What laptop?

[TheCarFather]

I was silly enough to buy a NetBook or 'ultra-book' in January for about £250 and it has been the worst purchase ever, it is stupidly slow, so much so that I use my phone for everything now, which isn't ideal.

If I get a laptop it needs to be fast for basic things such as browsing the internet, emails and Microsoft word.

I was looking into a MacBook Air because of the battery life, the retina display and also because i think it'd be the best choice for photography which is something that I want to get into.

It'd also be nice if it could run basic games with ease and could store all my films on.

Price doesn't really concern me as long as it's under £800 as I'd rather not have to get a new laptop for 5 years+ after this purchase

Thanks!

[TheCarFather]

FlossyThePig said:

What will you want to do on your new machine?

What are you trying to do on your current machine that is too slow?

On my current laptop browsing the net, opening word, opening films opening apps such as netlfix, it's all painfully slow, even opening photos just to look at them is slow. On my new one id do all I done before but also play some basic games and edit / upload photos etc.

[TheCarFather]

tim0409 said:

A Macbook Air is a good shout and a very nice machine but it doesn't have what Apple calls a retina display although it is rumoured to be coming soon as a 12".

Oh I must be getting confused with the pro, if I go for a mac id want the retina because it is such a crisp picture.

[TheCarFather]

nickofh said:

If you want to go down the route of a new machine I personally suggest a Lenovo Thinkpad. Your budget will easily get you an brand new L Series Thinkpad, I5 processor and a lightening fast solid state drive. All this will easily meet your requirements and should easily last 5+ years.

You might want to think about an external hard disk if you want the speed of a solid state disk as it would not give you the capacity you need for lots of films.

We currently a thinkpad L412 ( 3 / 4 years old ) , an R500 ( 5 years old ) and an old r60e( 7 years old). My dad has my old r61e also. All the machines were used ex business laptops when I bought them and still work perfectly today , I'm on my R500 now.

The battery in my old r61e lasted over 1000 cycles and over three years of daily use and my wife tested the spill resistant keyboard with a hot coffee! Brilliant machines for the money imo.

Edited by nickofh on Monday 11th August 23:09

Wasn't really aware of the brand but searched them up and will definetly look into it more, Crazy how tough some of the laptops on there are and I like how secure they seem, a contender vs a MacBook. Thanks!

[TheCarFather]

Thanks for all the feedback, after looking at specs etc it looks like if going apple the macbook pro with retina looks the best bet and at well over £1000 I'm not sure if I can justify that for what will be predominately home use, I'll take look at Samsung as well but at the moment I'm leaning towards the lenvo think pad range

[TheCarFather]

Sorry for the late response.

I ended up getting the 13' Macbook Pro with Retina the base 128gb SSD and 8gb of ram, i5 dual core processor.

I'm really really happy with it, it can do everything i want it to do day to day with a tonne of battery life but i can still chuck my ps4 controller into it and place some decent games with ease.

Whats other Macbook users do about storage? I'm not sure whether to go for cloud storage or just get an external hard drive.