New Laptop Cost

[Biker1mike]

Laptop finally died. Picked up a new HP and got to thinking.
My first real home use workstation set me back over a month's pay and had to be financed. Next couple of upgrades also cost more than the mortgage. The ROI was great for faster promotions and raises at work.
This latest laptop cost less than a day's pay (before I retired).

 

[GeoHorn]

They could GIVE them to you and they’d still make money on the software upgrades necessary to keep connected. Same thing for printers and peripherals….the SUPPLIES is where they GET you.

I resisted for soooo loooong…but finally got an I-Pad Pro and now virtually NEVER USE A LAPTOP AGAIN!

 

[The Evil Twin]

It's funny that way. Vehicles have gotten stupid expensive and computers stupid cheap. So cheap that my company literally gives them away. I have one in my office, one in the family room (for the TV), one in the RV, one in the shop.... all Windows 10, SSHD 64 BIT. "Modern" machines. They are almost disposable.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

re:

They are almost disposable.






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re: They are almost disposable.

No they ARE 'disposable' !!!!
I haven't bought a new desktop or laptop in DECADES. No need , keep getting 'hand me downs' or 'it's toooo old' units.

This machine has Win10+ on it,came fully loaded with 5-6ooo$ worth of windows programs, er 'aps', huge SSD, 1tb HD and other 'stuff'. Yesterday friend dropped of a MacBook, that has Win7 on it.
I still prefer my ORIGINAL laptop , from 1981.


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[Roadworthy]

I switched to a laptop several years ago with a Toshiba. Since then I've moved to Lenovo Thinkpad computers. I pick them up used "reconditioned" on eBay. My most recent one came with Windows 10 Professional, an Intel i7 processor, and a 500 gigabyte solid state drive. I'm happy.

 

[jyoutz]

I switched to a laptop several years ago with a Toshiba. Since then I've moved to Lenovo Thinkpad computers. I pick them up used "reconditioned" on eBay. My most recent one came with Windows 10 Professional, an Intel i7 processor, and a 500 gigabyte solid state drive. I'm happy.

I like laptop docking stations with a keyboard and large monitor. But when I want to travel, the laptop disconnects from the docking station and is compact.

 

[JimmyJazz]

I will say that you get what you pay for. I bought an HP computer to work remotely and absolutely hate the thing. I had to send it back. It took 6 weeks to fix. Had to buy another. Its glitchy. The Apple products are more expensive but worth it if you spend a lot of time on it. I cant tell you how many HOURS I spent either on hold or engaged in technical conversations with someone in Bangladesh. I shudder when I see an HP product. Good luck.

 

[AndyM]

I have a win 7 pc from 2008 that served me well but when I decided to set up a NAS to escape the youtube ad nonsense it was simply not capable of downloading videos. I tried everything I could think of to refresh it (it was a Vista unit I upgraded), cleared cache, defragged it blah blah to no avail. If there is a trick I would love to know it.

My new pc (2020), an Asus, is up to all I ask of it.

 

[sagor]

AndyM, one can still upgrade from Win7 to Win10.
The PC I'm using right now was built in 2009, with Vista and a free upgrade to Win7. Search the Internet for upgrading to Win10, the ISO (distributions) are still available and online. For anyone interested, look for a utility to download ISO images from Microsoft called "Windows-ISO-Downloader" (www.heidoc.net).
One may have to install an older version of Win10 first, then install upgraded version... The Internet is full of help for upgrading from Win7 to 10...
My old PC was original i7-920/12GB ram. Upgraded to SSD and Win10, and it runs just as well as any modern Core-I5 machine I have. Still used as my day to day desktop.

 

[AndyM]

Sagor - thanks. Interesting thought - but, it is a Sony with a core duo and 3 gb ram (at the time, a decent? laptop). I expect an ISO download would be more effort than its worth especially as finding drivers could be difficult (or impossible for me - I am NOT a techy).

 

[GreensvilleJay]

the desktop I'm on has both WIN7U and WIN10 on.All my good program run under 7, 10 is only for tax purposes....

 

[TheOldHokie]

Laptop finally died. Picked up a new HP and got to thinking.
My first real home use workstation set me back over a month's pay and had to be financed. Next couple of upgrades also cost more than the mortgage. The ROI was great for faster promotions and raises at work.
This latest laptop cost less than a day's pay (before I retired).

In 1982 I worked on the specification and purchase of a state of the art Cray 1 super computer for our lab - ten times faster than anything else. The price tag was several million dollars and it required half a reinforced floor in the building to house, power, and cool it and another six figure Sperry Univac mainframe to front end it. The "obsolete" Dell desktop I am typing on would have blown it out of the water. Regardless of make or business model the tiny physical footprint and miniscule cost of compute power today is truly amazing.

