New Laptop

[robertgrumbles]

Hi everyone,

I am thinking about buying a new laptop during the holiday season to take advantage of the sales. I use excel extensively at my job (financial analyst - use multiple linked spreadsheets etc.) and think that I will probably need to work at home at some point. I was wondering what I should be looking for in the way of hardware. I am on a budget, so what's the slowest cpu, ram etc. I can get away with? I don't anticipate using the laptop for anything more than excel, office and surfing the net, so don't need anything fancy.

Thanks!

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

Check out www.tigerdirect.com. I got my 17" Toshiba Satellite laptop there for about $700 and it's been fantastic. They've got a lot of smaller (and cheaper) stuff too, most all of which should suit your needs. But if you're going to be working from home, you'll want to get as much processor and hard drive as you possibly can. A laptop is great on the road, but it can't compare to a desktop, which you'll see almost immediately if you do anything with Access.

HTH,

 

[xenou]

I've gotten my laptops from TigerDirect twice in the last few years - no problems. One was a refurb and was a fine machine - still in service. I'm not sure but prevailing wisdom seems to be that you need lots of memory with Windows Vista or Windows 7 (assuming your using Windows). I'd try to get at least 6 Gigs of ram, and aim for 2 or 4 processing cores, which must be about standard now (some budget laptops have 8 and basically blow my current working laptop, which is three years old, right out of the water). You can always put in memory yourself too, if you see a good deal on a machine without as much as you'd like. Seems like you can even get something with an i3 processor with 6 or 8 gigs of memory for less than $600 these days. I don't usually pay much attention to processor speed - I can't bring myself to pay hundreds extra just for more GHz, though maybe I just don't know what I'm missing.

Edit: just visited TD and Toshiba satellites are freakishly cheap at less than $600 with 8 gigs of memory, 8 core i3 processor, 500 Gb hard drive - pretty much twice or thrice what I'm working with at home myself right now! For bargain basement prices they have some Lenovo T60 refurbs with 32-bit XP running on them - a bit out of date and nothing very fancy or powerful, but reliable (and less than $300). If you wanted to have a laptop but aren't sure you'll need to use it a whole lot that could be a way to go. I've got one of these now and it's been a good machine. Last I heard XP has until 2014 for official support.

 

[xenou]

A laptop is great on the road, but it can't compare to a desktop, which you'll see almost immediately if you do anything with Access.

This is true - I usually go for budget myself but it's amazing what even the cheapest desktop's have inside them these days.

 

[SydneyGeek]

More RAM is probably going to help you more than a bigger CPU.

Something like a second gen Core i5 with at least 4 GB RAM (going to 8 GB is a cheap option) will do the job nicely. But go for 64 bit Windows or any RAM beyond about 3 GB will be wasted.

Denis

 

[robertgrumbles]

Awesome! Thank you guys so much for your help!

 

[scelba]

place an emphasis on the processor. Get at least a dual core if not a quad core system. The ram and everything else that comes with that type of configuration will be at least industry standard. upgrade ram if you have the $$
I have noticed many multi-sheet calculations that have gone from 20 min to about 45 seconds from a single core to dual core. You will appreciate the extra processing power for large sheets and complex formulas.

 

[hrlngrv]

Don't skimp on hardware. Where you could really save $$$ is if your employer has a license with MSFT which allows you, their employee, to buy an Office license for US$10.

OTOH, if your employer has terminal servers it'd be cheaper still to run Excel remotely.

 

[T. Valko]

Edit: just visited TD and Toshiba satellites are freakishly cheap at less than $600 with 8 gigs of memory, 8 core i3 processor, 500 Gb hard drive -

My how times have changed!

I bought my first machine back in 1986 (or was it 87 ?)

Compaq 286
20 MB hard drive
640 K ram
Dot matrix printer

$2500

 

[Domski]

A laptop is great on the road, but it can't compare to a desktop, which you'll see almost immediately if you do anything with Access.

I guess that just depends how good your laptop is

Dom