Yeah that stuff, the Adobe PDF suite, the SDMB. I don’t want to spend more than I have to, but if 16 and 512 works, I’ll go with that. To use a car analogy, I don’t want a Ferrari, nor a Ford Focus. Say a Nissan Maxima.
On the other hand, if you’re doing scientific research, then you just might want a gaming computer, because it turns out that the same hardware that’s used for high-end graphics can also be used for high-end mathematical modeling.
Though you probably wouldn’t spring for the transparent case and the glowy neon tubes in the shape of menacing eyes, nor for the mouse with 17 different buttons on it.
I’d add that for most gaming laptops, you can disable the high-powered gaming hardware and draw the screen via the chipset graphics. You can get the battery drain down to a level approximately that of a standard laptop, and end up with possibly better lifetime since the gaming laptop probably has an uprated battery.
And plenty of windows of each open. Word, Excel, Adobe, Chrome. A bunch of windows open and print jobs going. Also I have a USB docking station that works pretty well–plug it in and I get dual monitors, keyboard, mouse, speakers, mic, etc., but I can unplug it and take it on the road or to the couch where the old one drank too much and fell off…
A bunch of windows open just means more memory. Memory’s cheap, and relatively easy to upgrade if what you have isn’t enough.
16 or 32?
No one ever complains they have too much memory or disk space, but you are probably fine with 16/512.
My brand spanking new desktop (Ryzen 5800) came with 16/512. I added another 16 plus a 1TB SSD and a 4 TB HDD, but that’s what I need.
The business laptops generally have more durable batteries that can last longer and not go bad with too many recharge cycles. IMHO the screens are generally better, as well. Even if they support the same resolution, they are usually brighter with more contrast as well.
My 18 year old daughter recently asked me what a “desktop” was. Yes, I’ll go fetch my cane.
One other issue might be screen quality. A business application might be taken to include a need for accurate colour. A P3 gamut capable screen can cost more, as might a screen that is well calibrated out of the box.
In truth the better colour gamut and calibration just make everything nicer. So I would want to check the screen capability. Basic sRGB gamut is fine, but you can do better now.
Professional graphics artist application will need proper calibration, but if you need that, you will already know that you do.
It’s true that people rarely complain about having too much memory. And getting as much as you can is a cheap form of futureproofing.
However, memory is nearly always user-upgradable. And the price difference for a laptop that comes with more memory is often significantly higher if you added it yourself. It’s also an easy upgrade you can do down the line if you do actually start running out of memory.
Chrome needs about 8GB of memory these days, if you keep open many tabs. And it’s good to have additional memory on top of that for other programs, so 16GB is probably the sweet spot these days for normal use. (Memory works best in powers of two.) For the apps you want to run, @UltraVires, 16GB would be sufficient, and I would not pay extra for 32GB unless it is cheap. I would at most pay $50 extra for it.
As for the rest: yeah, you don’t need a gaming laptop. I would say that, given your requirements and what you are apparently willing to spend, you are well within the around $1000 sweet spot, which tends to give you the most bang for your buck.
In business, if the business is a decent size with several employees using computers, they likely have a central server that acts as a repository for historical work files, so a big disk is less necessary. You only need room for the files relevant to your work today (unless your work involves a lot of photography or video graphics which use enormous amounts of space). More useful is ensuring it is SSD technology (aren’t they all nowadays?) which is significantly faster than HDD, traditional magnetic spinning hard disks.
Regardless, for current work files, have a plan to backup the laptop - i.e. to the server when you plug it in, or even copy your work files to a thumb drive and then unplug it to keep it safe. The most common and devastating computer virus nowadays basically searches your hard drive for anything like a data file anywhere it can write, and then proceeds to encrypt those until you pay a ransom. You can reformat and reinstall Windows, Office, and other apps - but you cannot get your files back if you did not back them up, or if the backup was plugged into the PC and writeable when the virus struck.
(Well configured servers will let you write files to your area, and then back them up somewhere where a virus on your computer cannot touch them, does not have permission.)
Not mine. We use the cloud…OneDrive.
But that was my point. Unless there’s a secondary service that copies the contents of oneDrive somewhere that you cannot overwrite, this is useless protection.
If a ransomware virus starts encrypting the files on your disk, then eventually it will get to the oneDrive folder; and if you are connected, then those changes will be copied up to the cloud copy as well. Without some way to protect the cloud contents from automatic updates, or a service to copy the cloud contents to another location (that also does not trigger automatically to overwrite that too) your files are still at risk. Same with a USB stick that you leave plugged in, or plug in before the virus is removed.
On a regular basis, ensure your files have not been corrupted and there is no virus on your laptop, then either plug in a USB stick or connect to OneDrive and copy/synchronize your critical data. Then unplug/disconnect that copy. There are programs that can do automatic backups but (a) if the backup repository is on a read-write location, it too can (will) be overwritten by the virus, (b) be sure you can recover the data from a re-installed backup software on a rebuilt system. (Don’t forget the backup password…)
The problem is that for ease of use, most people operate with full admin rights on their PC, so will have write permissions to mist connected devices.
OneDrive provides both version history and Ransomware Protection
So should I have off site backup? Is @md-2000 right or does OneDrive do the job?
It depends on your level of comfort. I trust OneDrive personally, but for business I backup my key staff from OneDrive to another server. Everyone else is just OneDrive.
Yeah, I mean it is Microsoft, not Joe’s Bait and Backup (bring your own cooler). If it was the latter, I could see, but this is a national corporation that would be destroyed if their promised security didn’t happen.
In fact, I don’t think you want people relying on local storage, so I actually prefer smaller local drives.
Experience has taught me that most manufacturers who are supplying SSD drives with their computer go out of their way to supply some of the worst ones I have ever seen. My Dell G5 15 gaming laptop came with a 512GB “SSD” in the M2 form factor (in other words shaped more like a memory stick than a hard drive). Yes, it was faster than most of the old-style spinning platter hard drives, but compared to a high-quality SSD it was about 20% as fast as it could have been. I replaced it with a Samsung SSD and the performance perked up quite a bit, and it was relatively easy to replace. I will not fall for that bullshit again.
I would not trust a third-party upgrader selling laptops on Amazon unless I had already done business with them and knew them to be quality people. I would buy directly from HP or Lenovo, or from a retailer like Costco. Right now, customizing is tough because the chip shortage has several models with 3 - 4 month delivery timeframes (or longer), but usually there are some that should work and have reasonable delivery times.
I agree about 16GB being fine for most workloads. I upgraded mine to 24GB to handle the extra load of running VMs and SQL Servers on it. I have no idea how someone would get Chrome to use 8GB of memory, I typically have between 10 - 20 tabs open and I use about 3 - 4GB. Unless you regularly hit a LOT of memory-heavy websites, you should be fine with 16GB. Modern i5 chipsets will offer plenty of performance, so get them over an i7 unless you are doing particularly CPU-intensive stuff (Like running a SQL Server or VMs or CAD or something). $2,500 is ridiculously high for a normal business laptop. I mean, after I got my computer, did the upgrades I wanted, bought a docking station, keyboard, mouse, wireless headset, etc I think I was around $2,500 total.