Would I benefit from upgrading my laptop

[Ian J]

I only use my laptop when I'm overseas on holiday which is about five or six weeks every year. It's used for light business use as in raising invoices on Excel and surfing.

I tend to buy Toshiba Portege laptops as they are very light and thin making them ideal for carting around with me.

I currently have a Portege Z830-10T which is a few years old now and has a 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i3-2367M processor, 4Mb Ram and a 128 GB solid state drive.

I've been looking at Ebay and there are newer models available at reasonable prices (say £250) as in a Portege Z30 with Intel Core i5-6200 6th generation, 8Mb Ram and a 256 GB solid state drive.

The question is would I notice sufficient difference to make it worth while?

 

[gpietersz]

If its light use and you do not have any problems its unlikely to make much difference.

You are looking at second hand at that price, right? I am a bit wary of buying second hand laptops because batteries may not be in good condition and replacements can be quite expensive compared to the price of the laptop.

The bottleneck in web surfing is usually your connection, not the processor. Its worth looking at CPU and RAM usage though. You can also tweak browsers to use less RAM. You could add some RAM which can perk old machines up a bit.

If Excel is not noticeably slow, then that is not a problem. If it is, you could try using Libre Office (or maybe other alternatives).

 

[Ian J]

If Excel is not noticeably slow, then that is not a problem. If it is, you could try using Libre Office (or maybe other alternatives).

Excel isn't really slow as everything I do is fairly basic with no complicated macros but as I mentioned in a previous thread I am still using Excel 2003 and I think that you were one of the people that suggested I try out Libre Office.

I did download it and at first glance it seemed fairly similar to the older versions of Excel so I thought I might take the opportunity of trying it out on a fresh laptop along with Windows 10 which I've never used either and if I am happy with my knowledge levels I can them transfer both programs to my main desktop.

Then I wonder if I'm just trying to convince myself

 

[gpietersz]

Yes, I did suggest it there as well. I tend to defer hardware upgrades by tweaking or switching software.

Does you laptop feel slow compared to your desktop?

 

[Ian J]

Does you laptop feel slow compared to your desktop?

If I'm honest probably not

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

You're just like me Ian I think...trying to find reasons to justify something you want to buy! For me, its cars and motorbikes, even though I already have two of each and they work perfectly well. If I can find someone who can give me a good reason to buy another motorbike, then that's the only opinion that matters.

If you want a new laptop, just buy one Ian.

 

[paulears]

The speed and efficiency of laptops has levelled off. Processors have got faster and memory is quite cheap. In practice the limiting factor on performance now is no longer the processor, but the display side of things. For cheap good laptops I've bought Panasonic tough books for years - touch screens and the older ones heavy and brick like, but they just go on and on. The newer ones are slimmer and sleeker, and have i5 processors, Windows 10 and say 8Gb of RAM On Excel and Word, they're speedy and efficient - internet and things like youtube are perfectly fine. However, I can't edit video on them, and some of my music apps won't run because they feature video windows. Spec wise they're powerful enough but the graphics side cannot compete with a brand new one where now the extra money and technology goes into video displays.

 

[Ian J]

You're just like me Ian I think...trying to find reasons to justify something you want to buy! For me, its cars and motorbikes, even though I already have two of each and they work perfectly well.

Cars and holidays for me. I have three years to go on my car PCP and I've booked next year's holidays already

 

[Ian J]

I had an accident at the weekend. I was looking at second hand Dell Latitude laptops on Ebay and my finger jerked forward all on it's own and hit the "buy" button.

Having spent an hour or so trying to get to grips with Windows 10 I must admit that I am finding it hard going and am struggling to do even the simplest of tasks.

 

[StevePoster]

If there are minimal issues that can be resolve by simple hacks, it would rather stay and no need to upgrade because it will also cost you in the end.

 

[Financial-Modeller]

I'm a little late to this one but for simple spreadsheet stuff, Google Sheets seems pretty good.

