New laptop - Dell or Asus?
Discussion
I'd get an MX5, as an IT professional.
I've been using an Asus ultrabook for I forget how long. Rock solid, light weight, cheap, nice to use, excellent 3k touch screen. Used it as main work machine for years. It's now on Zoom duty when I'm at home as I use a raspberry pi as a thin client to access work environment. But when traveling, it's still my work machine and can drive two external screens as well as its own.
My wife uses a Dell ultrabook that she's had for years. Rock solid, light weight, not cheap as high end, nice to use, good screen. It's her only PC and readily does s everything she needs for getting people organised, sticking out press releases, plotting the revolution, spending all our money, etc., etc.
Comparing Dell, Asus. HP, Lenovo, Apple, blah laptops is like comparing Vauxhalls, Fords. Fiats, Peugeots. They're all solving the same basic problems in the same ways and as manufacturers they are so similar that it makes no sense to say one is better than the other in the same way that it makes no sense to say Ford is just better than Vauxhall or vice versa. They all occasionally make good products, they all occasionally make bad products. Generally they all make stuff that's fine and not very exciting.
I've been using an Asus ultrabook for I forget how long. Rock solid, light weight, cheap, nice to use, excellent 3k touch screen. Used it as main work machine for years. It's now on Zoom duty when I'm at home as I use a raspberry pi as a thin client to access work environment. But when traveling, it's still my work machine and can drive two external screens as well as its own.
My wife uses a Dell ultrabook that she's had for years. Rock solid, light weight, not cheap as high end, nice to use, good screen. It's her only PC and readily does s everything she needs for getting people organised, sticking out press releases, plotting the revolution, spending all our money, etc., etc.
Comparing Dell, Asus. HP, Lenovo, Apple, blah laptops is like comparing Vauxhalls, Fords. Fiats, Peugeots. They're all solving the same basic problems in the same ways and as manufacturers they are so similar that it makes no sense to say one is better than the other in the same way that it makes no sense to say Ford is just better than Vauxhall or vice versa. They all occasionally make good products, they all occasionally make bad products. Generally they all make stuff that's fine and not very exciting.
I work for Dell & as you'd expect have Dell laptops. Now on number 6 I think after nearly 20 years with Dell. All have been OK, I had a pro-support engineer out for a keyboard on one where the cat caught a key & whipped it off with his claw. Another company one had a new motherboard, but otherwise U just use them. I don't do client anything, I do enterprise support on server group stuff. Personally I'm using a Dell Inspiron, only issue is the charging socket went intermittent, 16 quid from Amazon & I changed it myself.
Riley Blue said:
captain_cynic said:
Asus, lighter
Dell, better after sales support.
I'm an Asus fan having had 4 laptops over he last 12 years with no issues, they're light, powerful and cheap. . However for work I'd still recommend Dell as you can get support very quick when time is money.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but four Asus laptops in 12 years is a high turnover rate; I'm in the process of replacing an 11 year old Lenovo and only because its case is damaged.Dell, better after sales support.
I'm an Asus fan having had 4 laptops over he last 12 years with no issues, they're light, powerful and cheap. . However for work I'd still recommend Dell as you can get support very quick when time is money.
Also you're making a lot of assumptions.
I'll explain.
My first one was stolen less than a year into owning it. Mea culpa, I left it in my car overnight.
The other three still work. They're light gaming laptops so their ability to run current games has a finite life. That is abot 5 years and was the main reason for replacement. 2012 - 2017, 2107 - 2022, 2022 - current.
The worst assumption is the one I have is nearing the end of it's life instead of being at the begining.
muppets_mate said:
LunarOne said:
I've said this before on here but as an IT professional there are only two laptop brands worth buying and neither of them are Dell or Asus. With £450 to spend I'd buy a used business laptop so that I could have a much higher quality machine than £450 would buy in Argos or Curry's.
Care to share which those two brands are please?I've had Dell and HP laptops in the past and while they worked fine when they worked, they seemed to be much less reliable. At my current workplace, we can choose whatever laptop we want under £2500. Of the technical staff there are a few who use Dell XPS, but about 60% use Apple and the remainder use Lenovo. The Lenovo group are split between Windows and Linux Desktop users. Not seen any tech users use Windows 11, they stick with W10. Only admin, sales and marketing use Windows 11, but probably 90% of them use a Macbook.
captain_cynic said:
Riley Blue said:
captain_cynic said:
Asus, lighter
Dell, better after sales support.
I'm an Asus fan having had 4 laptops over he last 12 years with no issues, they're light, powerful and cheap. . However for work I'd still recommend Dell as you can get support very quick when time is money.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but four Asus laptops in 12 years is a high turnover rate; I'm in the process of replacing an 11 year old Lenovo and only because its case is damaged.Dell, better after sales support.
I'm an Asus fan having had 4 laptops over he last 12 years with no issues, they're light, powerful and cheap. . However for work I'd still recommend Dell as you can get support very quick when time is money.
Also you're making a lot of assumptions.
I'll explain.
