New Computer

[Clive]

I'm in the market for a new computer and wonder if we should abandon Windows and buy a Mac instead.  We've had several Macs in the past and Mrs Clive really loves them.  We would like a laptop with as large a screen as possible and a high spec including SSD.  At present we have a very full Dell belonging to Mrs Clive and an Asus for myself.  Both are 17.5".  The Dell is a top quality machine but the Asus feels a bit flimsy.  We envisage coming down to one shared computer.  Any advice would be useful.

[Simon]

At the risk of asking a stupid question, will all your existing Windows files open on a Mac?

[Steve]

All I can suggest is pop to an Apple store or the like i.e. John Lewis spend some time and see how you get on. My MBP is 5 and half years old, it now hosts an SSD and is still a very capable machine. However you won't get larger than 15in.

[Clive]

At the risk of asking a stupid question, will all your existing Windows files open on a Mac?

Half of then no longer open on Windows so I don't have much to lose.   

All I can suggest is pop to an Apple store or the like i.e. John Lewis spend some time and see how you get on. My MBP is 5 and half years old, it now hosts an SSD and is still a very capable machine. However you won't get larger than 15in.

I guessed that might be the case but 17.5" Windows laptops are pretty hard to find anyway.  For Mrs Clive the Mac will be a breeze because she used them for work for many years.

[Lance]

You could always hook up the laptop to a larger external display for the times you do want a bigger display.

[Bill]

Any advice would be useful.

If you do go for any form of Mac, get it spec'ed the way you want it from the start- they're not easy to upgrade later.

And get it with AppleCare. That's not to say they're any less reliable than PC's, but if they do go wrong they can cost an arm and a leg to repair.

[Clive]

Thanks for the tips.  We've just completed a major downsize so storing large monitors is not something we really want to do.  Good point about the cost of Mac repairs. 

[stevenrw]

I guessed that might be the case but 17.5" Windows laptops are pretty hard to find anyway.  For Mrs Clive the Mac will be a breeze because she used them for work for many years.

Not quite true Clive, PC World has loads of 17.5" machines from realistic prices up to (and even more expensive) than MacBook Pro. (Varying quality however, it has to be said)
You can get a great Dell Inspiron 17.3 with the very latest Gen.6 Intel i7 processor for under £800, (the desktop version is called "Skylake" not sure if they use the same for Lappies) saving £200 over the entry level MBP.
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/laptops.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn#!facets=40189~0~196669,70205~0~2922199,41105~0~5225964,93410~0~1450395&p=1
You could always look to replace the drive with an SSD once the warranty has expired. The Samsung 850 Evo 1Tb is now available for less than £300 or the 500Gb for less than £150. That will give you a powerful W10 machine that should move along at a fair old clip.
You should think carefully if you really want to invest £1000+ and still have what is, by any measure, a small screen. (Great display though it may well be).
As Bill points out, you will easily pass the £1000 mark once you start looking at whats included in the "entry level" Apple machines compared with what you need. An i7 MBP with 500Gb storage will cost about £2000. Thats just madness for a 15" screen.

[Clive]

Thanks for doing the research Steve.  I'm quite happy to buy another Dell and the Inspiron 17 5000-Series costs £649.00 and has an i7 processor, Windows 10 Home, 8GB Memory and 1TB Solid State Drive.  Which revolves at 5400 rpm.  That ticks all the boxes unless anyone can see a flaw. 

[Bill]

... unless anyone can see a flaw. 

Windows 10 ?

[Simon]

The price!  Have you shopped around, Clive?

[stevenrw]

Just to be clear Clive - there is a typo on the Dell description. I think it has a conventional HDD rotating at 5400 NOT a solid state drive.
I think the price is quite competitive given the spec and Dell quality. If you compare to a Lenovo machine at PS World http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/lenovo-z70-17-3-laptop-black-10134826-pdt.html - even if they had it in stock.
The i7 6th Gen Skylake processors are brand new to the market so they are still pricey.

[J!ll]

I like Windows 10! installed on my new laptop from 8.1, no problems.

[Clive]

Just to be clear Clive - there is a typo on the Dell description. I think it has a conventional HDD rotating at 5400 NOT a solid state drive.
I think the price is quite competitive given the spec and Dell quality. If you compare to a Lenovo machine at PS World http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/lenovo-z70-17-3-laptop-black-10134826-pdt.html - even if they had it in stock.
The i7 6th Gen Skylake processors are brand new to the market so they are still pricey.

