Best for the money laptop

Loganwayne

Loganwayne

#BTL
Joined
Feb 15, 2013
Location
Clyde, North Carolina
I need a new laptop. The one I have now is about six years old, and keeps freezing and is incredibly slow. I'm a full time student again will be using excel, autocad And rivet a good bit so I figured it was time for an upgrade. Not looking for top of the line just a solid middle of the road unit that I can get all the work done on with out it crashing and slowing down a ton.
 
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I would say look for one based on Autocad since that is probably very needy. Everything can be done on all but the cheapest machines. You would be surprised that your current laptop with an SSD hard drive, a bump in RAM, and Win 8 would do just fine for everyday stuff. I personally prefer Asus machines because I've owned numerous models all with great success.
 
If you're talking 2D autocad, there is nothing to worry about with any full size laptop these days. I've got a mid grade HP for work and it runs 3D modeling software just fine.
 
Skinny said:
I would say look for one based on Autocad since that is probably very needy. Everything can be done on all but the cheapest machines. You would be surprised that your current laptop with an SSD hard drive, a bump in RAM, and Win 8 would do just fine for everyday stuff. I personally prefer Asus machines because I've owned numerous models all with great success.
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i have a mac now and although i can get a friend to rebuild it for me it will take a couple weeks for him to do it, and I've dropped it a few times and the screen is about to fall off and now every time i open it, it makes all kinds of noise. my friend is going to buy it back form me and i should be able to get a decent computer with what i can add to it.
 
I used to have a toshiba that lasted for 6 years of daily use, needed to replace it when hinge broke, bought a new near top of the line toshiba on sale, and had nothing but problems, and exchange it for an HP.

Now we have 4 HP laptops in total and I love them but 3 of the newer ones have windows 8 and I hate it.

My current one I use autocad, solidworks, bend-tech, and Gibbs-cam on, as been great. It has I7 processor, 1tb memory, beats audio, I forget all the other details.

Anyway I wait until Office Depot was cleaning out last years inventory and get them for a deal. Usually happens between July and August before the back to school crowd gets there.
 
Buy a Mac :)

Honestly though, at least get something with an I5 and 8 gigs of ram and it will last whatever you want to do for a while. An SSD is also great to have for battery life, quicker loading programs but you will not find one in a more "budget" focused laptop.
 
Lenovo owns the cheap laptop market.
Asus is second and quality is just as good if not better but no one touches lenovo on price/spec.

Ive got a 4 year old B570 that cost under $400 that will still do all you need it to
 
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This may seem like a trivial thing, but it isn't to me -
Do you care whether it uses the typical touch-pad style mouse control at the bottom, vs the little eraser in the middle of your keyboard style "Track-pad" or whatever it's called by different companies, that you just move w/ your finger?
Personally I LOVE the latter and HATE the former.
Not many companies offer those, so that would be a quick down-select point. Over the year's it's made the decisions easy for me - Lenovo or Dell.

I have a Lenovo T400 that's about 5 years old and still going strong. The ThinkPads used to be known for super durable chassis, seems when Lenovo took over the line and the prices dropped, some of the build quality dropped, but that just means they aren't built like a tank anymore. Processing etc Ron is right, they own the market.
 
I'll be using a wireless mouse most of the time. I found a new Lenovo for I think 250-275 on best buys website. 4gb memory 750 gb hard drive with a 15.6 screen probably the way I'm gonna go
 
Loganwayne said:
I'll be using a wireless mouse most of the time. I found a new Lenovo for I think 250-275 on best buys website. 4gb memory 750 gb hard drive with a 15.6 screen probably the way I'm gonna go
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Check to make sure you can easily increase the memory. 90% of the time it's just a plate to remove on the back, then pop out/in the modules. Depending on the type of CAD work, you may want more eventually.
Memory is super cheap now and easy to swap in.
 
So did you answer definitively whether or not you are going Mac or not? I think that is the ultimate divide on what is suggested.
 
Loganwayne said:
will be using excel, autocad And rivet a good bit
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Loganwayne said:
so would a 4 gb memory and a 500 gb hard drive be okay?
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Hell. No.

I'd look at 8GB and an SSD as a bare minimum spec. I have an old i5 with 8GB of ram that does a passable job running Revit or Autocad, but only one at a time. 12GB or 16GB is much better. My desktop has 16GB of ram. With only Chrome and one Revit instance open is sitting at just under 8GB of physical memory used.
 
of course if you dont need windows your memory will go a looot further these days as well.
 
I get Win 8 running on some old machines and really can be done on the cheap where the biggest benefits are the SSD drive. You will really need to shop at the other end of the spectrum if you plan on doing 3D modeling and CAD type work. Just the name of the game.
 
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