New laptop needed - absolutely clueless

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fidsey79

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Name
Sarah
Edit My Images
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I could really do with some help and support please. My ancient laptop has died and I need to replace it asap. I will be using it for Photoshop and Olympus software for my photos and it will be used for light work (word etc) and internet use. I am unsure about which processor is best AMD or Intel, or if indeed there is a difference. I leave photos on my laptop for longer than I should so would benefit from a good hard drive - not sure how much though! A disk drive would be essential (DVD's to keep kids quiet).
I would spend up to £500 and would like a reputable seller.
Any thoughts would be gratefully appreciated.
Sarah
 
Tesco has some good deals on laptops, decent memory (6gig +) and good hard drives (750gig +) and if you know anyone who works there =10% discount!
 
Bit unexperienced- but have a red dell laptop in the family which is pretty fast. Its i5 and windows 7. Battery life is great- about two hours i found playing a 2d game (terraria).
Lags a bit on fast moving computer games but otherwise ok.
 
The Dell Outlet are good and can be very cheap indeed. Also check hotukdeals.com. I'd say stick with Intel, get 4GB of RAM or above (8 if you do a lot of Photoshop) and an SSD drive for speed. I like a 15" full HD display personally too.
 
I'd strongly suggest going with something from the Dell Outlet, you'll find most of the equipment is brand new items, either refurbished due to being faulty on delivery, or cancelled customer orders.

You can make some excellent savings, and they list many specifications, and it is updated almost daily.
I agree with looking from something from Intel i3/i5 watch for the processors listed with a 'U' at the end of there model as they are lower power versions designed for thin and light laptops.
 
I received a Dell XPS15 last week from Dell outlet - looked new. One of the great things was that it came without all the malware that is so often included: just W8 plus a few Dell and Intel hardware-specific utilities. List price was about £1500 and I got it for £1000 + warranty extension.
 
i7 - 9530 model with 16Gb RAM and 1TB HDD + 32Gb mSATA to speed up boot etc. I'm still getting used to the screen - 3200:1800 resolution, which can make stuff really small on a 15" monitor (very sharp though!). Seriously considering replacing the 32Gb 'cache drive' with a 126Gb SSD to hold windows and apps - I can hear the HDD reading every time an image has to be re-rendeder after a little time processing in Lightroom.
 
Yeah, my dell had the msata 32gb cache drive swapped out for a 256gb one with the OS installed on day one. This was on a 15R inspiron and I had to strip the entire machine down to do it though. I used to be field certified on Toshiba laptops back the day and this still made me nervous!
 
ancient_mariner said:
i7 - 9530 model with 16Gb RAM and 1TB HDD + 32Gb mSATA to speed up boot etc. I'm still getting used to the screen - 3200:1800 resolution, which can make stuff really small on a 15" monitor (very sharp though!). Seriously considering replacing the 32Gb 'cache drive' with a 126Gb SSD to hold windows and apps - I can hear the HDD reading every time an image has to be re-rendeder after a little time processing in Lightroom.
Click to expand...

Good Choice! i7s are certainly speedy.
 
liamthejuggler said:
Good Choice! i7s are certainly speedy.
Click to expand...

It's a bit mixed on the performance front, and after editing a couple of images in Lightroom it will bog down a bit. Hadn't expected that at all.
 
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4712HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.3GHz)

Dell XPS 15 - 9530. It's the version with a 32Gb mSATA cache and 1TB spinning rust, and it's probably the HDD that slows it down.
 
ancient_mariner said:
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4712HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.3GHz)

Dell XPS 15 - 9530. It's the version with a 32Gb mSATA cache and 1TB spinning rust, and it's probably the HDD that slows it down.
Click to expand...
Maybe, depends where your cat and working files are. Wouldn't think it was the CPU, both of my i7 quad sandy ridges aren't a slouch. But I have ssd galore.
 
If you can face swapping out the msata for a larger one, then ignoring using it as cache and just install Windows to it as a "normal" SSD then it'll definitely be rapid. But having said that it should be pretty good out of the box...
 
It IS pretty good OOTB, and the cache gives sub 10sec startup times. I have a 240GB Crucial M500 drive & I may see if someone will do a trade for a similar size mSATA drive, then clone the HDD.
 
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