That was the fatal flaw Steve!     I'll clarify it with them. 

[Lance]

It's in the name. SOLID state drives don't rotate!

I've got a SSD in my work dell laptop and it certainly seems to help things along.

[Clive]

It's in the name. SOLID state drives don't rotate!

That's what I thought too.  It's blatant misadvertising to be honest.  There is no one available to ask until tomorrow. 

[Clive]

They've now changed it to SATA drive which doesn't really meet my requirements.  I'd set my heart on an SDD.   

[Simon]

Snowing my ignorance on 'modern' specs, what's so good about SSDs?  Are they more reliable because they're not relying on a mechanical spinning disk?

[Glenn]

Correct, also the access time to read/write data is a lot faster.

[Steve]

Must admit I've been astounded how quick SSDs are!

[Clive]

My present Dell is a Studio 1745, Core Duo, T6600@2.20 GHz with 4 Gb RAM, Win 7, 64 bit OS with a 350 GB HDD.
Will the Inspiron 17 5000 series be much faster booting up and retrieving stuff from the HDD?  It's so annoying I can't get what I want.  I thought Dell is supposed to make computers to customers requirements. 

[Glenn]

I have a 4 year old i5 HP Probook laptop, it would take around 75 seconds to boot with a hard drive, cloning it to an SSD the boot times are around 10 seconds. Putting a fresh build on the SSD did not result in any fast boot times.

[Simon]

My present Dell is a Studio 1745, Core Duo, T6600@2.20 GHz with 4 Gb RAM, Win 7, 64 bit OS with a 350 GB HDD.
Will the Inspiron 17 5000 series be much faster booting up and retrieving stuff from the HDD?  It's so annoying I can't get what I want.  I thought Dell is supposed to make computers to customers requirements. 

Have you looked on the Dell website?  I'm pretty sure you can customise a chosen model to your own specification.  Alternatively, www.scan.co.uk will build one for you to whatever spec you want.

[Steve]

Like most manufacturers mention SSD and the price rockets, in Dell's case high spec laptops in the Apple price range. Hybrid drives are slightly cheaper but 1TB seems a bit extreme for a laptop.

[Clive]

Thanks Simon but I would prefer to stick with a well known brand and Dell still seems to cut the mustard even just reading the posts on this very helpful thread.  I guess the Dell with the SATA drive is still a good machine that will be fairly future proof.  I think I might go for it.

[Clive]

We have decided to go for the Dell but wait until January when there might be a better offer or an upgrade available.  Someone has written to me saying that with Windows 10 you are forced to use Bing instead of Google.  Surely that cannot be true?   

[Simon]

It certainly isn't if you don't use Internet Explorer.

[Glenn]

Windows 10 doesn't use Internet Explorer, you have Edge. http://www.howtogeek.com/221709/how-to-change-your-default-search-engine-in-microsoft-edge/

[Simon]

Exactly.   

But what I meant was you can use Firefox, etc.   In actual fact W10 does still have IE installed, at least it is on my laptop, and you get the option to choose your default browser during the set up process, from what I recall. 

[Clive]

I've bookmarked the website because I certainly don't want to use Bing.  Thanks Glenn.   

[Den]

I loved his "White Christmas" though Clive. 

[stevenrw]

My present Dell is a Studio 1745, Core Duo, T6600@2.20 GHz with 4 Gb RAM, Win 7, 64 bit OS with a 350 GB HDD.
Will the Inspiron 17 5000 series be much faster booting up and retrieving stuff from the HDD?  It's so annoying I can't get what I want.  I thought Dell is supposed to make computers to customers requirements. 

Just a thought Clive...
If your existing Laptop is working fine, but just a tad slow, have you thought of just replacing the existing hard drive with an SSD? You can buy a pretty darn good Samsung 500gb 850EVO SSD for less than £120. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B00P73B1E4/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1447423898&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+850+evo+500gb

This will make your existing machine feel like new.

Physically its not difficult to fit and all you do is clone your old drive using the data migration software that comes with the drive.
The cloning software does exactly what it says on the tin. It copies every single bit of data including partitions etc from the existing HDD onto the new SSD. So when you boot it up it looks exactly like the machine did before, even the desktop shortcuts look the same.

Seems to me that its worth investing £120 to see if you actually need to spend £££ on a new laptop.

You have 64bit OS so you could also double the RAM, again fairly cheaply. That will help a lot.

