Looking for a New Laptop

D

dw1980

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Hi All.

I am in the process of procuring a new Laptop for my Boss. He currently has an Acer Travelmate 5760 (i5), which is now pretty old and is starting to be very slow and freezing etc. I have updated it to Windows 10, did a full format etc, but still freezes now and then. I hear him cursing a lot when he has to do zoom meetings etc.

I would prefer getting an i7. The laptop needs to have the number pad, and be at least 15.6" as he currently has. He does travel a lot with it, to Russia, and it gets to work on the mine sites (dusty etc). He has not had any problems with the Acer.

We have bought a few Dells over the last few years, but every single one of them has had endless problems, so we will not be buying Dell anymore. Please don't recommend Dell lol - I thought they were the best...

Any suggestions for a good Laptop, with good local support in South Africa if needed? I am looking at Asus - any comments regarding them? I have been very happy with the Asus routers etc that we have bought for the office.

Budget = R10k - 15K?? Or would we need to go higher?

Function: Excel, Word, Emails, Zoom meetings etc, AutoCAD Trueview for viewing drawings, good wifi/internet connection required. He does tend to have 7 Excel spreadsheets, and 5 Word documents, and several internet Tabs including Outlook opened at the same time... I have tried to explain to have them closed when not needed.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 
Have a look at the HP450 series, they are fairly robust, good warranty and its painless to deal with repairs.

I would also highly recommend the new Ryzen based systems , they are amazing performers, and are priced extremely competitively.

This is the configuration I would suggest going for, but you need to add a bit more ram for autocad:

HP ProBook 455 G7 (1Q3B5ES)​

AMD Ryzen 7 4700U APU with AMD Radeon Graphics
39.62 cm (15.6 in) diagonal FHD IPS eDP anti-glare LED-backlit slim, 250 cd/m², 45% NTSC (1920 x 1080)
256 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 Value SSD
8 GB DDR4-3200 SDRAM (8 GB x 1)

HP ProBook 455 G7 Notebook PC Specifications | HP® Customer Support

Specifications page for HP ProBook 455 G7 Notebook PC.
support.hp.com support.hp.com

PS Just noticed you posted in the gaming section, this laptop doesnt have a dedicated gpu so wont be great for gaming.
 
This will depend on what his top priorities are. For example, if the dust is a major issue, then a sealed fanless laptop would be best. This could include the Acer Swift 7, some of the Zenbook line or the Macbook Air amongst others.
 
dw1980 said:
I am looking at Asus - any comments regarding them?
Click to expand...
I currently have an Asus i5. Wireless connection has stopped working and I'm told that the HD is probably on its way out. This is under 3 years old. Admittedly this is the first Asus I've had so don't know if it's typical.
 
Does his current laptop have an SSD?

Anyway, Dell has the best warranty, and if you buy Lattitude or XPS/Precision, they are very solid. Sure, some can still have some driver issues if you buy the very latest, but overall I always loved Dell. I doubt you will get better support in SA.
Anyway....

If I can't go Dell, I would go HP.
 
ponder said:
Which dells did you buy as they have different ranges?
Click to expand...

So many many people buy an entry level/consumer laptop from the likes of I.C. with a terrible screen or poor build quality and then they're disappointed in the brand as a whole when it doesn't live up to expectations.

You can't go wrong with Dell or HP if you buy something like an XPS or Elitebook etc, also look at getting a longer onsite warranty.
 
KhoisanX said:
So many many people buy an entry level/consumer laptop from the likes of I.C. with a terrible screen or poor build quality and then they're disappointed in the brand as a whole when it doesn't live up to expectations.

You can't go wrong with Dell or HP if you buy something like an XPS or Elitebook etc, also look at getting a longer onsite warranty.
Click to expand...

Exactly hence me asking. You can't go wrong with the business range models.
 
Dell Latitude range will not disappoint, however if you have to go for another brand the Lenovo Thinkpads won’t let you down either.
 
garyc said:
This will depend on what his top priorities are. For example, if the dust is a major issue, then a sealed fanless laptop would be best. This could include the Acer Swift 7, some of the Zenbook line or the Macbook Air amongst others.
Click to expand...
Ok, dust isn't a major issue. We have the Dell Inspiron. Problem is the Dell stayed in the office in a very clean environment. Wasn't used very often. Major issue we had with Dells is that are terribly slow. I have an old Toshiba Qosmio with an i7 2 Gen, yet it makes this Dell look stupid with the processor speed and running tasks. Opening excel or word sometimes takes 2 minutes.

Every Dell we have had, has had this issue. I have formated etc, uninstalled all funny Dell software that runs in the background, set the laptops to only run important tasks in the background. I still don't know whey they are so slow. I worked on a celeron (painful), but they seemed faster than the Dells.

