Be Excellent To Each Other

My current laptop (Asus GL552JX or something, one of those "Republic of Gamers" laptops) has borked after 6 months - the Shift keys on the keyboard have stopped working, but with different keys, so for example the left Shift key can do a capital A but the right one can't, and neither can do a capital J nor a colon.

This state of affairs makes programming rather difficult.

Amazon are (apparently) going to send me a replacement laptop, but I figure this is an opportunity to get another one to fix a couple of the niggles I have with this one, and then sell the replacement when it arrives to recoup cost.

I've had a look and I'm struggling to find one that suits my (specific) requirements, which are:

- Intel Core i5 or i7 - my current one is i7, but I think I'd prefer i5 just for the improved battery life (which is abysmal on the current one)
- GeForce 950M or better (although the most taxing game I play on it is XCOM 2, so anything that might be able to deal with that would be enough)
- SSD for the OS, at least 128GB. Additional storage, as either SSD or HD very desirable.
- A dedicated Home and an End key - the current one has it on the numeric keypad so you either have to use Fn in conjunction with a number, or turn Num Lock off.
- A numeric keypad

Ideally it would have/be the following, but I can live without them:

- 15.6" inches - I don't want bigger, smaller would not be ideal but may be fine.
- Backlit keyboard
- Easy, non warranty-destroying access to replace HDs with SSDs etc.

I'm not mentioning budget as I'm open to anything, unless it's crazy money.

Oh, and it has to be something that can be delivered to me ASAP - so in an ideal world, something on Amazon Prime.

You were doing well for a Surface Pro until he "numeric keyboard" bit

Any sub 15.6" laptop that had a numeric keypad would be impossibly fiddly surely.

Alienware and MSI make the best high end laptops now IMO. I would take a look at both

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_no ... s=msi+gs60

And obviously Dell for Alienware

Can you not just get one of those add on numpads?

Yeah, you could always get one of those USB ones I suppose, it would look nice with your mouse mat, screen filter and wrist rest.

This looks to be the only model that has the numeric keypad

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-17-r3/pd.aspx

Also some on Prime

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss ... Caps%2C198

Those are what I'd consider "silly money", I'm afraid.


Nope, don't want to be carrying around accessories either.

On reflection, I suppose a number pad isn't particularly critical - I was always under the impression that I used mine a lot, but it's actually quite rare that I have to type in lots of numbers consecutively (whenever I do the accounts for the management company I'm involved with basically) so I suppose I can live without it.

I find a keyboard without a numeric keypad feels incomplete. And curse those who don't have NumLock on automatically.

Joking aside, the market for what we used to call "desktop replacement" laptops (15.6" or larger screen, keyboards with numpads) isn't doing so well these days (blame Apple, I think), so I think you'll have slim pickings with those as hard requirements.

Very true we have some CADD guys at work who asked for those, after a while they got pissed off with the weight and found that they could get 95% of their stuff done on standard laptops plus their powerful workstations

So they sat in the store for 2 years until the lease return. I took one home for a while and even travelled with it, far too bloody heavy.

We still have a couple of similar ones for portable Rift stuff but nobody at work wants these now.

Oh sorry man when you said ROG I thought £1100 was cheap

http://www.johnlewis.com/hp-pavilion-15 ... n/p2269674

Then add 500gb SSD and put the drive in it into a external caddy and use that for storage?

Edit. Bugger me it actually has a number pad !

I paid £700 for the laptop I have currently, for context.


Looked at this one, and also in Currys, and it seems to tick all boxes apart from not being readily available in many places.


Is the internal drive easily accessible? On my current laptop I just undo a screw and a panel comes off specifically for the purpose - I couldn't see similar when looking at this laptop in Currys last night, and I don't want the hassle of opening up cases and voiding warranties.

Usually HPs are quite easy to get apart. Mrs JC has one (some Beats thing with an AMD APU she paid £250 for) and it originally had a broken HDD. If you Google the model number you will find service manuals (just found them myself trying to beat the price).

I like ordering from John Lewis though. I would gladly pay the extra if they are more expensive too. Recently I bought a 32" HP Envy monitor and it arrived with a deep scratch in the screen. This was scary, as I could have gotten the blame but JL were fantastic. Their CS is legendary. They even sent out the new one on the day they were collecting the damaged one so I was only without a monitor for about two hours.

Oh yeah also this. If the DVD drive comes out and you can live without it then these are fantastic.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Icy-Box-IB-AC6 ... B007IXPQMY

That way you get to keep all of your storage as well as the SSD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6VNWN0 ... u.be&t=324

The DVD is easy. The HDD, not so easy. I would go the DVD route.

Being easy to get apart is fine provided it doesn't break the warranty for me to do it. This is why ideally it would have an SSD to begin with, even if just for the OS.

Have a look at that Icybox thing. It's an internal converter for your DVD drive to 2.5" and comes with an external enclosure for the DVD so you can still use the DVD. Pretty sweet.

Vanilla as fuck

Went for that green HP model in the end. Seems good so far, once I'd wiped it and reinstalled from a clean install of Windows 10, any way.

I appear to have borked my laptop.

It's only an HP Stream jobber for writing, but it was constantly crashing, unable to receive security updates because there wasn't the space on the HDD to download them. And my complaints to HP fell on deaf ears, who said "The clue's in the name, you aren't meant to download software, it's for streaming." Because you can stream security OS updates, can't you, you smug, patronizing arse.

I digress. So I tried to reset the PC to see if I could roll back from Windows 10 to an earlier OS which might take up less HDD space. Now it's in an infinite boot cycle, HP screen - black - HP screen - black - HP screen etc.

So I probably need a new laptop. Anyone had any good experiences with http://www.cheaplaptopcompany.co.uk/?

Need a new laptop. Mine is just crap now. Budget 300-400 ish.

Doesn't need to play games, well certainly not anything from the past few years.
Does need to be able to run the odd drawing program, ideally without the fan running up so much that I need to turn the volume up on the TV when it is in use.

Here is one option.


https://www.ebuyer.com/855754-lenovo-v3 ... 81b1001euk?

Two


https://ao.com/product/4xx96eaabu-hp-la ... =drytinder

Any thoughts/ alternative s appreciated.

Ps. Not getting a Chromebook.

I’ve got an original surface you can have for frees. Will probably do all that if you’re looking that basic.

'The odd drawing program' covers a whole range of things here. MSPaint or AutoCAD?

That would be awesome, but (and in no way wanting to sound like an ingrate) does it run proper Windows? It is primarily for Clare and she's got it into her head that she needs proper Windows as apps don't do what she wants! (I cba arguing)

See above, Clare has a 20 year old version of Corel draw she refuses to exchange.

It will be Win 10 I think. Fairly sure I upgraded from 8 when it was free.

Cool, well in that case I will happily take it off your hands!

That's bottom-of-the-pile money.