If it didn't do the trick for you, you still have a pretty darn good SSD that you can put in your new machine later on (repeating the cloning process) once the warranty has expired.

Adding an SSD is the best, most cost effective upgrade you can make to a PC. Laptops normally have mechanical hard drives which spin at 5400rpm, whereas desktop hard drives normally rotate at 7200rpm, so you don't need to be Einstein to figure a desktop will be faster given all other factors being the same, but adding an SSD to a desktop still makes a huge improvement which will be even greater going from a 5400 HDD.

[Glenn]

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-envy-13-d008na-windows-10-i5-6200u-skylake-8gb-ram-256gb-m-2-ssd-fhd-1920x1080-2322743

[Clive]

I don't want to open up the Dell to put new bits in it as I would rather have a new machine and start from scratch.  This is what I've always done and I'm stuck in my ways.     Sorry Glenn,  I couldn't possibly buy an HP - I've heard too many bad things about them.   

[Glenn]

I've got 5 HP's here, no problems with any of them, 2 laptops, 1 PC and 2 microservers.

[Lance]

I had an HP laptop which never had any issues and at work before my current Dell I had two HPs which never had faults either.

[Clive]

I take Computeractive magazine and readers seem to complain about HP far more than other brands of computer.   I've had two HP printers and neither lasted very long.  Conversely, my Canon printers have served me well.  I'm going to stick with Dell. 

[Simon]

I have a Dell laptop and have never had any trouble with it, except for a damaged screen, which I had to have replaced, and that was my own fault for picking it up with the screen open.   

[Den]

I have a HP Desktop (this is my third one over the years) and I swear by them and have never had any problems. 

[Clive]

  

[Steve]

It's all the same component manufacturers  just a different case/shell.

[Technical Ben]

I have a Dell laptop and have never had any trouble with it, except for a damaged screen, which I had to have replaced, and that was my own fault for picking it up with the screen open.   

That's a good attitude. I've heard one person saying it was HPs fault that his laptop did not survive him leaning over onto it.

I agree things should survive reasonable use, but where do we draw the line? I'm sure some people think throwing a TV out the window is reasonable.

[nowster]

I only ever buy second hand (refurbished) laptops.

[Clive]

It's all the same component manufacturers  just a different case/shell.

There is a lot of truth in that.  The last job I had before retirement was to inspect goods on behalf of foreign governments and one company I had to visit assembled video recorders and DVD players.  Apart from Philips and Sony who manufactured their own models, all the other well known makes were assembled at this particular company called Orion.  The cases were all different but the insides were identical - and all made in Thailand.   

[Glenn]

The HP Probook 4530s that I have is near identical to the Macbook of it's time, so much so that OSX ran it with only a little hack to the keyboard driver.

[Bill]

I'm sure some people think throwing a TV out the window is reasonable.

When you look at the standard of most of the programmes they may have a point

[zappaDPJ]

 

[Technical Ben]

Samsung and LG tend to make a lot of TV panels. No idea who does the gubbins and insides of players.

The TVs have a few major manufactures, just as HDDs and CPUs do for PCs. But you do get a lot of difference in quality between either the manufacturer or the grade of product. Some you could not see the screen sitting on the sun, others that look like your sitting on the sun!

[Clive]

Anyone had experience of PC Specialist http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptop-computers/ who make laptops to your own specification? 

[zappaDPJ]

I've never used them but they generally get good reviews on Trustpilot: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.pcspecialist.co.uk 9.3/10 indicates a high degree of customer satisfaction.

[Clive]

Thanks very much Zap, there is a lot of positive feedback on that site.  I could actually get the computer of my dreams.     But it's probably best if I run my specs past you before I buy.   

[Glenn]

A security hole that could allow attackers to access users' personal data was inadvertently placed on Dell computers, the company has admitted.
The hole represented a "profound security flaw" that could allow access to bank details and other personal data, experts said.
Dell has issued guidance on removing the software that produced it.
The news comes after Lenovo was also criticised for pre-installing adware that potentially compromised security

[Clive]

Well I've now decided against Dell because they won't give me what I want - an SSD drive.  Despite extolling its virtues at every turn.  I want  an SSD drive and God help anyone who stands in my way!     I'm going to have one built to my own specifications which I'm pretty certain are way over the top and I'm sure you will give me lots of good advice when I post the details.   

[Technical Ben]

HP has had this problem too IIRC. Some of the XPS systems.