My first one was stolen less than a year into owning it. Mea culpa, I left it in my car overnight.
The other three still work. They're light gaming laptops so their ability to run current games has a finite life. That is abot 5 years and was the main reason for replacement. 2012 - 2017, 2107 - 2022, 2022 - current.
The worst assumption is the one I have is nearing the end of it's life instead of being at the begining.
LunarOne said:
Lenovo and Apple. For my usage (running Linux VMs), Apple is out, so I run Lenovo. I'm currently using a 2-year-old X1 Carbon with i7, 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe and a 12-year-old T420 with i5, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. The T420 does everything I need day-to-day except run multiple VMs and play 4K content smoothly. Otherwise it's fine, and has benefits over many newer machines, like having built-in ethernet and a DVD drive, which gets used to burn ISOs sometimes needed in the datacentre. But mostly it sits on a docking station - something I really wish modern machines could do.
I've had Dell and HP laptops in the past and while they worked fine when they worked, they seemed to be much less reliable. At my current workplace, we can choose whatever laptop we want under £2500. Of the technical staff there are a few who use Dell XPS, but about 60% use Apple and the remainder use Lenovo. The Lenovo group are split between Windows and Linux Desktop users. Not seen any tech users use Windows 11, they stick with W10. Only admin, sales and marketing use Windows 11, but probably 90% of them use a Macbook.
Sorry, but here you've revealed you've never managed a fleet of laptops.I've had Dell and HP laptops in the past and while they worked fine when they worked, they seemed to be much less reliable. At my current workplace, we can choose whatever laptop we want under £2500. Of the technical staff there are a few who use Dell XPS, but about 60% use Apple and the remainder use Lenovo. The Lenovo group are split between Windows and Linux Desktop users. Not seen any tech users use Windows 11, they stick with W10. Only admin, sales and marketing use Windows 11, but probably 90% of them use a Macbook.
"take it to an apple store" is not something you have time to do and yes, they do break as often, if not more often than a Dell, difference is Dell can same day you a part and sometimes even an engineer.
Lenovo used to be exceptional back when they were IBM, you could use a Thinkpad to defeat an entire zombie army and it would still work perfectly. They kind of went a little bit downhill after that, no longer legendarily reliable. However the real problem is their owners, the Chinese. That puts them right out if you're in any way working for the govt, military or anything else that is high security (such as finance, insurance, gaming). So your choices when buying fleets are Dell or HP... and HP are truly dire.
I've forgotten more about OS X and Macs than most users will ever know... there are very good reasons there's no mention of them on my resume and I've walked out of interviews when they've been mentioned. Not that it's been mentioned for the last 8 odd years, I'm mainly a server/virt/cloud person these days.
I had a pretty powerful, high spec Asus laptop for photography and 3D cad/scanning. The screen died. Asus refused to give me an estimate until seeing the laptop, despite them having the full specification and serial number, and I'd diagnosed it to be either the screen or the screen cable (the laptop worked fine on an external monitor). They asked me to send the laptop to them for checking, and after paying a diagnosis fee, they would work out the cost. They couldn't give me a timescale either.
I bought a Dell XPS15.
I bought a Dell XPS15.
Riley Blue said:
Now that you've explained it I understand.
Sorry if I came off a bit harsh. Wasn't intended. It did make me think back to the 90's and 00's when compute power was increasing so fast that a new gaming rig would be at the end of it's useful life in 2 years... Now they'll last 5 easy with no upgrades.
Corporate refresh cycles were 2 years as well, but that's become longer as well with companies buying extended warranties.
captain_cynic said:
Riley Blue said:
Now that you've explained it I understand.
Sorry if I came off a bit harsh. Wasn't intended. It did make me think back to the 90's and 00's when compute power was increasing so fast that a new gaming rig would be at the end of it's useful life in 2 years... Now they'll last 5 easy with no upgrades.
Corporate refresh cycles were 2 years as well, but that's become longer as well with companies buying extended warranties.
Always been an advocate of Lenovo since back in the day (noughties) when our squillions of Sony VAIOs all failed and the Toshibas that replaced them all had power issues.
The Lenovos were light, well built and just worked. Could deploy them like shelling peas. Was never a fan of Dell magically forcing updates that broke things. Not sure whether they still do.
This year I realised I don't actually need portability and I do like gaming, so I bought a desktop over a more expensive, lower specced laptop for the first time in years and couldn't be happier with it.
Obviously if you travel for work that wouldn't suit.
The Lenovos were light, well built and just worked. Could deploy them like shelling peas. Was never a fan of Dell magically forcing updates that broke things. Not sure whether they still do.
This year I realised I don't actually need portability and I do like gaming, so I bought a desktop over a more expensive, lower specced laptop for the first time in years and couldn't be happier with it.
Obviously if you travel for work that wouldn't suit.
captain_cynic said:
Sorry, but here you've revealed you've never managed a fleet of laptops.
"take it to an apple store" is not something you have time to do and yes, they do break as often, if not more often than a Dell, difference is Dell can same day you a part and sometimes even an engineer.
