New Laptop

[ptonsparky]

One of the memory slots in my close to 10 year old Dell laptop is intermittent. Comparable new Dells are $1800-$2000. The suggestion by repair tech is that a Lenovo was less costly. Is it ‘less’ as well?

The old Dell has 2G and 4G sticks. I7 processor. When inserted in different slots the failure points to the one slot.
I ran out of memory with the 4G active. Frustrating.

 

[__dan]

Generally the T series Lenovo Thinkpads are the business build quality, generally repairable for some things. But there are still complaints about funky keyboards and weight.

I had just checked recently and the great Arrow Direct, Lenovo Thinkpad refurbs on NewEgg are all gone. Even the seller search listing for the category is gone. That would have been the place to go. I got two great machines that way, a 3rd gen X1 Carbon for $414 and a T540p for under 200.

I found out why the T540p they sent me was new uncirculated. Battery latch allowed some slight movement and it would disconnect. I had Arrow Direct issue a $25 credit, the difference between the grade A and grade B, and put a piece of HD duct tape across the battery and laptop bottom, so I am very happy. The T540p was so nice there was no way I was going to send it back, even with the funky keyboard.

It could be something to do with the trade war that made the good refub inventory disappear.

I would not buy someone else's used laptop, but if I could get those really clean and cheap corporate off lease refurb Thinkpads, it's a no brainer that's what I would do.

I was going to try a $450 Asus consumer grade beater, but the X! C is just so nice. I generally like Asus for my PC build parts.

Laptops take a beating and are not expected to last (10 years). If I could get the same deal for grade A Lenovo refurbs, that's where I would go.

 

[__dan]

This model was $165. refurb under the old sale with Arrow Direct. Possibly still not a bad choice but the Arrow Direct machines had a rep for being pretty good.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E1683484...82E16834847560

It's possible this machine has the M2 slot to add a cheap WWAN card for cellular LTE data. Has to be checked carefully for compatibility if you want that. Easy to swap to a sata ssd in those machines.

New T Thinkpads run ~ $800 on sale. You can generally get 35% off list for Thinkpads if you wait for the good sales or Black Friday.

 

[zbang]

I've written about this before- iI have hmm, six? seven? thinkpads up to 18 years old. All work. Using a 7+ year old T520 to write this (with added SSD and 8gb ram).

 

[PaulMmn]

If you're near a MicroCenter Mall store, they usually have refurb PCs and laptops available (although not on the sales floor). Check their web site. I picked up a Lenovo laptop a few years ago. other than eventually needing a new battery it works fine. Came with Windows and the 'alternative' office suite (not Microsoft). Has all the modern amenities-- USB ports, ethernet, DVD burner...

 

[iceworm]

Hopefully part of the same topic:
What are y'all using for archive - say like for photographs. Raw is ~25 MB.

I'm considering Blu-Ray, 25GB, BD-R.

Any thoughts?

 

[Fulthrotl]

Hopefully part of the same topic:
What are y'all using for archive - say like for photographs. Raw is ~25 MB.

I'm considering Blu-Ray, 25GB, BD-R.

Any thoughts?

2TB samsung flashdrive.

dunno how well burned media lasts, to be honest. a 2 tb drive may not last, either.
but it'll probably last longer than i need it to. probably last longer than i will.

i have two 2TB flashdrives, and i clone the macbook to them once a week.
i have a third one for offline storage. zero problems with them.... but i also
access them regularly.

dunno if they need refreshing periodically to hold their data.

 

[zbang]

Modern SSDs are quite reliable, but it's usually good to power them up once in a while, maybe every 6 months(?). Don't have to even plug them into a computer, just let the firmware start up and do whatever it thinks is necessary. ("flash keys"/thumb drives are generally far less reliable)