New Laptop, which one?

[Ant]

Alright guys.

So, looking at a new laptop, narrowed it down to two HP 14" laptops.

All that's between them are the processors and £150. Is the extra £150 worth going from an i3 1115G4 to an i5 1135G7?

It'll only really be used for 'general' computing, no gaming or graphics works at all.

Thanks!

[KungFooBob]

It's only a month until Black Friday, I'd be waiting unless I was desperate.

[Ant]

I would, but my experience of black Friday is that nothing is any cheaper unless it's the old tat they can't get rid of, people seem to go mad to buy stuff at the price they were already.

[KungFooBob]

Well in that case, I'd always go for an i5 over an i3, but £150 is quite a difference.

Whats your budget?

The Acer Swift 3 seems to be the 'budget' favourite of a lot of reviewers.

If you're going 14 inch because it needs to be portable, I've got one of these, it's great...

https://consumer.huawei.com/uk/laptops/ ... 3-amd/buy/

It's under £500 if you use the voucher code.

[Mussels]

The i5 is much better but you may not notice depending how you use it, if it's a cheap laptop for watching YouTube then i3. If it's costing a few hundred quid and you want it to last a few years or are expecting it to work well then the i5.

[Ant]

I would go for the i5 of course, but really wondering if it's worth the other £150.

My current laptop is an i5, 3rd generation, it's done well, but the battery is shot, needs to be kept plugged in.

[wheelnut]

I5, 8gb, 256gb ssd as minimum.

Anything less will struggle with win 10, especially as more feature updates come rolling down,

[KungFooBob]

Disagree, win 10 is less resource hungry than windows 7 in my experience.

It runs ok on any old shite.

[Mussels]

Let's remember he won't be running Windows 10 on it, I don't know how 11 will run on slower computers but MS have raised the minimum specs.

[Ant]

It has Windows 10, with an upgrade option.

I know I've not chosen the cheapest Laptop, but I had a look and I really do like the look of the HP, looks just so beautiful, so I know I'm paying more for the HP over a Lenovo. For example I could get the i5 in the Lenovo for the price of the HP i3. I know that sounds silly, I know.

[Felix]

I got an HP with the i5 10th Gen and its been great. My past Dell computers would slow down if video editing and say listening to music but this thing has took all i can throw at it just now. Also just upgraded to Windows 11 and so far all my old programs work as they should. Think the model number is 1035G1

[Ant]

I bought a 13.3" HP Envy, i5 laptop. It's W11!!!!!! I'll let you know how that goes, I really wanted W10, but the laptop that I wanted happened to be W11, so we'll see. I got it Tuesday, still haven't even opened the box! But I will do tonight if I get a chance....

[the_priest]

Ended up with a Dell Latitude 7820 with i5, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD HDD. Has TP 2.0 so it runs Win11 very nicely. Ebay refurbished, vouchers took £95 off the price, so it was £250 delivered. A good bargain and it arrived with latest BIOS, drivers etc installed. Well sorted. I used to work on these in my last job, so like them. Battery life is fine on this model and easy enough to change out if necessary.

[Mussels]

Sounds like a good deal but I think it has a 7th gen Intel processor so won't run Win11, I have the same problem.
Unless you have already upgraded it, then I'll have another try.

[the_priest]

It arrived with Win11 installed and runs perfectly. Yes, 7th Gen i5 Intel and no issues.

[Mussels]

It arrived with Win11 installed and runs perfectly. Yes, 7th Gen i5 Intel and no issues.

MS still says no.
I see I can change a registry setting to force it but this is putting me off.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/21/2268 ... -pc-waiver

I wonder if someone signed a waver on your behalf.

I suspect Win11 isn't recommended for Gen7 because of the meltdown and spectre bugs that were fixed in Gen8. MS rolled out a patch for these in windows ten but it affected performance so they are likely to have left it out of eleven.
If you do sensitive stuff on your laptop you may want to check if your processor is supported.

[the_priest]

For my son to use for Uni. Will be his course material only.