Advice for a new laptop please

[lord_kelvin]

Hi guys,

I needed to bin my old laptop from 2008 🙁 with the following specs:
Acer Aspire 5551, 15.6 inch HD LED LCD, CPU AMD Athlon X2 P320 (2.1GHz), ATI Mobility Radeon HD4250 GPU, RAM 3GB DDR3, 250GB, DVD, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium.

I have 2 questions now:

1) What would be a laptop NOW on the market with the same performance? (So I will have an idea of the MINIMUM spending for my new laptop)

2) What I could get from THAT minimum spending (as per point 1), up to 600£ (or EURO, or $ equivalent if you are in the US) that is your STRONG advice for an excellent quality/price product?

I would stick with around 15inch screen (so not 11,etc)
Brand not important, just reliability of the brand.

USE:
NOT hardcore gaming,
NOT photoshopping,
YES to EXCELLENT streaming performance (movies online, youtube, BBC Iplayer etc. I have a fast broadband anyway)

I would like to say thank you in advance to anyone will participate in this discussion.

M.

 

[Sohom]

If you want streaming devices, then the best is the xbox one S or xbox one X, but its not portable enough.
My list of suggestions for a laptop are as follows (as you haven't provided a budget or OS choice):
1) Microsoft Surface https/www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Surface-Laptop-Intel-256GB/dp/B0727VQLGM/ref=sr_1_27?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1504692270&sr=1-27-spons&keywords=laptop&psc=1
2) HP OMEN https/www.amazon.com/HP-Quad-Core-i7-7700HQ-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B074NWG783/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1504692674&sr=1-2-spons&keywords=HP+Omen&psc=1
3) Apple Macbook (latest gen) https/www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-Retina-MPTR2LL-Version/dp/B072MH3V2R/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1504692587&sr=1-4&keywords=Apple+macbook
4) MSI Gaming Laptop https/www.amazon.com/MSI-GL62M-7RDX-1408-Performance-SteelSeries/dp/B071K1Q8TK/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1504692760&sr=1-3&keywords=MSI+Gaming+Laptop

 

[lord_kelvin]

Dear Sohom,

I did not know that to watch streaming online like youtube, BBC iplayer and similar website with movies online streaming I needed such a powerful computer 🙁
They are actually out of budget I think.

Also I would like to know what will be a minimum laptop to get the same performance of the one I have so I could compare. I mean I was doing fine with my old one til it breaks.

Also I need for office work so word excel etc so Xbox is excluded

Thanks a lot for your help.

I like Ubuntu but I think I would prefer to go for Windows (a GOOD version of it not a slow crap one please, I am in the dark here...) because the laptop is for my wife and she is not to aknowledged with Linux platform (I appreciate that Ubuntu is easy, but you know...)

Cheers,

M.

 

[Sohom]

Then i would suggest this: (this laptop also happens to be amazon's choice too)
https/www.amazon.com/Amazons-Choice-E5-575-33BM-15-6-Inch-Generation/dp/B01K1IO3QW/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1504701535&sr=1-3&keywords=laptops
But if it were for your wife, i would recommend you getting a 2 in 1 maybe like the asus transformer book but they are less powerful .
Go for the one mentioned by me.

 

[lord_kelvin]

There are people complaining about the laptop being SLOW...

The ONLY thing I would not like is a slow laptop. I do not care about SO if it is not the very last one, no gaming, etc but a quick response for Libreoffice or email or streaming on youtube BBC iplayer etc etc. YES please

 

[jaguarskx]

The Acer Aspire 5551 is ancient in the world of laptops and the Athlon X2 P320 CPU is extremely weak. Basically any laptop with a Core i3 CPU can easily surpass the performance of such a laptop. An Example would be the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 for £400 which is probably one of the least expensive (if not the absolute least expensive) laptop with a current 7th generation Core i3-7100u CPU. The Intel HD 620 graphics core is a lot more powerful than the old Radeon HD 4250, but definitely less powerful than a mainstream dedicated GPU.


https/www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-Inspiron-Laptop-Intel-Windows/dp/B01N5MBZD9/ref=sr_1_18_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1506413222&sr=8-18-spons&keywords=i3-7100u&psc=1

 

[jaguarskx]

There are people complaining about the laptop being SLOW...

The ONLY thing I would not like is a slow laptop. I do not care about SO if it is not the very last one, no gaming, etc but a quick response for Libreoffice or email or streaming on youtube BBC iplayer etc etc. YES please

People are complaining that it is slow primarily because it has a standard hard drive rather than a SSD. SSD have much higher read / write speeds than HDDs. A typical laptop with a HDDs takes around 45 - 60 seconds to load Windows 10. A laptop with a "slow" SSD can do so in 20 seconds or less.