First, please assume I know nothing about computers.
My mother wants to buy me a laptop for the holidays. I have no home computer so this would be my primary home computer but I currently get along fine with my iphone but I would find it helpful to have a laptop with a larger screen and a real keyboard. I don’t want a tablet because I want to access work and it is easier to do what I need on a laptop.
At work I have a Dell latitude 15.6 inch This is what we are looking at.
I am NOT a gamer but I would like to play simple games (think on the level of solitaire, minesweeper or bejeweled but nothing fancy)
From what I can tell it has a lot of memory and power compared to a standard laptop. However, I am used to Intel processers and from what I read the AMD are not as good (less battery life, noisier and hotter).
It comes with one year of Microsoft Office-does it spontaneously disappear after one year or does that mean that I just cannot get updates?
So-is this a good deal for the money? (I find buying computers is like buying mattresses-each company makes about a billion models and sells them under different names to make it really complicated-I know you have to look at the specs but I have trouble judging what is good for the money).
I’d suggest going to the Microsoft Store either in person or via the website to see if you like any of the systems there. They’ll be free of crapware and should be optimized for performance. There are several for less than the one you’re looking at.
For your apparent needs, do NOT get a $1000 laptop or go to the MS store. That is the premium option. You do not need or want the premium option. You’d just be throwing money away.
Any good name brand $500 laptop of the right size will work for you. Among the name brands HP is not one of the better ones, IMHO.
MS and others are switching to a subscription model. You regularly pay for the program to keep working. You stop paying (or don’t pay after the free trial ends) and the program stops working. No more buy-it-once-and-use-it-forever in such cases. Just download and run LibreOffice instead.
If you just want to run simple games like Solitaire, get a $150 used laptop running Windows 7. And that’s still overkill except that it’s a good idea to avoid older OSes.
Consider the size and weight of the machine. Do you want it to actually be comfortable on your lap? Will you be traveling with it?
A SATA hard drive (your link shows the HP has a SATA drive) is a spinning disk and old tech. Now, it should be fine but does work like record players do. They do take a LOT of abuse as far as moving the machine around while working on it. And are cheaper per amount of storage for sure. SSD or Solid State Drives are where things are going.
I’m a bit of a special case since I live at so high of an altitude. SATA drives do not work for me for lap tops. They are however intended to work at the pressure of a typical airliner cabin which is pressurized to about 7000 feet (Denver, the mile high city is at 5280, I live at 11,200 feet).
You don’t have a computer at home. But are used to a laptop at work. I recently purchased a Dell XPS 13
I am used to multiple large monitors for work. The 13 inch ‘ultra book’ works very well for me at home for cruising the net, ordering stuff, paying bills, email and some simple games. And setting it aside or on my lap is easy. The 13" borderless screen (it has about 1/4 inch bezel/border makes for a very small footprint overall.)
I’ll never consider a tablet as I also need a functioning keyboard, and don’t always want to hold it. I have a Kindle for that.
Given that you want to access your work systems, I suggest you speak to your workplace’s IT department so you and they can be sure that the laptop meets their security standards. You’ll likely get a good deal on a Dell and be able to get a cheap MS Office license through them too.
The keyboard of a laptop is fully functional (but without the number pad), and will feel the same as a separate keyboard. If you plug in another keyboard, your smallish screen might be rather far away.
But you will definitely want an external mouse – the touchpad of the laptop is the work of the devil. Cover the laptop mouse pad by taping a card over it, or else the slightest brush of it when typing will move your cursor. You can disable the pad, but if your mouse crashes, you’ll have no way to recover it if it requires access to setttings, and you won’t have it readily available if you go portable.
(Above remarks from experience of a non-nerd user.)
Sorry, I didn’t make myself too clear. I’m not really doing research into what I really should have at home-I basically just needed to tell my mom yes or no on this particular machine. My basic questions were:
-Is an AMD drive OK for light use?
-Is there a benefit to the Microsoft office subscription versus just a one-time buy?
-Is a 17 inch screen to big to be portable?
Since I own my business, I don’t need to clear anything through IT and security is not an issue because the office system is cloud-based and has its own security. I don’t have anywhere to put a docking station and I don’t use one at work (we started with 4 desktops and the 2 laptops were add-one for convenience. I have already upgraded half of the desktops and both laptops at work to solid state drives and I certainly could upgrade the home one in the future but I don’t want to really insist on it since as I noted this is a gift and while I was given veto power in the sense of “This seems to be a really good deal-do you think you would like it as your holiday gift?” I don’t feel comfortable saying “No-please purchase something much more expensive.” I really just wanted to be able to say either “Thanks-l think it will be great to have a home computer” or “No-it’s a rip-off and you’re being cheated.”