Choosing a new laptop
Recently I’ve been thinking about getting a new laptop. I have this rule that a laptop should last me at least 3 years (ideally more) and my old laptop was bought in September 2010. So for the past few months I’ve been trying to work out if there’s something suitable on the market that is a good replacement (last time I didn’t manage to find something that ticked all the boxes, but did pretty well for the price I paid).
To start with I decided to track my laptops over time - largely because one of my concerns was about the size of a replacement, because I have a significant leaning towards subnotebooks. In the end the reason I decided to upgrade was for some extra CPU grunt; my old machine had a tendency to get pretty hot under any sort of load.
| Date | Model | CPU | Screen | RAM | Storage | W (mm) | H (mm) | D (mm) | Weight | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Amstrad PPC 640D | NEC V30 8MHz | 9" 640x200 non-backlit green LCD | 640k | 2 x 3.5" FDD | 450 | 230 | 100 | 10kg | ??? |
| August 1997 | Compaq Aero 4/33c | 486sx33 | 7.8" 640x480 CSTN LCD | 4MB | 80MB | 260 | 190 | 43 | 1.6kg | ??? |
| July 2002 | Compaq Evo N200 | P-III 700MHz | 10.4" 1024x768 TFT | 192MB | 20GB | 251 | 198 | 20 | 1.1kg | £939.99 |
| August 2005 | Toshiba Portege R200 | Pentium M 753 1.2GHz | 12.1" 1024x768 TFT | 1280MB | 60GB | 286 | 229 | 20 | 1.29kg | £1313.58 |
| September 2008 | Asus EEE 901 | Atom N270 1.6GHz | 8.9" 1024x600 TFT | 2GB | 4GB + 16GB SSD | 248 | 175 | 23 | 1.1kg | £299.99 |
| September 2010 | Acer Aspire 1830T | Core-i5 470UM 1.33GHz | 11.6" 1366x768 TFT | 8GB | 500GB | 284 | 203 | 28 | 1.4kg | $699.99 (~ £480) |
The EEE didn’t actually replace the Toshiba, but I mention it for completeness. It was actually the only machine I moved to the US with, but after about a month of it as my primary machine I realized it wasn’t an option for day to day use - though it was fantastic as a machine to throw in an overnight bag, especially when coupled with a 3G dongle.
I wasn’t keen on significantly increasing the size of my laptop. There are a number of decent 13” Ultrabook options out there, and I looked at a few of them, but nothing grabbed me as being worth the increase in size. Also I wanted something better than the Acer - one of the major problems was finding something smaller than 13” that had 8G RAM, let alone more. There’s a significant trend towards everything soldered in for the smaller/slimmer notebooks, which makes some sense but means that the base spec had better be right.
Much to my surprise the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 looked like an option. It comes with an i5-4300U processor (at least since around Christmas 2013), and the 256/512G SSD models have 8G RAM. Screen resolution is an attractive true HD (1920x1080) and the 10” display means it’s smaller than the Aspire. Unfortunately the keyboard lets it down. It’s fine given a flat surface, but not great if you want to support the whole thing on your lap. Which is something I tend to do with my laptop, whether that’s on the sofa, or in bed, or on a bus/train.
Another option was the Sony Vaio Pro 11. This is a pretty sweet laptop (I managed to get to play with one at a Sony store in the US). Super slim and light. 8GB RAM. True HD screen. However I have bad memories of the build quality of the older Vaios and the fact that there was /no/ user replaceable parts put me off - it’s a safe bet that a laptop battery is going to need replaced in a 3 year lifespan.
What I managed to find, and purchase, was a Dell Latitude E7240. I admit that the Dell brand made me wary - while I’ve not had any issue with their desktops I didn’t associated their laptops as being particularly high quality. Mind you, I could say the same for Acer and I’ve been very pleased with the Aspire (if they’d had a more up to date model I’d have bought it). I bought the E7240 with the Core-i5 4300U (so the same as the Surface Pro 2) and True HD touch screen. It has a replaceable battery, expandable RAM (up to 16G) and the storage is an mSATA SSD. It also came with a built in 3G card. At 12.5” it’s a little bigger than my old machine, but I decided that was a reasonable idea given the higher resolution. I’m typing this article on it now, having finally completed the setup and migration of the data from the old laptop to it this evening. More details once I’ve been using it for a little bit I think.