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  • SQLGeek

    Muh state lines
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    Sep 22, 2017
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    Richmond
    which seems ideal except the battery isn't replaceable and that's a lot of high society to be disposable.

    Many form factors seem to be going that way.

    I like my work Lenovo machines I've had over the years but I'd never recommend a consumer one due to the issues Dye talked about. I like HP well enough. The Surfaces are damn good. An HP was my last personally owned Windows laptop and it was a great machine until my F#@^ing dog freaked out, hooked the power cord and then yanked the whole thing onto the ground and thrashed the screen. Thank goodness I had a cloud backup I could restore to a new machine.

    16 GB memory is good. RAM and storage are relatively cheap so adding more upfront and not worrying about it later is my favored approach.

    SSDs are awesome in terms of performance but their price per GB is going to be higher and while prices have gone down on higher capacity, they are still fairly pricey per GB. But the SSD as my boot drive is the only way I'll fly. If you want more storage, you may want to consider going a smaller SSD as a primary boot drive and a 1 or 2 TB HDD as a secondary storage drive. That may not also be an issue if you're looking to hookup to an existing NAS.
     

    SQLGeek

    Muh state lines
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    Sep 22, 2017
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    Help me understand if this is an accurate comparison


    1. Lenovo - Glock
    2. Dell - 1911
    3. HP - Taurus
    4. Others. - High Point

    I can't decide if that's a slight on Dells or not but if it is, then I'd agree with it. ;)

    I'm not a fan of Dell personally. The work Dell I had, which was a new machine, was a total POS. My sister's Dell was a total POS. My coworker's Dells were total POS.

    I'd never buy a personal Lenovo because of this:

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/lenovo-tumbles-after-report-about-alleged-chinese-spy-chips.html

    I'd say HPs are Glocks or M&Ps. Nothing super flashy but they work.

    The high end fancy gaming machines are your race guns or Wilson Combats.

    Dells fit in the Taurus category for me.
     

    DyeF9

    In Thrust We Trust
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    Jan 25, 2019
    2,407
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    Red Oak TX
    I can't decide if that's a slight on Dells or not but if it is, then I'd agree with it. I'm not a fan of Dell personally. The work Dell I had, which was a new machine, was a total POS.
    Dell computers are POS, they do at least have good CS and decent warranties. I found it massively irritating that Dell's could have various different chipsets within the same model for multiple parts of the system. Depended on who was the lowest bidders the day they made the model I guess.
     

    DyeF9

    In Thrust We Trust
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    Jan 25, 2019
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    Red Oak TX
    By no means are all HP Computers good, but their mid to high end Ultrabooks are completely reasonable laptops. Good displays with good resolutions (I hate those off resolutions that make it difficult to display webpages), capable of using a dock, and I've not had any issues with mine. I don't use my laptop for much, some web stuff, excel, PowerPoint, music, YouTube, email, etc. I don't try to use it for anything like games or much intensive work.
     

    oldag

    TGT Addict
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    Feb 19, 2015
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    I have had good use from Dell notebooks.

    Last Lenovo I had was a piece of junk that didn't last two years. Toshiba notebooks not what they used to be.
     

    Kar98

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    Aug 8, 2016
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    DFW
    I have had good use from Dell notebooks.

    Last Lenovo I had was a piece of junk that didn't last two years. Toshiba notebooks not what they used to be.

    There are literally tens of thousands of Lenovo ThinkPads in use at my place of employment and the 5,000 or so that went through my hands the last few months are all around four to five years old. Some of them really took a beating too but still work. They're just barebones, no frills, ugly pieces of crap. But they work.
     

    DyeF9

    In Thrust We Trust
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    Jan 25, 2019
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    HP EliteBook 735 G6 Notebook PC is a decent option. Has 16 GB RAM, half TB NVMe drive, runs on an AMD Ryzen cpu. I'm not typically an AMD guy, but right now they're crushing Intel. It has a 13.3" 1920x1080, should have reasonable battery life that is easily replaced, and not a huge laptop by any means. You can also buy accessories for it, such as a laptop dock.

    If you prefer Intel for whatever fanboy reasons, then the HP Elite series has many other options with similar specs but a 7th or 8th gen processor
     

    Kar98

    TGT Addict
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    Aug 8, 2016
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    HP EliteBook 735 G6 Notebook PC is a decent option. Has 16 GB RAM, half TB NVMe drive, runs on an AMD Ryzen cpu. I'm not typically an AMD guy, but right now they're crushing Intel. It has a 13.3" 1920x1080, should have reasonable battery life that is easily replaced, and not a huge laptop by any means. You can also buy accessories for it, such as a laptop dock.

    If you prefer Intel for whatever fanboy reasons, then the HP Elite series has many other options with similar specs but a 7th or 8th gen processor

    That's an expensive email checker...
     

    DyeF9

    In Thrust We Trust
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    Jan 25, 2019
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    Red Oak TX
    That's an expensive email checker...
    He can buy a cheap laptop, but he's not going to be happy with it more than a couple years, which was a stipulation of the new laptop. Should be pleasant to use and last a good 5 years, roughly. Also the cheapies have intolerable screens that make me batshit crazy, so I can't in my right mind, recommend them.
     

    Darkpriest667

    Actually Attends
    Lifetime Member
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    9   0   0
    Jan 13, 2017
    4,489
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    Jarrell TX, United States
    Just got home and read this.

    There are only two brands you can consider if you need a smartcard reader:

    HP and Dell

    Lenovo is out because of obvious reasons (you can pm me about it if you don't know what they are.)

    Anyone else is out because their support and logistics will be too shitty to be reliable if you do have an issue.

    I don't know what HPs support system is like. I do know what Dell's is like and there is a reason people buy them.

    Total disclaimer. I work at Dell in the highest level of commercial support you can get. We sold 71 million PCs last year on top of the 280 million (verified) Dell service tags still in operation (those that logged onto the net and at least sent a signal to our update servers to check for an update.) About 1/3 of that is consumer/client (what you'd be) so round it off to 130 million Dell consumer/client PCs. At my level of support WORLDWIDE we had 24000 tickets last year (12000 of them in the US.) So out of 130 million PCs 24000 or so had an issue serious enough that it required L3 or L4 support.
     
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