Haven't needed a laptop in many years until recently when I started to do GM Techline Connect / SPS stuff. My 2010-era laptop was not cutting it, so I'd have to drag my desktop out to the shop each time. That got really old really quick, but fortunately the wife did me a favor by cracking the screen of the old one by piling stuff on top of it (she was the only one that used it), which negated the "we have one that works just fine" complaint she'd give me if I went to buy a new one.
When it comes to laptops, I've had much better luck with 3-5 year old off lease business systems, I feel you get more for the money. My criteria was cheap, expandable, and a generation CPU new enough to support Windows 11 natively (without hacks / bypasses).
I found a Dell Precision 7530 with sort of low/middle of the road specs for $300 - I5-8300H CPU, 16GB DDR4, 512GB M.2 SSD, discreet Quadro P1000 GPU, 15.6" screen, backlit keyboard were the nuts and bolts. The beauty of these workstation laptops is there's 3 M.2 SSD bays, and 4 RAM slots and they typically come with more ports and ethernet. I figured I could make a very competent system (32gb RAM, 1TB+ storage) with little extra money.
What I actually received was a Xeon E2176M 6-core CPU with Quadro P2000, otherwise same specs. Battery health reported in the BIOS is still good and seems to hold a charge / run down just fine. It's always a gamble with off-lease units whether you'll actually receive the OEM power adapter, but that was there too. Looking up a comparably equipped used system on Amazon / Ebay, they sell for about $700-750, nowhere near the $300 I paid.
Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked and just bought another for the wife-- we were going to share the first one, but I cringe at the idea. This is too good a deal to pass up. There's no guarantee the next one will be spec'd above what is advertised, but the wife doesn't need the extra CPU/GPU horsepower for her sewing / craft / sublimation stuff, which is about all she uses a laptop for.
When it comes to laptops, I've had much better luck with 3-5 year old off lease business systems, I feel you get more for the money. My criteria was cheap, expandable, and a generation CPU new enough to support Windows 11 natively (without hacks / bypasses).
I found a Dell Precision 7530 with sort of low/middle of the road specs for $300 - I5-8300H CPU, 16GB DDR4, 512GB M.2 SSD, discreet Quadro P1000 GPU, 15.6" screen, backlit keyboard were the nuts and bolts. The beauty of these workstation laptops is there's 3 M.2 SSD bays, and 4 RAM slots and they typically come with more ports and ethernet. I figured I could make a very competent system (32gb RAM, 1TB+ storage) with little extra money.
What I actually received was a Xeon E2176M 6-core CPU with Quadro P2000, otherwise same specs. Battery health reported in the BIOS is still good and seems to hold a charge / run down just fine. It's always a gamble with off-lease units whether you'll actually receive the OEM power adapter, but that was there too. Looking up a comparably equipped used system on Amazon / Ebay, they sell for about $700-750, nowhere near the $300 I paid.
Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked and just bought another for the wife-- we were going to share the first one, but I cringe at the idea. This is too good a deal to pass up. There's no guarantee the next one will be spec'd above what is advertised, but the wife doesn't need the extra CPU/GPU horsepower for her sewing / craft / sublimation stuff, which is about all she uses a laptop for.
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