Suggestions on new Laptop

[Rowland Jonathan1]

Hello, I am planning to buy a laptop in India.My budget is around ₹50k.Should I wait until Windows 10 releases and until the OEMs release new products or go ahead and buy it now.Any suggestions ?

 

[pankaj981]

Depends on your needs. It would help if you could provide us details on what and how you intend to use it? (Professional work, gaming, casual web surfing, etc.)?

 

[Rowland Jonathan1]

Depends on your needs. It would help if you could provide us details on what and how you intend to use it? (Professional work, gaming, casual web surfing, etc.)?

I will be using it for professional work(office,programming)as well as for home(General uses).I have shortlisted the Dell inspiron 15 5000 and HP Pavillion 15 notebook.

 

[claireabbot99x]

You don't need to wait for Windows 10 or OEM release. They are just OS, you will find updated drivers and support for these in future.

What you need to look at the physical elements of laptop you're going to buy.

 

[pankaj981]

Okay so here is what you should concentrate on...

- Since you won't be gaming, an integrated graphics should suffice your needs. Besides newer integrated graphics chipsets are way powerful than their counterparts 3-4 years ago. Plus having an integrated solution does provide you with better battery life. Unless you plan on using this for heavy professional graphics work (CAD or A/V decoding/encoding) you should be fine without one

- Since you mentioned about using it for office and programming, I would suggest with having at least starting with 8 GB RAM. Being a developer myself 4 GB used to be manageable a few years ago but with now with Windows 7, a couple of Excel 2010 files, Outlook 2010, couple of VS2008 instances and SSMS open, my work laptop easily consumes 4-5 GB. Again it does have a ton of enterprise applications (security and encryption) running simultaneously so at startup it self it takes about 3 GB. 8 GB DDR3 (1333 MHz+) is what you should be looking for.

- For processor, don't settle for anything less than a Quad Core i5 and a Gen 4 or 5 (if you find one). I would have suggested a Core i3 or Core M (or even a BayTrail Atom) depending on the need (battery v/s performance). In this case since you would be using it for programming, a Core i5 as suggested would be your lowest-end option

- A 500GB fast HDD should be enough. Or an SSD with a secondary drive (this is preferred unless you keep frequent backups)

- Depending on portability, a 14, 15 or 17 inch 1080P screen should be good. You need that real-estate, especially for multiple tabbed IDEs, unless you would be using it on external monitors using a docking solution.

- After sales support: This is very important, especially the budget minded Indian market. I haven't lived in India for a while so really can't comment on this, do some research so as to which company has a good reputation. Last time I checked (a couple of years ago), Dell had a bad reputation while HP was doing good, not so sure about Lenovo though.

- Docking solution (this is as per need)

It was really hard to find a 1080P screen w/ 8GB memory and a Core i5+ Gen4+ processor for that price so here are some of your options:

HP Pavilion Notebook - 15-p205tx_Laptop
HP Pavilion Notebook - 15-p206tx_Laptop
Asus K555LJ K Metal Series XX131D Core i5 - (8 GB DDR3/1 TB HDD/Free DOS/2 GB Graphics) Notebook
Dell Inspiron 5000 5558 Core i5 - (8 GB DDR3/1 TB HDD/Windows 8.1/2 GB Graphics) Notebook

 

[Rowland Jonathan1]

Thanks pankaj981 for giving me a clearer picture of what configuration I will need for my purposes.