Solved! Laptop's for Small Business, need help!

[aloys24]

Hello all,

I work for a small company with no IT department and I have been put in charge of buying a few new laptops.

These will be used for business use, no heavy gaming at all.

I need laptops that are great at multi-tasking.

I'm mainly looking at Dell, between the vostro and latitude lines.

The main difference i'm seeing is the processor. Will I see a large difference between the i5-2430M and the A8-3500M? How will the difference be 3 years from now?

Any recommendations out there?

Thanks for the help!

 

[hang-the-9]

The AMD is more of a lower power CPU, not as fast as the i5, but will have longer battery life and is probably cheaper. For general use, documents, videos watching, etc... the AMD is fine.

 

[WR2]

Hello aloys24;

If you look at the Big List of Mobile Processors (CPU Benchmarks) you'll find the i5-2430M ranked @ #44 and the A8-3500M ranked #136.
The AMD A8-3500M quad core APU trades some CPU horsepower to get a better graphics option - Radeon HD 6620G - on the APU package. Still, a capable performer and worthy of consideration if you get a very good price break over the i5 models.

For a business class multi-tasking workload I would go with the Intel Core i5-2430M. That HD 3000 Graphics on the CPU is roughly equivalent to a Radeon HD 5450 or Geforce 310 dedicated graphics card from a couple years back.

 

[shadamus]

In general Dell tries to target the Lattitude at businesses since they tend to keep the models in production/support longer, and they make them to be hauled to/from the office every day.

The Vostro line was introduced to bring a lower-cost option to the business market.

If your users will actually be hauling them around, spend the extra cash now and go with the Latitude line.

Also: For business-use, I don't think you'd notice much use between the i3/i5/A8, they are all more than fast enough for office work.

 

[WR2]

The 'natural' competitor to the Vostro 3550 would be the HP Probook 4530s and is probably worth a close look:
HP ProBook 4530s Review
Dell Vostro 3550 Review

 

[aloys24]

Thanks for the responses guys!

I still can't make up my mind, haha!

 

[WR2]

No problem there. Hard to go wrong. You're only looking at excellent choices.

 

[hang-the-9]

Also, with no IT department, you probably want to get a 3 yr warranty for them.

 

[hang-the-9]

That link shows it as an i5, and the cost is not that much for a good business laptop. The Lenovo T420 models we get where I work start at about $1,000.

 

[aloys24]

I ended up going with the Latitude E6420's. They had a special deal through the AICPA, so they only ended up costing $1300 a piece, including the extra $400 for 2010 office professional. They have the new i5 in them which is nice, and they come with the 3 year warranties which is the main reason I went Latitude over Vostro.

Thanks for all the reply's I think everyone will be happy with there new laptops!