose with bad experience expected). Multimedia usually wants hardware to throw at the problem so you should have not been shopping for the 'cute' small laptops. If you want a good experience and don't need portability then I recommend a desktop anyway.
chvvkumar
Active Member
I second the XPS recommendation. I've got four for various family members and if looking at a windows laptop, they are at the top of the list for me. Especially with the 2020 models that came out in the last couple of months.
Let me tell you how dumb Dell and their XPS line is(FYI I've owned several XPS desktops, and 3 XPS laptops).......
I have a 2 year old(several now, but 2 year when I could not use it anymore)dell XPS 13 ultrabook. You know the ones that have the screen that flips so it's a tablet also? Super nice laptop with an I7 1TB SSD, etc, etc.
Anyways, Dell in all their infinite wisdom puts a chip on their motherboards that reads the same chip in their chargers. Well one day my brand new laptop slowed down to a crawl, and I get a message that my charger needs to be a DELL branded charger. OK it's brand new, maybe I just need a new charger? Call up dell, get a charger, and low and behold, same issue. When I was on the phone with tech support I find out that dell put's a chip on the MB that talks to the charger so you can only use a dell branded charger or it halves your computing power, or in my case I only get to use 1/3 of the computing power making it pretty useless. Tech support says they have never had a chip on MB fail and it was probably the charger, so I buy the charger.
After getting the new charger in, I'm getting the same error, and it's slow as h*ll. So I call up dell to find out what the issue is..... Long story short, the chip on the MB died and needs to be replaced. It costs more for a new MB($998.99 was the price I was quoted) then it does to buy a new laptop!!!
I have always been a proponent of dell, simply for how easy they are to work on. Now I will never recommend a dell to anyone who asks.
I have a 2 year old(several now, but 2 year when I could not use it anymore)dell XPS 13 ultrabook. You know the ones that have the screen that flips so it's a tablet also? Super nice laptop with an I7 1TB SSD, etc, etc.
Anyways, Dell in all their infinite wisdom puts a chip on their motherboards that reads the same chip in their chargers. Well one day my brand new laptop slowed down to a crawl, and I get a message that my charger needs to be a DELL branded charger. OK it's brand new, maybe I just need a new charger? Call up dell, get a charger, and low and behold, same issue. When I was on the phone with tech support I find out that dell put's a chip on the MB that talks to the charger so you can only use a dell branded charger or it halves your computing power, or in my case I only get to use 1/3 of the computing power making it pretty useless. Tech support says they have never had a chip on MB fail and it was probably the charger, so I buy the charger.
After getting the new charger in, I'm getting the same error, and it's slow as h*ll. So I call up dell to find out what the issue is..... Long story short, the chip on the MB died and needs to be replaced. It costs more for a new MB($998.99 was the price I was quoted) then it does to buy a new laptop!!!
I have always been a proponent of dell, simply for how easy they are to work on. Now I will never recommend a dell to anyone who asks.
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