Pentium vs I3 while using a dock

dovidgottesman

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Hi,
I am trying to give advice to a friend about what laptop/PC to buy. For the CPU, I think he should go for an I3 or Pentium (I have never owned either, but I have read about them). But he also wants to use it with a USB 3.0 docking station, so my question is whether a Pentium is enough to run such a station.
 
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jaslion

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What does your friend want to do with the laptop? What dock does he want to use? Docking stations don't require any performance to operate.
 

dovidgottesman

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I assume his needs are internet browsing, document writing, and light to moderate spreadsheet operations.
lets say, for argument's sake, the dock would be a kensington sd3500v.
Why do you say that a dock doesn't require extra performance?

 

jaslion

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If you want the most elegant solution to docking a laptop look for a laptop with a thunderbolt 3 port or a usb-c port that is thunderbolt 3 enabled. That way you only need 1 cable to run the dock instead of the 4 that dock needs to operate.

A dock does not need any extra performance since it just multiplies the ports already on your system.
 

dovidgottesman

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Thanks
Would you say that buying a Pentium in 2018 to run windows 10 is not a bad idea? (I know that this is not the original question, but your description is CPU authority)

 

jaslion

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What pentium? Can you list some laptops you are looking at?
 

dovidgottesman

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Here are two examples

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-Notebook-Computer-Bluetooth/dp/B07HGQWMW7/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1538989415&sr=1-1&refinements=p_89%3ADell%2Cp_n_condition-type%3A2224371011%2Cp_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A1264420011

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-Flahship-Pentium-MaxxAudio/dp/B07HGVF2J5/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1538989415&sr=1-5&refinements=p_89%3ADell%2Cp_n_condition-type%3A2224371011%2Cp_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A1264420011

Pentium N5000

None of these have USB type C though

 

jaslion

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Both laptops are quite weak but the pentium one does have a 500gb ssd. However it seems really really iffy. A 512gb ssd would be about half the price of the laptop and I can't find info on a dell that has those specs so something tells me this laptop has been modified with some cheap slow 512gb emmc storage. To add on to that one person even got a laptop without a charger so these have definatly been modified.

Either way you won't be doing any docking with those laptops and if you are it's going to be quite a hassle to do so.
Also not even talking about the poor quality of these devices.

I would recommend a used business class laptop that will be cheaper, really high build quality, faster and have a docking port so you can get it's dock for super easy docking and undocking.
 
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