Its free, and you can try it on any operating system via your browser, and/or buy a Chromebook to use it.

Chromebooks are available from £140 in PCWorld today.

I have no particular affinity to the Google ecosystem, (and buy MS Office with Excel to use for all client work, as I'm a pretty advanced user of Excel, and don't object to the cost at all) but for basic use (invoices etc) by an average user, it can be a better application.

 

[Nick Garnett]

Excel isn't really slow as everything I do is fairly basic with no complicated macros but as I mentioned in a previous thread I am still using Excel 2003 and I think that you were one of the people that suggested I try out Libre Office.

I did download it and at first glance it seemed fairly similar to the older versions of Excel so I thought I might take the opportunity of trying it out on a fresh laptop along with Windows 10 which I've never used either and if I am happy with my knowledge levels I can them transfer both programs to my main desktop.

Then I wonder if I'm just trying to convince myself

I suspect you are, it's a disease that I have as well, wasting too much time procrastinating about buying 'stuff' I don't really need, hope you get better soon because I haven't

 

[Nico Albrecht]

You wouldn't and also there is a reason why nobody really buys Toshiba laptops. They are poor at best but fulfill a niche budget market.

6th gen i5 with a 720p lcd only Toshiba would pull that off these days.

Also not sure what you use but Toshibas are quite bulky laptops and their track pads are poor at best.

Slightly increase your budget and see if you can get a used 4th gen Dell XPS or Asus Zenbook.

performance over power has quite a bit improved in the 6th and + version so battery life should be much better.

Deep inside you know you want the
LG gram 17"

 

[Ian J]

You wouldn't and also there is a reason why nobody really buys Toshiba laptops. They are poor at best but fulfill a niche budget market.

6th gen i5 with a 720p lcd only Toshiba would pull that off these days.

Also not sure what you use but Toshibas are quite bulky laptops and their track pads are poor at best.

Slightly increase your budget and see if you can get a used 4th gen Dell XPS or Asus Zenbook.

performance over power has quite a bit improved in the 6th and + version so battery life should be much better.

Deep inside you know you want the
LG gram 17"

I'm not sure who you are responding too but if it's me my last two laptops have been Toshiba Portege which I bought specifically because they are anything but bulky but are paper this and light so take up no space or weight in my suitcase when travelling.

I did eventually buy a second hand Dell Latitude E7250 with a 5th generation i7 processor last month which I'm very happy with .

The LG gram 17" looks very nice but far too big for me

 

[Nico Albrecht]

The LG gram 17" looks very nice but far too big for me[/QUOTE]

There is always the LG Gram 15 and 13 , very good machines.

For the Dell Latitude E7250 I strongly recommend to check TPM. There is a bug in it and it can cause total data loss. Seen it myself and just waiting to happen.

Here is the full link how to check, by default it is on. Turn it of if you don't use encryption on your laptop: https://www.dell.com/support/articl...er-with-tpm-in-windows?lang=en#EnablingtheTPM

 

[Ian J]

For the Dell Latitude E7250 I strongly recommend to check TPM. There is a bug in it and it can cause total data loss. Seen it myself and just waiting to happen.

Not having a clue what you're talking about I spent ages trying to follow the instructions unsuccessfully then spotted that BitLocker isn't available on Windows 10 Home edition which is what I have.

Whilst the LG may be a better machine I only paid £250 for my E7250 which included £41 Vat so it was a fairly cheap outlay. It would have been even cheaper if I'd waited a month as the bugger is now selling them for £210 but such is life.

I'm very happy with the hardware but not so sure about Windows 10 although I'm sure that I'll get there in the end

 

[Nico Albrecht]

TPM is on the bios / efi base level and can be used independently of the actual OS. W10 home has no root drive encryption support but it still can be turned on in the bios and causes havoc.

If you miss the TPM setting in your bios perfect.