She's been dealing with a really slow, Win 7 laptop for the last few years and I thought I'd get her a late Christmas pressie.
Budget is ~$700, absolute maximum is $1000.
Basic requirements are
There are so many brands and models that fit these criteria, it's overwhelming. Any suggestions would be great!
Thanks!
Hey. Appreciate the response.
There is no gaming, no photo/video editing. It is used mostly for sound mixing/editing and multimedia consumption. Preferred primary storage is SSD, total size of 250GB should be plenty.
By saying the i5 I meant having at least a dual core CPU with hyper-threading. So mainly the speed (over the i3).
The current laptop does run Windows 7, but it suffers from hardware issues (unresponsive trackpad, a slow dual-core processor, only 2GB DDR2 RAM) which is why we are thinking of replacing it.
You could configure a Lenovo E550 with i5-5200, 4Gb RAM, FHD screen, DVD burner and 128Gb SSD for $880.
Many people recommend Dell Outlet for lightly-used or essentially unused laptops at good prices, but you can't control the configuration and 256Gb SSD are not so common. Scrimshaw will tell you to look at the Latitude range rather than Inspiron for higher quality,
Otherwise, Shopping Express has a good range and keen pricing, but again a big SSD tends to come only with high-spec machines costing over $1k.
i'd go one of these and swap the HDD
http://www.centrecom.com.au/laptops?orderby=10&b=1&specs=1,2…
my choices would be the $6xx ones
15" Dell Inspiron from the Microsoft Store — shiping is free.. and it's $699. This deal was posted a week ago
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msaus/en_AU/pdp/Dell-Ins…
15.6-inch HD touchscreen (yes, this is FHD 1080p display)
Intel Core i5-5200U
8GB memory/1TB HDD
Dell outlet is currently empty until JANUARY 6th because of holidays. If you can wait, and are willing to spend north of $700 for a decent Latitude that's probably the best option, but remember the specifications provided are as-is and cannot be changed.
Shove a ssd in the lappy she has now. It will most likely run faster than any std hdd equipped budget line new lappy you buy now.
If she is still unhappy with it just use the ssd in a new lappy.
Either way, a ssd is a must have these days but it usually works out much cheaper to install one yourself.
OP's mum's laptop has 2GB of DDR2 memory. Read that: DDR2. So around 6-7 years obsolete now.
It's high time for a new machine methinks, besides if it's for mum you'll want to give her something nice.
Make sure you put an ssd in it for her! :-)
These requirements are very general and a super cheap laptop could meet these easily. To find a laptop best suited to your need you should provide them. Some of the key questions are: Is there any gaming? Video/Photo processing? Storage requirements? Also saying you want an i5 kinda means nothing as they have been around for years but have changed dramatically with each generation, so what aspect of the i5 is important, performance, battery usage, heat generated etc?
The fact her current laptop is slow would 95% be the windows install, simply doing a backup and fresh install would bring it back to as new if it was fast enough when she first got it. If it runs windows 7, fairly sure if will still meet your above basic requirements - saving $$$.