Looking to replace my ageing desktop with a laptop, dont need anything fancy, no gaming etc but would like HD screen and a decent spec to last a few years. is this a good buy?:

http://www.johnlewis.com/asus-x556ua-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-15-6-full-hd/p2803922?navAction=jump

The JL warranty appeals but open to suggestions….

Cheers!

Its ok for the money but i get the impression that you dont use it heavily so it might be over kill for your needs. You could look to save money by getting an icore 5 or 3 as i reckon you wouldnt notice the difference other than the financial saving.

I’d say it’s OK but look for one with an SSD (solid state disk) this seems to have a bigger positive effect on performance than i5 over 3 for example, 1TB is pretty big too, so unless you are editing video, you might be better forgoing capacity in favour of performance. I recently boot an SSD into my wife’s old laptop, which has basically reduced boot up from minutes to seconds and made the damned thing usable again. we were considering binning it before. I wouldn’t buy a laptop with a spinning disk again.

Agree. Have a similar spec lenovo laptop, originally came with a normal hard disk. Was ok but seemed sluggish. Replaced with an SSD and it flies.

No idea, but this is the 501st time this thread title has been used.

That’s got to be a record?

agree with the ssd recommendations. i always find with laptops, set a budget. around the same price there normally spec’d similar by the manufacturer. 8gb hard drive, an ssd and whatever screen size floats your boat. i never go lower than 15.6 for a laptop. ips screen if you can.

It’s not a bad laptop, especially with the JL warranty. But… and this is a pet peeve of mine – the keyboard….!

Do you need a numeric keyboard on the RHS? I personally have never used a numeric keyboard on a laptop (in fact, the only time I’ve really used a numeric keyboard was 20-odd years ago inputting met data into a Dec VAX).

The downside of having the numeric keyboard permanently fitted is that your natural typing position is then never central to the laptop and screen, it’s always offset to the left. Personally, I find this really irritating and always point it out when friends and family ask me ‘does this laptop seem ok?’.

Lots of people aren’t bothered, but it bugs the hell out of me!

+1 for the SSD suggestion though – this is coming at you from a mid-2010 Mac Book Pro 15, into which I fitted a 500GB SSD about 5 years ago – and I can see this lasting a few more years before I need to replace it. It’s still really, really quick!

Last thing – up to 5hr battery life – will that be long enough?

On the other hand both my home and work laptop have number pads on the RHS. Really useful if you do any work with numbers. When I have to use a laptop without one I miss it. Can’t say I’ve ever noticed the offset typing position causing an issue.

That’s got to be a record?

It does appear that way, but no chance surely?!

As above, youd be better off with an i5, and the cost saving would allow it to have an SSD drive.

i7s are more capable but unless your doing something quite speciaist, you simply won’t notice the difference. You will notice a difference with an SSD over a mechanical drive though.

It does appear that way, but no chance surely?!

That’s curious. I’m guessing it’s a glitch in the way it increments because the thread ends in a number. The only other instance is this:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/is-this-a-good-laptop-for-500

… which is a duplicate post of this thread.

It looks pretty good to me as long as you do not mind the relatively high weight and bulk.

The ports on offer look good and there is a USB C 3.1 port for future proofing.

Personally I would go for something lighter but this does seem a good option.

As someone who looked at this very recently, even though theoretically ‘trading’ the i7 for SSD, or other feature sounds good, in reality they just don’t exist.

It’s amazing how few Full HD laptops there are at this price point.

We ended up going for a Lenovo Ideapad in the pre black friday deals for £299 for an i3/4gb/1tb and then upgrading the ram and SSD separately (haven’t put in the SSD yet though). The reason we chose this is because the screen was so nice and the total cost was less than most others.