Decent laptop recommendations.

[Reynard]

+1 for Lenovo. I've been running this refurb Thinkpad for about three years now and would definitely have another. I keep my old Sony Vaio for running Photoshop, but everything else gets done on this machine. I see nothing wrong with refurb - more bang-for-buck IMHO, and stops something useful going to landfill.

As for software, LibreOffice here. As someone who does a lot of archive work and writing, I'd say it's actually better than Office, even if a few bits aren't quite as intuitive.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

+1 for Lenovo. I've been running this refurb Thinkpad for about three years now and would definitely have another. I keep my old Sony Vaio for running Photoshop, but everything else gets done on this machine. I see nothing wrong with refurb - more bang-for-buck IMHO, and stops something useful going to landfill.

As for software, LibreOffice here. As someone who does a lot of archive work and writing, I'd say it's actually better than Office, even if a few bits aren't quite as intuitive.

As far as refurb is concerned I am generally a fan

BUT

you need to check the battery is OK - if they have been used and refurbished then it has often been owned by a company
and the person they gave it to would have used it in a way that may not have been ideal

at least with some ebikes the control thingy display the range!!

When I had to work out the best laptops to buy for a whole school I generally used refurb
but that was knowing that the battery only needed to last an hour or so at a time - then would go back on charge

 

[vickster]

If you go on Groupon there are always very cheap (like £8) offers for full Office Professional
Old versions - but I have yet to come across anyone who really needs the latest "greatest" versions except for big companies who would install it themselves anyway

I am sure you already know enough to refuse any sales person who tries to get you to pay for Norton of anything else??

Except those don’t work in my recent experience as they are just a dodgy link to some corporate registry that you can’t access

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Except those don’t work in my recent experience as they are just a dodgy link to some corporate registry that you can’t access

They have always worked when I have tried them - and i have done it several times over the years

except my wife has been having trouble with it on the laptop she got a few months ago
the sellers have been apparently good and when I complain they have sent me a new key to restart it

 

[vickster]

They have always worked when I have tried them - and i have done it several times over the years

except my wife has been having trouble with it on the laptop she got a few months ago
the sellers have been apparently good and when I complain they have sent me a new key to restart it

Lucky you, I could get no response from the seller and for the sake of a tenner, I couldn’t be bothered to expend much energy on it. I got a deal on full official MS office through Argos for under £50.
Also, having read reviews of such deals afterwards, I’m glad I couldn’t get the dodgy software to download (I’m not an IT person so didn’t want things being embedded in the registry or some such)

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Lucky you, I could get no response from the seller and for the sake of a tenner, I couldn’t be bothered to expend much energy on it. I got a deal on full official MS office through Argos for under £50.
Also, having read reviews of such deals afterwards, I’m glad I couldn’t get the dodgy software to download (I’m not an IT person so didn’t want things being embedded in the registry or some such)

The software I got was not dodgy - it was the proper stuff from the Microsoft store

it was just the activation code that came from the Groupon company

I suspect some are "better" than others!

 

[DRM]

As far as refurb is concerned I am generally a fan

BUT

you need to check the battery is OK - if they have been used and refurbished then it has often been owned by a company
and the person they gave it to would have used it in a way that may not have been ideal

at least with some ebikes the control thingy display the range!!

When I had to work out the best laptops to buy for a whole school I generally used refurb
but that was knowing that the battery only needed to last an hour or so at a time - then would go back on charge

I'm typing this on a 15 Year old Lenovo ThinkPad T420, running Ubuntu, it's built like a tank and it's had 2 replacement batteries from Duracell Direct, 2 Power branded which are very good quality, so batteries are readily available for them

 

[Reynard]

I'm typing this on a 15 Year old Lenovo ThinkPad T420, running Ubuntu, it's built like a tank and it's had 2 replacement batteries from Duracell Direct, 2 Power branded which are very good quality, so batteries are readily available for them

Mine's a 460 running Win 10.

I can get between two and a half and four hours out of a battery, depending on what I'm doing. Although largely, it tends to be plugged into the mains for the most part.

I was planning to upgrade to Win 11-capable one, but unfortunately my spendables pot all disappeared into vet bills

 

[Jameshow]

+1 for Lenovo. I've been running this refurb Thinkpad for about three years now and would definitely have another. I keep my old Sony Vaio for running Photoshop, but everything else gets done on this machine. I see nothing wrong with refurb - more bang-for-buck IMHO, and stops something useful going to landfill.

As for software, LibreOffice here. As someone who does a lot of archive work and writing, I'd say it's actually bettering than Office, even if a few bits aren't quite as intuitive.

I have three laptops I use.... a dell personal one it's ok but feels nothing special.
A Lenovo ideapad which is nicer than the dell.
But the best is the refurb ThinkPad tbh.
Which is the cheapest irrc

 

[Reynard]

I have three laptops I use.... a dell personal one it's ok but feels nothing special.
A Lenovo ideapad which is nicer than the dell.
But the best is the refurb ThinkPad tbh.
Which is the cheapest irrc

The thinkpad?

They're good bang for buck. I think I paid about £350 for this one.

 

[DRM]

The thinkpad?

They're good bang for buck. I think I paid about £350 for this one.

This one was a cast off from my son, he got it as a refurb at about 3 or 4 years old, it's still working ok, I upped the RAM to 8 GB, and put an SSD in it, it's still very fast, when it was on W10 it would start up in about 40 seconds from off to logged on! it has the option to run a SIM card, but it's 3G network, which will shortly be getting turned off, but it still works for now, battery life is good, from 100% to 45% in 4.5 hours with a mix of surfing & watching Youtube videos