New laptop advice

[SA Chris]

You can see this in Settings > General > iPad Storage and the usual culprit tends to be images/photos. In which case you could consider offloading those to cloud storage (e.g. iCloud or Google photos)

This. And cookies. And we pages / other things it automatically downloaded when you were just looking at them. And if you delete them, remember to clear them from your bin too.

 

[andi_e]

I'm thinking about a new laptop, as I've spent the past two days waiting for my 9 year old Lenovo Z51-70 to update, but I think it's getting a bit old now.

I'm after something with a large screen that cna handle video editing (my old one was OK for this but struggles with 1080p). I'd like a large internal HDD, but would be tempted to swap out any hard drive with the (upgraded c. 2 years ago) 2TB SSD I currently have in my old laptop.

Price wise, I'm looking at something relatively budget. It doesn't need to be the highest spec machine, and I'd like to spend something well south of a grand. I like Lenovo but am not tied to the. Definitely windows though!

 

[SamT]

Look at the dell refurbished outlet.. always had good deals from there for work laptops.

 

[andi_e]

I'm thinking about a new laptop, as I've spent the past two days waiting for my 9 year old Lenovo Z51-70 to update, but I think it's getting a bit old now.

I'm after something with a large screen that cna handle video editing (my old one was OK for this but struggles with 1080p). I'd like a large internal HDD, but would be tempted to swap out any hard drive with the (upgraded c. 2 years ago) 2TB SSD I currently have in my old laptop.

Price wise, I'm looking at something relatively budget. It doesn't need to be the highest spec machine, and I'd like to spend something well south of a grand. I like Lenovo but am not tied to the. Definitely windows though!

I just came here to post this again. I'm still running my Lenovo Z51 but it feels like it's about to shit it at any moment. Can anyone recommend a laptop for around the £1000 mark that will handle DaVinci Resolve? Preferably a larger screen in the 15.6" range! Windows only. No "AI powered" nonsense. Cheers all

 

[remus]

How firm is the windows requirement? Macs are pretty much in a league of their own at the moment. Suspect you'd be able to pick up a 15" M1 or M2 chip second hand for ~£1k.

 

[andi_e]

Although I dislike new windows I've never used anything else and I really can't be arsed fucking around with other operating systems... Anything with windows xp sp2 preferred!

 

[jwi]

How firm is the windows requirement? Macs are pretty much in a league of their own at the moment. Suspect you'd be able to pick up a 15" M1 or M2 chip second hand for ~£1k.

I have to agree, I have both a new-ish ThinkPad and an old M1. The performance gap, using regular office software, photo editing or just running big matrix multiplications in Python/R/Whatever, the difference is huge.

 

[stone]

I'm profoundly ignorant about computers. Mine seems to me utterly knackered. I'm interested in people saying "old" macbooks are the thing to get. How old is old? My (heap of floundering junk) says it is:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
2.9 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

 

[jwi]

Do not get a used mac-book with and intel chip. So when we say "old" we still mean 2021 or later.

I have a 2017 macbook with 16GB ram I use as a typewriter, and for bringing to lectures. It is clearly struggling even with this.

Try to reset the SMC, and maybe reinstall the OS and install a minimum of necessary apps. Run as much as possible on other peoples computer (run office 365 etc in the cloud). Stop using Chrome (it will eat all resources on your computer).

 

[CrimpyMcCrimpface]

Also agree with everyone that Mac is by far the best option at the price point. I've heard all the positive hype about the M1 chips and from my experience owning a 2022 Macbook Air they have lived up to it. Very comfortable editing videos while simultaneously using Google suite or internet browsing. It's not my first Mac laptop, they've all been robust and held processing power for a long time. Once you get used to hotkeys and the general architecture of the OS you'll find you can be more efficient.

Refurbished direct from Apple is the best option imo. They have several M2 options for under 1k currently. https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/refurbished/mac

 

[James Malloch]

Also agree with everyone that Mac is by far the best option at the price point. I've heard all the positive hype about the M1 chips and from my experience owning a 2022 Macbook Air they have lived up to it. Very comfortable editing videos while simultaneously using Google suite or internet browsing. It's not my first Mac laptop, they've all been robust and held processing power for a long time. Once you get used to hotkeys and the general architecture of the OS you'll find you can be more efficient.

Refurbished direct from Apple is the best option imo. They have several M2 options for under 1k currently. https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/refurbished/mac

Check out Currys, too. Their eBay store has various grades of refurb with pretty hefty discounts.

I got an M3 air recently which was a grade B refurb. It was 7 months old, only had one charge cycle, and was absolutely spotless. The box was the only thing which wasn't pristine. I got about 35% off RRP.

It was too old to add on apple care, but you still get 1yr warranty with Currys.

 

[Lopez]

My 2 cents. I say the same every time the argument "i've had a £400 lenovo, replaced it with a £2000 mac, and the mac is just so much better" pops around, so here it goes.

If you are considering spending a grand on a used laptop, you get much more computer if you get a windows based one.

I'm writing this with a £500 used laptop that blows most macs out of the water in every single way except maybe looking cool at starbucks (sorry :boohoo: ) This laptop was around the 2k mark when new, and besides maybe playing the latest games at the highest settings (which i don't do) it does everything else flawlessly.

At times i'm doing video editing, 3d design/rendering, and photoshop all at the same time and i don't even bother closing one piece of software to open another.

The one drawback is, it runs windows, but only recently i had enough of it and switched to Linux which i was reluctant to do, and found it to be a really good decision and less hustle than i thought it would have been. Definitely recommended.

I run it as dual boot so i can boot to windows when i want to, mainly if i have to use photoshop as it runs like shit in linux. Best of both worlds really