I never claimed to have managed a fleet of laptops, but I have been a highly technical user in a household-name software company with tens of thousands of laptops deployed. When Apple laptops failed, they certainly didn't take them to an Apple store. IT replaced the laptop with a machine kept in stock, and laptops would be repaired under a corporate service agreement. Historically IT used to provide HP, Dell and IBM, and after 2012 users could order a Macbook when their laptop was due for renewal, with manager agreement. In about 2015 Dell and HP were taken off the approved list, leaving only Lenovo and Apple which could then be ordered without manager approval. I used to talk to the beardy ones (IT helpdesk) and they said that the failure rate for the HP and Dell machines was too high. My own experience was that my team often had failures with HP and Dell and less so with Lenovo and Apple. We put that down to Dell and HP being more advanced in terms of spec and features, while Lenovo was less adventurous and stuck with tried and tested tech. Not great for gaming, but perfect for a trustworthy business machine."take it to an apple store" is not something you have time to do and yes, they do break as often, if not more often than a Dell, difference is Dell can same day you a part and sometimes even an engineer.
I work for a much smaller company now, but Lenovo and Apple still dominate in the personal desktop space here. I have nothing against HP - in fact our biggest hardware partner is HPE and we have deployed thousands of petabytes of mission-critical storage around the globe based on their servers.
LunarOne said:
muppets_mate said:
LunarOne said:
I've said this before on here but as an IT professional there are only two laptop brands worth buying and neither of them are Dell or Asus. With £450 to spend I'd buy a used business laptop so that I could have a much higher quality machine than £450 would buy in Argos or Curry's.
Care to share which those two brands are please?AI1601 said:
Ended up returning the i5 Vivobook and bought the i3 Vivobook OLED. Must say, the screen is fantastic and everything is nice and quick. Amazed how quick it turns off!
I have been looking at a sub £400 laptop to use on the sofa as my gaming laptop is too big and heavy. Have to say this looks way better than the £400 offerings from Dell.Very tempted to order one.
All cheap laptops are built down to a price, it almost doesn't matter what you buy.
Once you're spending more money the Dells are just much better (Latitude over Inspiron).
I work for an IT VAR and get to see loads of kit come through. If you're spending £380, get whatever. If you're spending £700-1k get a Dell.
Once you're spending more money the Dells are just much better (Latitude over Inspiron).
I work for an IT VAR and get to see loads of kit come through. If you're spending £380, get whatever. If you're spending £700-1k get a Dell.
captain_cynic said:
Sorry, but here you've revealed you've never managed a fleet of laptops.
"take it to an apple store" is not something you have time to do and yes, they do break as often, if not more often than a Dell, difference is Dell can same day you a part and sometimes even an engineer.
Lenovo used to be exceptional back when they were IBM, you could use a Thinkpad to defeat an entire zombie army and it would still work perfectly. They kind of went a little bit downhill after that, no longer legendarily reliable. However the real problem is their owners, the Chinese. That puts them right out if you're in any way working for the govt, military or anything else that is high security (such as finance, insurance, gaming). So your choices when buying fleets are Dell or HP... and HP are truly dire.
I've forgotten more about OS X and Macs than most users will ever know... there are very good reasons there's no mention of them on my resume and I've walked out of interviews when they've been mentioned. Not that it's been mentioned for the last 8 odd years, I'm mainly a server/virt/cloud person these days.
What he said. Lenovo used to be bomb-proof but have give downhill a bit since IBM sold it."take it to an apple store" is not something you have time to do and yes, they do break as often, if not more often than a Dell, difference is Dell can same day you a part and sometimes even an engineer.
Lenovo used to be exceptional back when they were IBM, you could use a Thinkpad to defeat an entire zombie army and it would still work perfectly. They kind of went a little bit downhill after that, no longer legendarily reliable. However the real problem is their owners, the Chinese. That puts them right out if you're in any way working for the govt, military or anything else that is high security (such as finance, insurance, gaming). So your choices when buying fleets are Dell or HP... and HP are truly dire.
I've forgotten more about OS X and Macs than most users will ever know... there are very good reasons there's no mention of them on my resume and I've walked out of interviews when they've been mentioned. Not that it's been mentioned for the last 8 odd years, I'm mainly a server/virt/cloud person these days.
Edited by Funk on Thursday 30th May 19:56
AI1601 said:
Ended up returning the i5 Vivobook and bought the i3 Vivobook OLED. Must say, the screen is fantastic and everything is nice and quick. Amazed how quick it turns off!
Good choice. Getting the latest CPU if it's roughly similar 'grunt' is usually the best thing for longevity.I'm writing this on my 2017 i7 with 4k screen which still does everything I'd want, including fairly intensive photoshop stuff. And I still have my 2007 Sony Vaio with blu ray drive working and running Windows 11, useful as a chuck-it-in-the-luggage, don't-care-if-it-breaks travelling laptop. Approx 10 years is ok for a fairly top of the range spec laptop, and 5 years for a budget one, assuming relatively 'normal' tasks.
... although I'm now jealous of your OLED screen... !
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff