computer search - homeschool edition

We are searching for a 15"+ laptop, windows 8/10 based, touchscreen, i3 or above with an optical drive. These are non negotiable.

We like Dell and dislike Asus based on past history.

I can get a decent Dell Inspiron 7000 15" for $735 like this

Inspiron 15 7000 Series Inspiron 15 7000 Series Operating System Windows 10 Home 64-bit English Processor 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-6200U Processor (3M Cache, up to 2.80 GHz) Memory 8GB Dual Channel DDR4 2133MHz (4GBx2) Hard Drive 256GB Solid State Drive Video Card Intel® HD Graphics 520 LCD 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) Truelife LED-Backlit Touch Display with Wide Viewing Angles

Or one without an SSD for about $540.

I also can spend a $250 gift card I have through work for Dell.

HP has a good relationship with my employer, and therefore I can buy a 15" Pavilion like this:

15.6" diagonal FHD IPS UWVA BrightView WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080) Touchscreen 6GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM (1 x 2GB, 1 x 4GB) Windows 10 Home 64 HP Pavilion - 15t Laptop 256GB M.2 SSD HP Wide Vision HD Webcam with Dual Digital Microphone (Natural Silver) Security Software Trial No Additional Office Software Intel® Core™ i5-6200U (2.3 GHz, up to 2.8 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores) + Intel® HD Graphics 520 SuperMulti DVD burner 2-cell 41 WHr Lithium-ion Battery Full-size island-style keyboard 802.11b/g/n (1x1) and Bluetooth® 4.0 combo

for $440.

We are wary of HP as a company, despite having the same warranty. I can work on stuff, so I'm not too concerned really, but the Asus's we've had failed in difficult to repair ways, like the HDMI port and the charging port failing.

HP or Dell, or something else?

I'm wary of HP both as a company and as a manufacturer of laptops...

I'd go with the Dell, the price difference is worth the RAM difference.

For me personally, HP over Dell. My mom's laptop is a bit older, but meets your requirements, and has been nothing short of a work horse, even when I was using it for things it wasn't exactly meant for. I've had several desktops and laptops from hp with almost no issues to speak of. Their built in software leaves a bit to be desired though, but software is an easy fix.

I've just never been a big Dell fan, they remind me of the early 90s computers wanting branded parts, weird places to work, no room for expandability(criticism based on desktops). Hopefully since they bought Alienware they adopted the r&d department, but I avoid them like Apple.

If it wasn't for the optical drive, I'd suggest my current Lenovo. It's been a work horse, fantastic warranty and repair service, and fairly well specced. My screen connector failed, with parts on back order I had 22 day turn around, actual days not business days.They may have options that still have optical drives, I'm not sure.

I actually bought my Lenovo as a gaming laptop, based solely on the corporate deployments Lenovo does. Seeing so many companies using them for so many things gave me the idea they know what they're doing, and I've not been disappointed in the 18months I've owned it.

revrico wrote: I've just never been a big Dell fan, they remind me of the early 90s computers wanting branded parts, weird places to work, no room for expandability(criticism based on desktops). Hopefully since they bought Alienware they adopted the r&d department, but I avoid them like Apple.

They were one of the last holdouts to use proprietary parts, but they've stopped doing that over a decade ago now, they use all standard parts these days.

I like Dell. Very big in the business world. I am wary of HP. Just look at the "drivers" that any HP printer comes with, for example.

I have in the past year bought 1 used ('refurb') Dell laptop, one Lenovo Thinkstation and one Lenovo laptop. The Lenovo laptop motherboard cratered on me at about the 60 day mark and was repaired under warranty. I can't really complain, it was $199 new with shipping. It has been fine since.

Most of the homeschoolers I know just use flashcards.

I've always had good luck with Toshiba laptops myself.

I've been wary of Dell since my wife (then girlfriend) had one in college--but that is going on 10 years ago now. It was slow and overheated a lot. I think it lasted about 3 years, which was pretty bad compared to my Lenovo which lasted 5 (and still is in use as a backup).

There are very few proprietary parts in a computer any more. They are take advantage of the economies of scale that are built out now a days. It's too expensive not to do that. There is some overall lack of expand ability out there but that is more just in the quest to try to be as compact and lightweight as possible and the consumers not really caring for the ability to expand on their system.

I will not comment on on over the other because have been employed by one of them for 12 years now.

This does not hit your marks but I bought this earlier this year. 11" ThinkPad

It is from Lenovo's education series. I love it. Very durable.

$30 will get you a USB, plug in optical drive

Some reviews

Keith Tanner wrote: I've always had good luck with Toshiba laptops myself.

That makes two of us. Except for the one that started on fire.

Sad you don't like asus, thats my jam. Echo the comments on hp though. Dell, i am ambivalent. I hate their touchpads, but the rest of it seems good.

Where I work they are buying HP equipment and if I had any say in it we would go back to Dell. One of my biggest gripes with HP is their site sucks when it comes to trying to find drivers and such. If you are doing your own support I would go with Dell.

