Advice for a new laptop please

lord_kelvin

Prominent
Sep 6, 2017
4
0
510
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.
 
Solution
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

lord_kelvin

Prominent
Sep 6, 2017
4
0
510
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.
 

lord_kelvin

Prominent
Sep 6, 2017
4
0
510
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 :)
 
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
 
Solution


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.