What are people rocking for laptops these days?

[rx7boi]

My HP G2 laptop screen has been on the fritz for a while.

I forgot if it was Speedog or Spikers that was looking for a refurbished laptop but I'm going to go the same route and check out Dell's refurbished stock. I have my eyes set on a Latitude 7000 series and it should be around the $350 to $400 mark.

[Sugarphreak]

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[Mitsu3000gt]

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XPS 15 i7 512GB SSD 16GB Ram with the 1080p screen.

Has the big battery. Going to be a beast. Not sure there is a better value machine for 1800 bucks out the door.

Did you buy last years model? I would wait for the new ones if you can, they are hugely improved and right around the corner if not already available. Even the base i5-8300H in the 2018 XPS 15 is as good or better than the old i7-7700HQ depending on the task and a lot of other improvements were made.

[killramos]

It’s a 9560 at a substantial discount. I have no need for any of the new features so it would have just cost me more money.

Also no way I would have it in my hands before June.

[Sugarphreak]

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[Mitsu3000gt]

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I saw a few benchmarks that confirm this; the new 8th gen i5 is apparently 40% faster than the old one

Yup, definitely wait a little bit if you are in the market for an XPS 15. Dell's discounts aren't very good either, you're still around $2K for old tech. That 7700 HQ is long past it's prime, outclassed even by the most entry level CPU. The 6-core i9-8950HK is a beast (as far as laptop CPUs go, 6c/12t/4.8Ghz sc turbo) as well if you're going all out. Better video cards too. Performance increase for more demanding tasks is up 40-60% from last year which is rather significant.

[FixedGear]

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Just ordered a laptop, I ended up spending a lot less then I though I would, but I was still able to get the main features I wanted.

I ended up getting a Lenovo Ideapad 720s

The model I ordered has the 14" screen version I was after and only weighs 3.4lbs. Some of the nicer features include the 8th gen i5-8250U Processor, 256Gb SSD hard drive, 8G of ram, and GeForce GT MX150 card. It should be able to run some of the design programs I want to use with no issues at all.

https://www3.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptop...d=720s_(14%27)



With some of the discount coupons I found (IDEAPAD10), it was $1053 including all taxes and shipping.

Hope you like it dude! That's one of lenovo's consumer-grade lines, I can't vouch for the durability, but I hope it serves you well.

[Sugarphreak]

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[ExtraSlow]

For the price you paid, if it lasts two and a half years, you came out ahead. And there's no reason it shouldn't.

[msommers]

Exactly. I had an HP all throughout Uni plus several years after, it just would not die. Really, my Lenovo has been pretty solid too. I dunno what people do to their laptops, I'm probably just lucky no hardware issues on either (or my desktop actually).

Must be a porn volume vs. hardware longevity curve on the internet somewhere...

[Mitsu3000gt]

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Exactly. I had an HP all throughout Uni plus several years after, it just would not die. Really, my Lenovo has been pretty solid too. I dunno what people do to their laptops, I'm probably just lucky no hardware issues on either (or my desktop actually).

Must be a porn volume vs. hardware longevity curve on the internet somewhere...

Haha same here, I don't understand what people do to their laptops. I still have an Asus Ultrabook from 2011-2012ish. Solid aluminium, super slim and built like a tank. Cold boots to windows in literally 3 seconds and is even faster than when I bought it thanks to W10. Looks like new in every respect. It lacks the power to run things like Photoshop now (4GB RAM and weak iGPU), but for general computing it's perfect. And it has a matte screen which is so hard to get on laptops. Battery life is shockingly still pretty decent, 6+ hours of light tasks or movie watching.

I have been enjoying my iPad Pro for convenience but it doesn't have nearly the power or app capabilities to do a lot of what I want.

I have been planning to jump on the next great laptop deal I see with 8th gen i5 or better, 8+ GB RAM, 256gb+ ssd and integrated AMD GPU or discrete Nvidia 150 or higher. Best laptop deals I've ever seen in my life were still Black Friday 2016 at Lenovo, I regret not jumping on something then.

[killramos]

So a couple days with the XPS15 and I am very impressed. High quality machine and its great to be back in a proper sized laptop again, amazing what a proper amount of screen real estate can do. I really don't understand the hyper portability movement.

Getting used to a new keyboard but Its pretty good except somehow the caps lock and A key are not where I expect them to be and that is taking some getting used to. The Surface keyboard wasn't actually that bad which i give it proper credit for. Dell does cram a bit of bloatware into the machine but I have removed most of it and I am going to see how it goes before going down the clean install route.

Machine is crazy fast, easily the fastest computer I have ever owned. Usually runs without fans on, though i will admit its a bit loud when they do turn on periodically. Battery life seems good so far but i haven't really given it a chance to run down yet ( which might be a challenge at 10 hours+ estimated life ). I found the surface to be a bit lacking in this regard as web surfing seemed to tax it quite badly.

Haven't installed any games on it yet, not sure if I really will but its nice to know i have the option.

1080p screen took a few hours of getting used to after using a 12" 4k screen, but now I don't notice it. This screen is also Matte which i think contributed to the learning curve. Always wanted a matte monitor and I really like it so far, very even across the entire screen.

Real laptop is much easier to use in bed or sitting on the couch, one issue with the surface is it cant prop itself up without the kickstand.

Did a few hours of excel work with it last night and it was a dream, running the monitor at 100% scaling at 1080P is perfect for excel, I found that at a reasonable scaling factor WAY too much of the real estate on the screen was taken up by menu bars. I can use this essentially on par with how i use normal monitors at work.

Overall very happy with this at an awesome price, I am sure the new one is better but I would rather contribute the 5-700 dollar savings to a monitor/docking station setup I think. Not to mention getting a month or 2 of additional usage where I could really use it daily. Reading into the USB-C monitors which seem pretty slick though sounds like the compatibility is pretty half baked when it comes to actually powering the devices which is disappointing. Might still pick up the LG monitor and if I am gaming or something where the machine will need 130W I can just pull the charger out of my bag for those rare situations.

This is essentially a desktop replacement / only computer for me and it is a great balanced option in that regard.

Edit:

One thing everyone should do if they pick up one of these dells is redo all the advanced power settings. The machine was set to turn itself off after a few hours. Kept wondering why everything on my machine was gone the next morning. After redoing all the settings things seem much better. This is dell overriding the windows defaults btw.

[Sugarphreak]

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[Mitsu3000gt]

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E I did look into trying something quieter, but it seems you can't get away from it, at least not yet.

The Kaby Lake G series with integrated AMD Vega GPUs have integrated graphics that outperforms a GTX 1050 and easily outperforms a MX150. I am not sure if they are any easier to cool though, haven't seen any reliable thermal testing yet.

[Sugarphreak]

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