Check out Toshiba. The often have deals directly from their website, and we've had excellent experience with them. SWMBO's old Win-7 laptop took a tumble down a full flight of stairs, and not only kept on going without problem, it's since then been passed down to 2 of our kids and still keeps going. It was around $350 new. We've bought several others since then which have also worked very well for us.

I used to get a "daily deals" email, which often had $50-$100 off their regular price, but I've not seen one in months now that I think about it...

I've got some Toshibas. One's 20 years old. The other is 15. They still work.

So on the dell: how much is the SSD worth? Is it worth buying one aftermarket and installing it myself? Will I get a product key or whatever so I can easily reinstall Windows?

You should be able to reinstall Windows with the OEM product key, usually the laptops will come with a Windows DVD as well.

256GB SSDs run from $70-$150, so you could save a bit by installing one yourself.

Product keys are now built into the Bios for anything win 8.1 and above. You just need to make a USB key for the backup and recovery. Honestly though, the service teams don't like non Dell hard drives in the unit so I would recommend waiting till after the warranty is up to upgrade.

GameboyRMH wrote:

revrico wrote: I've just never been a big Dell fan, they remind me of the early 90s computers wanting branded parts, weird places to work, no room for expandability(criticism based on desktops). Hopefully since they bought Alienware they adopted the r&d department, but I avoid them like Apple.

They were one of the last holdouts to use proprietary parts, but they've stopped doing that over a decade ago now, they use all standard parts these days.

My work ... workstation is a Dell Optiplex 9020 (IIRC??) minitower. Nice enough machine with an i7 on a decent mobo, but the PSU is completely non-standard and uses some stupid proprietary 8-pin connector with no known pinout instead of an ATX one. Want to upgrade or replace it? Contact your Dell dealer. Want to add a PCIe video card (there are plenty of slots) or extra drives or something? Well, you can't because there are no MOLEX or PCIe power connectors or any free connectors of any kind, and even if you get out the soldering iron & cable splicers it's probably not powerful enough to run them anyway. Unimpressed.

We run all Dells here at work. Someone was asking the IT guy the other day about HP and he did not have many nice things to say about it.

My work laptop hooked into a docking station at the office. Running CAD, Microstation, 3d laser scanning software, you name it. Been running this thing at work and at home for a couple years now with zero issues. And it was someone elses laptop before it was mine.

I actually did not notice a huge difference when they got me upgraded to an SSD. We had some network improvements around that time so sometimes I attribute the speed to that but it may have something to do with my hard drive too.

GameboyRMH wrote: You should be able to reinstall Windows with the OEM product key, usually the laptops will come with a Windows DVD as well. 256GB SSDs run from $70-$150, so you could save a bit by installing one yourself.

Back in the early days of SSDs, well, around 2009 or so, I used some SSDs at work and was dramatically unimpressed. We had many failures without any backup possible.

Being 2016, where/what brand/what type would I be looking at?

Or is it just worth it to buy the more expensive Dell with it already there and do one of the myriad of other household projects that I have (I'll start a thread about that later on)?

Buying an SSD is easier than buying a hard drive, they're like ice cream, when they're bad they're still pretty good

They are all still just as prone to sudden unrecoverable failure however, so backups are important. If you want your drives a little less explodey and a lot slower and cheaper, get a regular HDD.

Whether it's worth it is up to you. You'd be saving the price difference plus getting a 2.5" HDD if you install your own (which you could use for backups), but you also have to reinstall all the software from scratch (or copy the hard drive across first, which is a moderate PITA for an expert).

Copying the hard drive across is super easy using Acronis True Image software and an external USB-SATA enclosure. Then swap the drives and put the HDD into the external enclosure and use it to make frequent backups.

The enclosure was $5 and the Acronis software was a free download with the hard drive purchase. Absolutely painless process, and I've cloned many drives (doing HDD and SSD upgrades to laptops and desktops) with that software with no issues.

No need to reinstall any software or use the OS install key.

At work, we have had pretty good luck with Lenovo and Dell. This year so far, we've ordered about 35-40 Lenovo laptops (usually the Ideapad 300 or 500) with the newest generation I3 processors. They outperform the last gen I5's and are a pretty good value. Out of those, we had one get stupid on us when we were setting it up and it was replaced under warranty within the same week. They have all been under $350, only concessions are that they have a regular HDD and 4-6gb of RAM. The 500 series has an aluminum shell, where the 300 is textured plastic.

I personally have two Dell machines: a beast of a I7 desktop, and an I5 Inspiron 15R laptop. Both have been fantastic machines. The Dell laptop has a metal case and feels more sturdy than the Lenovo laptops do, but they are more money.

Imaging or cloning the partition across is easier but not an ideal technique - usually that software doesn't handle differently sized partitions well, especially if the target drive is smaller. The cloning tool's boot CD also needs to support all the hardware you're using in the operation. And it won't save you from any of the post-cloning work you might have to do - I don't think there would be any in Win7+ though. On that note, with Linux filesystems, cloning could create two partitions with the same UUID!

So it's worth a try but it's not a sure thing and you might end up with a bit of unallocated hard drive space.

if I am starting from scratch, and nothing is on the PC of value, I am happy with a blank Windows install, so long as that's as easy as it was in the way way long ago, where you threw in a CD and plugged in the key on the front of the box.