Need recomendation for work laptop

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usuariofeliz

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Hi,

I would appreciate your input on some work laptops. I know dell is pretty much the standard for business, but I'm trying to think outside the box. Do you have any recommendations?

The budget is around $1K. Must have minimum 15" screen, 16GB ram, and an i5.

Thanks a bunch.
 
I would recommend a T series Thinkpad, but it seems ram is made of gold these days. Going from 4GB to 16GB is like $340, taking a <$800 laptop to over $1100. Not sure of Dell is going to get you the same type of deal. I would think so. Maybe consider buying a laptop with 4GB, and spend $125 or so on two 8GB SODIMMs.
 
I would second on the Thinkpad. For a business laptop it's not just about specs, it's about reliability. Some of Dell's more expensive Studio laptops are ok for business if you can live without a docking station, but those are really only an option if you targeted a much higher price range.

You'll probably want to upgrade the screen, do that as an option on the base model. Going to 1600x900 is $50 extra, going to full 1080p is $250 (1080p would put you slightly over budget). For the memory you could save a lot of money by leaving it at the factory 4GB. Then buy two 8GB sticks from NewEgg or whatever and remove the 4GB stick you got (the T series has 2 ram slots, one under the laptop, one under the keyboard). To be 99% sure they're compatible get a pair of 8GB 204 pin DDR3 SO-DIMMs rated as PC3-10600 or PC3-12800 (ratings between those might work, but those exact ratings are what the T series motherboard and BIOS officially support and what Lenovo will sell you). The pair should run you about $90-$120.
 
Definitely order with the cheapest HDD and RAM possible and upgrade those seperately.

All of the OEMs charge about twice or more the going price for RAM and SSDs.

And even if you do get the "upgraded" RAM and SSD from the OEM, there is a pretty good chance that they are going to stick the cheapest thing they can get their hands on in there.

Edit: We run all Dell where I work.

For a 15" general work laptop, you would want the E6530 with a Quad core processor as well as the upgraded Graphics.

For a 15" cad/3d work laptop, you would want to get the M4700 with a quad and upgraded graphics (do specific research on the different cards available as gthe Nvidia cards are generally slower and more expensive than the ATI cards available in the Precision Workstation laptops).
 
My only issue with the Dells is that they aren't as price competitive for the $700-$1200 business range. For example the E6530's $700 configuration is very similar to the Lenovo T series $700 configuration, except it drops from an i5 to an i3 and from 4GB to 2GB. Hardrive, screen and other components are the same and at the end of the day I'd slightly prefer Lenovo build quality over Dell's good models (and certainly over its bad ones).

With the price of RAM and todays software the 2GB configuration on a $700 laptop just baffles me. Of course Dell has always played games with the absolute minimum amount of ram. When Windows XP first came out they advertised laptops and desktop with an amazing 'free' ram upgrade. What Dell didn't mention was that without the upgrade they wouldn't have met the minimum system requirements for the OS.
 
David_CAN said:
My only issue with the Dells is that they aren't as price competitive for the $700-$1200 business range. For example the E6530's $700 configuration is very similar to the Lenovo T series $700 configuration, except it drops from an i5 to an i3 and from 4GB to 2GB. Hardrive, screen and other components are the same and at the end of the day I'd slightly prefer Lenovo build quality over Dell's good models (and certainly over its bad ones).

With the price of RAM and todays software the 2GB configuration on a $700 laptop just baffles me. Of course Dell has always played games with the absolute minimum amount of ram. When Windows XP first came out they advertised laptops and desktop with an amazing 'free' ram upgrade. What Dell didn't mention was that without the upgrade they wouldn't have met the minimum system requirements for the OS.
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Yeah, Dell is "sneaky" like that.

We get a corporate discount with Dell, so our price from Dell is most likely going to beat Lenovo.

For a regular person that doesn't get a discount, I would go with which ever one was cheapest at the time.

You can usually find discount codes for the different OEMs by doing a search on google.
 
One more thing, don't buy an HP. The build quality is absolutely atrocious (their printers have gone way downhill too). Despite the fact that we normally operate on a 2 year schedule we canceled with HP after 12 months (even with the extra discounts they tried to throw on).

The build quality of their elitebooks was just so bad - the keyboards often developed the same problems, the hinges almost all developed issues ranging from just not closing completely to coming right of, we had high numbers of unexplained board failures requiring shipment back to HP and the keyboard light would often get stuck. They also don't stand up to even office wear and tear - those brushed metal exteriors would quickly get covered in tiny scratch marks and would discolor at random spots. A two month old Elitebook would look like it came off our junk pile while a 4 or 5 year old Thinkpad that had passed through 3 owners before being shoved haphazardly into a cupboard for storage would still look new.
 
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