Another what laptop question.

[Cletus Van Damme]

I've never had problems with AMD, seem to get more for your money. I've bought a couple of laptops for my daugter, the latest is a Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega 8 graphics. It's no gaming machine, but the graphic performance is way better than what Intel intergrated graphics were at the time. The fan runs on it quite a bit, but it's not as bad as HP Laptop with an I5 cpu. As other people have stated always get one with a SSD.

When you say R5 is at a Ryzen 5, or is it a new CPU? I just think the AMD APU's have better integrated graphics for a better price than the Intel's. I think Intel brought out a better integrated graphics chip for laptops, but probably costs more. Just if you ever want to do light gaming, probably better if ever connected to a tv for 1080p playback or possibly higher resolution. Thats the main reason I went with a Ryzen 5 APU when I got the laptop at christmas and price etc..

Edit: Lenovo make good laptops, the abuse the first one I got for my daughter took, was unreal..

 

[stephec]

The spec says R5-3500U, also the Argos one is a HP, not Lenovo.

Edit: just noticed that JL also have a HP with a Ryzen 5 3500U.

 

[stephec]

One question - do you need a DVD/CD drive on it for playing DVD's or CD's or making copies or loading stuff on?
Simply solved by a stand alone DVD drive, but something to think about.

There doesn't seem to be many with a built in drive now.

 

[Sharky]

There doesn't seem to be many with a built in drive now.

Don't think there are now. But if you want to rip your CD collection onto the pc or make backups of your photos etc, you need one. We bought a standalone dvd drive. Around £50, so not expensive, just something else. And I don't think w10 comes with dvd play software either. But there are freebies that can be downloaded. I had to ask on here a while back. A search should find it.

 

[Sharky]

https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/w10-dvd-player.243702/

 

[ColinJ]

I narrowed it down to a choice of two, both with 8gb ram 256 memory, a Lenovo with i5 from Argos, or an Asus with AMD from John Lewis.

I am happy with my Lenovo, which was actually from John Lewis. It has a similar spec but an i7 processor for a bit more oomph for more demanding applications.

 

[slowmotion]

You can get a copy of MS Office for about £5 on Ebay complete with licence key.

 

[FrankCrank]

I've never had problems with AMD, seem to get more for your money. I've bought a couple of laptops for my daugter, the latest is a Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega 8 graphics. It's no gaming machine, but the graphic performance is way better than what Intel intergrated graphics were at the time. The fan runs on it quite a bit, but it's not as bad as HP Laptop with an I5 cpu. As other people have stated always get one with a SSD.

When you say R5 is at a Ryzen 5, or is it a new CPU? I just think the AMD APU's have better integrated graphics for a better price than the Intel's. I think Intel brought out a better integrated graphics chip for laptops, but probably costs more. Just if you ever want to do light gaming, probably better if ever connected to a tv for 1080p playback or possibly higher resolution. Thats the main reason I went with a Ryzen 5 APU when I got the laptop at christmas and price etc..

Edit: Lenovo make good laptops, the abuse the first one I got for my daughter took, was unreal..

Mine's an Ideapad with N5000 CPU and 128GB SSD, had it about a year now. I'm a basic user, and does all that's expected of it. Only complaint is surface scuffs showing around keyboard area, but just cosmetic. Think they upped to 256GB now. For me, everything else was overkill.

 

[DCBassman]

Laptops at a reasonable price with SSDs seem to be limited to 512GB - by the time W10 has taken its chunk there is not much left if you use it for videos

W10 uses less than 20GB if kept tidy. Keep videos externally, you don't fill up your primary drive ever, on any machine. That is what kills the performance, hdd or ssd. Less so for ssd, natch.
If you must store a lot if videos, spend the dosh on a terabyte ssd, or make do with spinning disks.

 

[Cycleops]

Thanks everyone, should probably have added that Mrs Stephec needs office and a proper keyboard as well.

MS Office is available on all platforms now, Android, iOS, Chromebook OS as are all their products.

You really don’t need a dvd drive these days unless you use iTunes and want to import your cd collection. Back ups can be uploaded to any of the cloud storage apps.

 

[DCBassman]

MS Office is available on all platforms now, Android, iOS, Chromebook OS as are all their products.

You really don’t need a dvd drive these days unless you use iTunes and want to import your cd collection. Back ups can be uploaded to any of the cloud storage apps.

Unless you're on the end of a slow internet connection. Then the discs become rather useful...

 

[stephec]

You can get a copy of MS Office for about £5 on Ebay complete with licence key.

Do they actually work properly though?

I've been looking at a few and the feedback seems to be 50-50 as to whether it's a rip off or not.

 

[Mike_P]

W10 uses less than 20GB if kept tidy. Keep videos externally, you don't fill up your primary drive ever, on any machine. That is what kills the performance, hdd or ssd. Less so for ssd, natch.
If you must store a lot if videos, spend the dosh on a terabyte ssd, or make do with spinning disks.

They do go onto an external drive as and when but 4k videos for some reason do not run smoothly off attached devices IME - might be down to using MS bog standard software. 3 rides only currently on the laptop taking up 137Gb of space.

 

[stephec]

They do go onto an external drive as and when but 4k videos for some reason do not run smoothly off attached devices IME - might be down to using MS bog standard software. 3 rides only currently on the laptop taking up 137Gb of space.

Would it make a difference if you copied it from the external drive to your desktop when you want to watch it, then delete it afterwards?

 

[Mike_P]

Would it make a difference if you copied it from the external drive to your desktop when you want to watch it, then delete it afterwards?

That's what I do subsequently but the copying times are slow so its simpler to keep them on the laptop and do a mass move to an external drive overnight as and when needed.