I will give credit where it is due, their support is indeed very good. My boss hates Dell so much, there is no way to convince him to change his mind.

Reason I was thinking about the Asus laptops is because my Desktop PC has an Asus MB, we got this PC in 2012, I run AutoCAD, a few Excel spreadsheets, Word, Outlook, Chrome, have multiple folders open, and this PC runs like a dream! This has the i7-2600 CPU - never a days issue.
 
The_Hobbit said:
What spec and model was the Dell? Dell won't be slower than an equivalent alternate.

Sounds like they weren't set up properly or there was a specific issue with a particular model maybe? I've seen an issue with a graphics driver on certain models, downgrading to a prior version sorted that out. All brands have those from time to time.
Click to expand...
laptopmedia.com

Dell Inspiron 3576

Visit the post for more.
laptopmedia.com laptopmedia.com

Problem is we bought a few Dells (different models) over the period, for the Wife, Daughter etc, and they all complained and they kept coming back to me to see why they are so slow. Formatting etc did not make a difference at all. Like I said, at most time sit would take over a minute to open excel/word.
 
Barbarian Conan said:
Does his current laptop have an SSD?

snip
Click to expand...
This is the biggest question here.

The very first thing I would do is check if it has an SSD, if not, get one big enough for the amount of space he has used, and clone everything over to an SSD. Not the best-of-the-best way to do this, but it will get him up and running on the SSD in the shortest space of time.

Once that is done, if he no longer has issues (can almost guarantee it will fix most of his slow/freeze issues with that machine) then you've solved most the problem for the foreseeable future, and at some point could do a clean format on the SSD to get things running optimally.

Only if it currently does have an SSD and there are still these issues, would I suggest you consider a new machine with the excellent suggestions in this thread :).
 
Chiller89 said:
This is the biggest question here.

The very first thing I would do is check if it has an SSD, if not, get one big enough for the amount of space he has used, and clone everything over to an SSD. Not the best-of-the-best way to do this, but it will get him up and running on the SSD in the shortest space of time.

Once that is done, if he no longer has issues (can almost guarantee it will fix most of his slow/freeze issues with that machine) then you've solved most the problem for the foreseeable future, and at some point could do a clean format on the SSD to get things running optimally.

Only if it currently does have an SSD and there are still these issues, would I suggest you consider a new machine with the excellent suggestions in this thread :).
Click to expand...
Yeah this one has a normal hard drive - I like the SSD idea.
 
diapason said:
I currently have an Asus i5. Wireless connection has stopped working and I'm told that the HD is probably on its way out. This is under 3 years old. Admittedly this is the first Asus I've had so don't know if it's typical.
Click to expand...
You just need to replace the WiFi card
 
Make sure you're running your Dell with the correct charging cable. If you're using a 65W charger on a machine that requires a 90W charger then it boots as normal but will be incredibly slow as the CPU is automatically rate limited and you won't get any warning messages or anything about using the incorrect supply.
 
backstreetboy said:
www.nucleustech.co.za

HOME of NucleusTech South Africa

Nucleustech specialize in supplying the highest quailty laptops and tech at the most competitive price around. We pride ourselves in our unrivaled after sales support and customer relations.
www.nucleustech.co.za www.nucleustech.co.za
Click to expand...
Thanks for this link. I ordered from them after seeing it and had a very good experience dealing with them.
 
dw1980 said:
Hi All.

I am in the process of procuring a new Laptop for my Boss. He currently has an Acer Travelmate 5760 (i5), which is now pretty old and is starting to be very slow and freezing etc. I have updated it to Windows 10, did a full format etc, but still freezes now and then. I hear him cursing a lot when he has to do zoom meetings etc.

I would prefer getting an i7. The laptop needs to have the number pad, and be at least 15.6" as he currently has. He does travel a lot with it, to Russia, and it gets to work on the mine sites (dusty etc). He has not had any problems with the Acer.

We have bought a few Dells over the last few years, but every single one of them has had endless problems, so we will not be buying Dell anymore. Please don't recommend Dell lol - I thought they were the best...

Any suggestions for a good Laptop, with good local support in South Africa if needed? I am looking at Asus - any comments regarding them? I have been very happy with the Asus routers etc that we have bought for the office.

Budget = R10k - 15K?? Or would we need to go higher?

Function: Excel, Word, Emails, Zoom meetings etc, AutoCAD Trueview for viewing drawings, good wifi/internet connection required. He does tend to have 7 Excel spreadsheets, and 5 Word documents, and several internet Tabs including Outlook opened at the same time... I have tried to explain to have them closed when not needed.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Did you come right in the end? I'm in a very similar situation but wondering whether the i7 is not more than I really need.
 
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