Any IT geeks? New Laptop time

DH9

Central Defender
I've got about £500 to spend on a laptop for selected kids and wifey. Needs to be suitable to run MS Office, watching Netflix, Amazon YouTube and generally perusing the internet.
Was looking at Intel i5 chips (my Dell work one is an i7 and pretty quick), a bit nervous i3 might be a bit slow and dated.

Any suggestions?
 


I've got about £500 to spend on a laptop for selected kids and wifey. Needs to be suitable to run MS Office, watching Netflix, Amazon YouTube and generally perusing the internet.
Was looking at Intel i5 chips (my Dell work one is an i7 and pretty quick), a bit nervous i3 might be a bit slow and dated.

Any suggestions?
You lucky, lucky, lucky, etc. Stuck WFH with a poxy iPad. Every tw*t who calls a meeting or shows us how to do things better (properly?) does it on a laptop. They insist it's the same on iPad. Is it fuck.
 
You lucky, lucky, lucky, etc. Stuck WFH with a poxy iPad. Every tw*t who calls a meeting or shows us how to do things better (properly?) does it on a laptop. They insist it's the same on iPad. Is it fuck.

id be interested in the detail of that if you can be bothered. Im thinking of buying one or the other (iPad or laptop). What’s your experience.
 
You lucky, lucky, lucky, etc. Stuck WFH with a poxy iPad. Every tw*t who calls a meeting or shows us how to do things better (properly?) does it on a laptop. They insist it's the same on iPad. Is it fuck.

What can you not do on your iPads that you need? Genuine question, cos it should all work absolutely fine for most work stuff.
I've got about £500 to spend on a laptop for selected kids and wifey. Needs to be suitable to run MS Office, watching Netflix, Amazon YouTube and generally perusing the internet.
Was looking at Intel i5 chips (my Dell work one is an i7 and pretty quick), a bit nervous i3 might be a bit slow and dated.

Any suggestions?

To answer your question there - if you are considering an iPad (even the cheaper ones) will:

Run MS Office
Watch Netflixd
Amazon
YouTube
Browse internet

You can also use remote working tools, such as:

WebEx
GoTo meeting
MS Teams
Slack
Trello

You can also connect it to a monitor and keyboard etc if you wish to work on it for longer periods and be more comfortable.

For the kids as well - subscribe to Apple Arcade and get a load of good games included for £5/month. Also you will get Apple TV+ (apple's intro service to start taking on Netflix) free for a year.
 
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id be interested in the detail of that if you can be bothered. Im thinking of buying one or the other (iPad or laptop). What’s your experience.
If I'm being honest it's not too bad and 95% of the time a laptop would be left switched off. It's just I'm more used to using iPad for leisure and pc etc for work. Plus any work related training or software has always been on pc/laptop.
 
You lucky, lucky, lucky, etc. Stuck WFH with a poxy iPad. Every tw*t who calls a meeting or shows us how to do things better (properly?) does it on a laptop. They insist it's the same on iPad. Is it fuck.

Think it would drive me up the wall trying to type emails and stuff on a ipad. Typing alone is so much easier on a laptop.
 
I've got about £500 to spend on a laptop for selected kids and wifey. Needs to be suitable to run MS Office, watching Netflix, Amazon YouTube and generally perusing the internet.
Was looking at Intel i5 chips (my Dell work one is an i7 and pretty quick), a bit nervous i3 might be a bit slow and dated.

Any suggestions?
Why would an i3 of the same generation be dated compared to an i5? tbh, for your workload, I'd pick an i3 and use the savings for a better screen (must be 1080p), more RAM (at least 8GB), more SSD drive space (256GB Min).

If you want any gaming capability at all, then Ryzen would be a better option. They are about on par for CPU, but vastly better for graphics. AMD are hammering Intel at the moment.
 
For the activities the OP has mentioned, you could shave £200 off your £500 budget and get something that would comfortably do what you need.

The only 'must have' for me would be an SSD. I rescued a 10 year old laptop someone at work was literally going to throw away, replaced the HDD for an SSD, installed Windows 10 and I expect it to last for another 5 years at least.
 
Why would an i3 of the same generation be dated compared to an i5?

AMD are hammering Intel at the moment.

I’ve no idea about i3 or i5 which is why I asked the question.

had a Dell laptop with a amd chip a few years ago and it was awful, which is why i was using my i7 laptop as the benchmark because I know that works well despite it being a few years old.
 
I have a surface pro and love it. Small, light, easy to operate, switches from laptop to tablet mode instantly. VPN set up on it so I can access the network drives at work remotely. Screen is small but I can wirelessly connect it to my big tele I’m sitting room and use it in that, it’s class.
 
I’ve no idea about i3 or i5 which is why I asked the question.

had a Dell laptop with a amd chip a few years ago and it was awful, which is why i was using my i7 laptop as the benchmark because I know that works well despite it being a few years old.
The AMD A-4/6/8/10 chips looked good on paper, but didn't deliver. Ryzen is a totally different ballgame. They are kicking intel's arse over the last 18 months

i3/5/7 are the same types of kit, just progressively better. Although with mobile CPUs its not that simple as they have sub-categories for power consumption too - an i7 with ultra low power consumption may not be as powerful as an i5 with high power. Feel free to post links to things you see, and loads of people will comment.
 
Could do with some advice too. All I'm really bothered about is a laptop that runs at a good speed when browsing and playing Footy Manager. Any cheap recommendations please? Budget no more than £500 also.
 
Could do with some advice too. All I'm really bothered about is a laptop that runs at a good speed when browsing and playing Footy Manager. Any cheap recommendations please? Budget no more than £500 also.
Deffo go with a Ryzen as the graphics on those is perfect for footy manager (light to moderate gaming, vs intel's non-to-light gaming)
8gb ram
256gb ssd
full 1080p screen

Sorry, I don't know WHICH ryzen cpu to go for, I'm not overly familiar with the line up.
 

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