HELP!!! Need laptop advice!
Hey all,
so my laptop crapped out on me and now I am in the market for a new one. With Black Friday coming up I am hopeful of finding something. I am trying to stay under $400 for the laptop. I use it for general surfing, poker, business like word, excel, PDF viewing etc. ability to hook up to printers or tvs etc. no real special needs for it no gaming or cad products or the like. I am looking to those of you who know computers for advice for best product bang for buck under $400. I saw some good reviews for a refurbished Lenovo think pad t420 for $329. Wondering if there were any thoughts or other suggestions?
help!
so my laptop crapped out on me and now I am in the market for a new one. With Black Friday coming up I am hopeful of finding something. I am trying to stay under $400 for the laptop. I use it for general surfing, poker, business like word, excel, PDF viewing etc. ability to hook up to printers or tvs etc. no real special needs for it no gaming or cad products or the like. I am looking to those of you who know computers for advice for best product bang for buck under $400. I saw some good reviews for a refurbished Lenovo think pad t420 for $329. Wondering if there were any thoughts or other suggestions?
help!
Comments
Dell Refurbished Black Friday Sale: 50% Off Select Optiplex Desktops and 22" Monitors, 40% Off Vostro Desktops + More - RedFlagDeals.com[DEAL%20NAME]
Core i5-5200U 6GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 15.6" Intel UMA, 1366x768, DVDRW, Windows 8.1, Bilingual KB (R556LA-SH51-CB) (Refurbished) - NMicroVIP
[ca.refurb.io]Lenovo Thinkpad T420 laptop 4GB ram 320GB HD i5 2nd gen cpu - $275 - RedFlagDeals.com Forums
Its older tech but is a good price and probably fine for your needs. Lenovo is also usually superior to most of the stuff you will find at best buy, for example.
I would put an SSD in it as comp suggests - in fact I'd call it mandatory these days. With black friday coming you should be able to pick up 240GB for $79.99 - do it!
Only thing that makes me hesitant to recommend it is that with refurb laptops you are gambling on battery life. I would personally buy new, but I'm biased. In that price range.... go for it!
With that said the only reason I'm looking at it was because of the reviews, my Wife is very into online reviews. But we know nothing about computers. So really it can be any make any model but under $400 and best bang for buck. Feel free to suggest anything else.
Comp what can you get me in the best set up you can under $400?
A Bfill suggests, battery life is always a question in a refurbed laptop although replacement generics can be had for $50-75. usually. An SSD for $79. is going to be of the older slower variety, a decent name brand one will cost likely just over $100.
The T4x series of Lenovo's are normally the business class of 14" laptops so they were designed for the business professional, ie a little more solid construction, better hinges, etc. The T5x series are the same thing in a 15.6" screen. Keep in mind that the 14" ones don't have the separate numeric keypad on the right side.
AMD Radeon SSD Radeon R7 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) RADEON-R7SSD-240G - Newegg.ca
Impossible to tell from what you posted. Link to the actual machine? There are many different T420's. And does it come with the O/S loaded onto it. Or if not are you comfortable loading it and all the drivers?
Heh sorry.
Absolutely, and you don't need a big one as you can use the SSD for O/S and programs and have a larger regular drive for data storage. That way you get the best of both worlds, fast and larger capacity. I've done this for a number of clients already. All are amazed at the performance increase.
Ok, here is a link to my complete list of available refurbed desktops and laptop as of today. Keep in mind this list changes almost daily and is my cost. Add 15% as that is the minimum I can charge. They all come with a Windows 7 license but no install media. This means they can be loaded with either Windows 7 or 10 legitimately. For local people I will load your choice of O/S for $180. including all drivers and updates, Chrome, Adobe, etc. Any other apps are negotiable.
P.S. Any of these can add an SSD drive if they don't already have one. I heartily recommend it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByUpt1mTBEfUN0YyMlQ5dlBtcUE/view?usp=sharing
Crucial BX100 500GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive - CT500BX100SSD1: Amazon.ca: Computers & Tablets
looks like it sold out at the black Friday price, but yeah 500GB MLC drive for 150 was a pretty good deal.
With black Friday deals popping up all over, basically just look for a decent brand name, read/write speeds around 500mb/s, and then look at the memory type that it uses: SLC = great, MLC = good, TLC = just OK
PS Keep checking here: SSD Deals - RedFlagDeals.com Forums
You won't find many TLC SSD's any more. Pretty well all would that I would choose would be be SLC because of wear cycles. Here's a pretty good description of the technology.
Best SSDs of 2015 - what's the best SSD on the market? | Alphr
Actually I really don't think MLC vs SLC is really much of a consideration any more. You would be very hard pressed to find a difference in speed or reliability in current drives.
SLC vs MLC ? does it matter any more? | StorageSwiss.com - The Home of Storage Switzerland
Another good article of recent vintage... I think we are way beyond Irunit's needs but it does make interesting reading. One thing I can tell you, if your SSD drive does fail, no matter which technology it uses, it is much more difficult to retrieve data from, so backups are CRITICAL.
https://www.titancomputers.com/Articles.asp?ID=283
Overwhelmed yet Irunit? Glad you asked?
Thoughts?
here is a link just for reference.
ASUS Transformer Book 10.1" 32GB Windows 8 Tablet With Intel Bay Trail QuadCore Processor-Black : Windows Tablets - Best Buy Canada
you can't use android apps or apple apps. you have to use windows apps (they have their own online store). but that is only for apps. you can use any regular software that would work on a regular PC. the asus transformer can be used as a touchscreen tablet and as a regular desktop depending on what you prefer. i have the regular pokerstars software on my tablet that i run on my other PC but i can't use the android pokerstars app on my tablet, for example, as that is only for android devices.
the windows app store is not the greatest but it is constantly adding new apps and getting better all the time though.
Kidding aside just spend the lil extra for a new laptop, You should never really buy a refurbished laptop/computer. If you are using this for a business you can write the laptop off at tax time.