As an unrelated side note I had to make a trip up to Chippewa Falls to benchmark the machine. On our drive from the airport to Cray's research and manufacturing facility we kept passing all of these little stores that had a sign out front that simply said Leinenkugel's. I remarked that these Leinenkugel people sure own a lot of stores.....

 

[jyoutz]

I will say that you get what you pay for. I bought an HP computer to work remotely and absolutely hate the thing. I had to send it back. It took 6 weeks to fix. Had to buy another. Its glitchy. The Apple products are more expensive but worth it if you spend a lot of time on it. I cant tell you how many HOURS I spent either on hold or engaged in technical conversations with someone in Bangladesh. I shudder when I see an HP product. Good luck.

I love iPhones and iPads, but have been very satisfied with HP computers and printers. Their inkjet printers are the most reliable I’ve owned and I’ve had many brands.

 

[Ton]

I've actually noticed a decline in "Moore's Law" over the past 10 years or so. The advancement of CPUs and RAM seems to have started to stagnate a bit compared to the periods prior to about 2012 or so. I think the semiconductor lithography has begun to reach it's physical size limit, and this is the main culprit for the slow-down. Just my opinion, of course.

 

[TheOldHokie]

I've actually noticed a decline in "Moore's Law" over the past 10 years or so. The advancement of CPUs and RAM seems to have started to stagnate a bit compared to the periods prior to about 2012 or so. I think the semiconductor lithography has begun to reach it's physical size limit, and this is the main culprit for the slow-down. Just my opinion, of course.

With the emergence of an entirely new technoogy we have shifted from talking about Moore's Law (transistor density in silicon) and are now talking about the compute power itself. An interesting (at least to me) discussion of this analog and what it may portend:

Moore’s Law Is Replaced by Neven's Law for Quantum Computing

Moore’s Law In 1965, Gordon Moore, the CEO of Intel, published a paper which described a doubling in every year in the number of components per integrated

community.hitachivantara.com

Dan

 

[Biker1mike]

With the emergence of an entirely new technoogy we have shifted from talking about Moore's Law (transistor density in silicon) and are now talking about the compute power itself. An interesting (at least to me) discussion of this analog and what it may portend:

Moore’s Law Is Replaced by Neven's Law for Quantum Computing

Moore’s Law In 1965, Gordon Moore, the CEO of Intel, published a paper which described a doubling in every year in the number of components per integrated

community.hitachivantara.com

Dan

LMAO ! The guy with poor grammar and piss poor spelling that no longer requires a laptop that is encrypted has to bail on this conversation.
I have heard that 2 nm and lower R&D is a blast if you can handle the pressure and are willing to try what the physicists of decades ago said was not possible,

Edit. Been retired for several years so what I worked on should be close to coming to market. Have to imagine it will be costly and us 'lowly, normal users' will not see it for a decade or so.

 

[lugbolt]

ironic that you mention this, and I'm gonna focus on the software

I use mine for specifically web surfing, and not much else. I have a dirt cheap one I use for automotive tuning and that kinda thing, bare bones, nothign on it but the tune software.

Girlfriend's died (HDD failure) and in her case it was better to replace it than to try to repair. It was OLD, hinges broken, poor HDD, slow as christmas, and generally just hard to use because win7 is no longer supported and they wanted her to upgrade to 11, which that confuser won't run.

So I called my friend in OKC and asked if he had a line on a Dell (he works for Dell) that would work for her. She's hard on laptops, falls asleep and drops it on the floor. Yeah sure he's got one, new, $105 with NO OS. Thats fine I have the enterprise version of windows os. Started to install, and they won't let it install....so I downloaded Linux Mint and installed that. She absolutely LOVES it. It's a little simpler than windows but it does everything she needs it to-and then some. Free OS. I run it on mine, dual boot with winders, and rarely use windows. It (linux) has some limitations but for what we use it for, it's been great. No viruses, free, free upgrades, etc. Every once in a while it'll update and the update will be "off", but they usually fix that right away. All open source.

 

[ctfjr]

Surprised no one has mentioned building their own... it's a fun hobby and plenty of resources available on the web to help with.

I've built several over the last few years and it's always a rush when it actually boots up.

You can build one to match your needs. May not be the cheapest way to go but certainly the most satisfying - much like tractors.

 

[dirtydeed]

Over the years I've used many frustrating laptops for target practice.

THAT has been the upmost satisfying activity I've ever had the pleasurer of experiencing with a laptop. Bar none.

If you've never had that sort of pleasure, you may experience it vicariously by watching the printer destruction scene from "Office Space".

 

[Jchonline]

They could GIVE them to you and they’d still make money on the software upgrades necessary to keep connected. Same thing for printers and peripherals….the SUPPLIES is where they GET you.

I resisted for soooo loooong…but finally got an I-Pad Pro and now virtually NEVER USE A LAPTOP AGAIN!

Never paid a dime for software upgrades with any of the PCs I have just to keep them connected. Sounds like you might have been scammed.