I'm pretty knowledgeable about the basics of what I need in my new laptop, which replaces current laptop that's nearly three years old and that's been the usual interval for me buying a new one for the last 10 years or so and its worked well for me. I don't play any games or do much that requires a super powerful or advanced model, I'm mostly doing web surfing, email, etc as well as a lot of Excel work for work, but I've always been just fine buying not the cheapest ones out there, maybe a step or two up from that. The current one I have is an HP that I bought in 2012, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive, 15.6" screen (which I want to keep, I like that size), card reader (which I need as my business requires me to take a fair amount of pics, so taking card out of SLR camera I have and popping it into card reader is perfect!) and I paid under $400 for it, if I remember correctly.
This time, I was looking for pretty much the same thing, but bumping RAM up to 8GB and I don't really need a bigger hard drive, I've never used more than 25% or so of my current 500GB drive, but of course tech always moves forward over time and most of them I'm looking at have 750GB or 1TB hard drives, which is fine. Since most of what I store is business related, stuff that I can NOT lose, its all backed up someplace. I use Office 365, which comes with 1TB of cloud space for each of 5 accounts, I let my dad use 2 copies of my 365 license, so I have 3TB available now and can't imagine how I'd ever come close to needing that much space for what I use it for, at least not as of now. I was looking to spend $600 or less on it and found a bunch of them that look good, but have one big question.
I see that at least a few of them, including a Dell model I'm considering, have no optical (CD/DVD) drive. I didn't hear of that before, but I don't shop for laptops too often. At first, I thought that sounded crazy, but the more I think about it, CD/DVDs should be obsolete soon, if not already, unless I'm missing something on that. I never use my laptop for watching movies either, so I can't think of what I'd really need an optical drive for, is it wise to just skip the optical drive now?
It looks like certainly for $600 and maybe even for less than that, I can find one with the 8GB RAM, etc I'm looking for and they come with HDMI and other things I don't use much if at all, but might be useful once in a while. My last two laptops were HP's and they've been fine and I had a Toshiba before that and they were fine as well. Any brands to stay away from?
So, my main question is about the optical drive, but if anyone has any other thoughts, I'd like to hear them, including any thoughts on the different brands, thanks!
This time, I was looking for pretty much the same thing, but bumping RAM up to 8GB and I don't really need a bigger hard drive, I've never used more than 25% or so of my current 500GB drive, but of course tech always moves forward over time and most of them I'm looking at have 750GB or 1TB hard drives, which is fine. Since most of what I store is business related, stuff that I can NOT lose, its all backed up someplace. I use Office 365, which comes with 1TB of cloud space for each of 5 accounts, I let my dad use 2 copies of my 365 license, so I have 3TB available now and can't imagine how I'd ever come close to needing that much space for what I use it for, at least not as of now. I was looking to spend $600 or less on it and found a bunch of them that look good, but have one big question.
I see that at least a few of them, including a Dell model I'm considering, have no optical (CD/DVD) drive. I didn't hear of that before, but I don't shop for laptops too often. At first, I thought that sounded crazy, but the more I think about it, CD/DVDs should be obsolete soon, if not already, unless I'm missing something on that. I never use my laptop for watching movies either, so I can't think of what I'd really need an optical drive for, is it wise to just skip the optical drive now?
It looks like certainly for $600 and maybe even for less than that, I can find one with the 8GB RAM, etc I'm looking for and they come with HDMI and other things I don't use much if at all, but might be useful once in a while. My last two laptops were HP's and they've been fine and I had a Toshiba before that and they were fine as well. Any brands to stay away from?
So, my main question is about the optical drive, but if anyone has any other thoughts, I'd like to hear them, including any thoughts on the different brands, thanks!
