Is It a Good Time to Buy a Laptop?

misterpotatomato on 27/05/2019 - 09:54

Hi all,

At the moment I have an Acer Predator with a 6700HQ processor. It's a few years old now (actually I bought it at this link: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/274654).

I've saved some money (~$2.5k) and I'm looking to upgrade to another laptop. I'm a software developer so I'm aiming for high clock speeds and as many cores as I can get my hands on. Graphics card doesn't really matter to me that much.

As it turns out I really like the Predator line and the keyboard layout, and basically everything about it. They have a really good cooling solution and are quite easy to work on.

I've seen this on sale on the HN site: https://www.harveynorman.com.au/acer-predator-helios-500-ph5…. At the moment is $2.9k, but with 9th gen just around the corner and 20xx video cards, I think we'll start to see laptops like that available for 2.5k. I actually went to HN at Bundall and offered 2.5k for that laptop the other day and the guy didn't even bother looking it up or talking about price etc.

So…

Is 2.5k for https://www.harveynorman.com.au/acer-predator-helios-500-ph5… a good deal, or should I wait for 9th gen to come out and see if I can get an 8 core laptop for about that price? Acer makes an 8 core Ryzen 2700 Helios 500 laptop but they're not available in Australia it seems :(

Keen for suggestions for a workstation-ish (again, mainly software development, not gaming) laptop for ~$2.5k

Computing Computer Laptop

Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 27/05/2019 - 09:56
    +1

    What don't you like about your current laptop or more specifically which features are slowing down your software development work?

    • misterpotatomato on 27/05/2019 - 10:03

      I find myself capped at times by the processor, namely Visual Studio lagging. Also when I spin up a couple of emulators the system can start to lag.

      Plus a bigger screen for on-the-go would also be good.

      • poohduck on 27/05/2019 - 12:33

        I assume you've got it running lean and mean? I'm still on a 6 year old dell running 8.1 and it flies. Nothing much running in the background, and old OS is always faster. I photo edit raws and just general use. It was years ago now, but I got rid of cortana and all the ms bloat / spy ware.

        • [Deactivated] on 27/05/2019 - 12:47
          +2

          You will probably find W10 will run faster than 8.1. It's a very efficient os

          • poohduck on 27/05/2019 - 13:17

            @[Deactivated]: I'd be amazed. I set up a windows 10 machine for a relative. Just a year ago. It was a new midrange hp laptop. I trimmed the processes down so much - I just couldn't figure out why it was so slow. Operating systems do get more resource intensive to take advantage of the improvements in hardware.

            • [Deactivated] on 27/05/2019 - 14:11

              @poohduck: Well from my own experience and 10 vs 8.1 reviews on the interwebs W10 is faster in nearly all areas.

      • atj on 27/05/2019 - 13:58

        Are you sure you're not IO bound?

        • misterpotatomato on 28/05/2019 - 09:37

          How would I know if I was IO bound?

          • atj on 31/05/2019 - 09:58

            @misterpotatomato: Not sure if it's still the way to go on Windows but perfmon can be used to find bottlenecks.

  • Fergy1987 on 27/05/2019 - 10:38

    No - wait for EOFY Sales

    • websterp on 27/05/2019 - 11:08

      ^This. EOFY sales would start in a week or two.

  • Glenningvalley on 27/05/2019 - 12:46

    The 9th Gen Processors are going to have some huge cooling problems to overcome., just like the 8th gens currently. might be a while before you see them at reasonable price and performing well.

  • renster72 on 27/05/2019 - 13:12
    +2

    check out Metabox, good prices atm..

    • SDF05 on 04/06/2019 - 23:35

      Second on Metabox, i got a Metabox laptop and i've been using it for two years with no issues….you can reduce the cost by removing parts (and even the OS which you can install by yourself since it's pretty easy). Got it around the same price range as OP, around $2K but this thing has a GTX 1070 with a i7-7820HK so it's meant to be running for a long long time (and i play pretty heavy games and it's still all good).

  • The mikky on 01/06/2019 - 10:16

    If you can wait for the new gen of Ryzen laptops, in a few months hopefully, they look like they will be really good for what you want.

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