Time for a new laptop. Recommendations?

Excellent graphics and colours is subjective..... you can handle 4K video without a graphics card BUT if you want 4K gaming you need a very expensive graphics card

james t kirk said:

It's not a question of utilizing my Internet connection to its full capacity. Hardly.

It's a question of exponential decay in speed due to the structure of the house. With Bell I have their Fibe 150 service. Speeds fall off a cliff the further I am from the modem. To the point that the WiFi signal is less than one tenth of what it is if I'm sitting beside the modem. Signals degrade with distance and the structure of the house. (And I don't think you want an electromagnetic signal so strong that it can rip right through masonry and timber and plaster (I live in an old house over 100 years old. Double brick walls and stone foundation walls.))

The Belden Cat 6 eliminates the issue entirely. It's vastly superior to wireless.

I'm not afraid to pull cables and crimp some fittings.

Any electronic guru will allays tell you that hard wired anything is always superior to wireless. Be that data, alarms, communication, or even a simple thermostat.

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I was actually in the same situation as you a year ago. I lived in a decent sized old house and the wireless signal would drop around half of the house. I propose 3 solutions for you:

1. I'm guessing you're using the free router that Bell gave you. Try replacing it with a good aftermarket one and it should be sufficient.
2. Run an Ethernet cable to the room / area where signal is low and attach it to a WiFi extender
3. Just use a dongle, with Bell 150 your max speed is only 150Mbs which is quite slow and won't even be bottlenecked by USB 2.0.

Also make sure you’re using the 2.4Ghz band of your wireless signal, not the 5Ghz. The 2.4Ghz waves pass through surfaces much easier.

Not sure if you're rewiring the house but if you're trying to future proof your connections, wireless is the future. More devices will be made without RJ45 ports, especially smart home stuff so investing in wireless will be much better in the long run.

Wired connections have their place, when stability, speed and redundancy are key. Such as for servers and security systems. But for general use wireless is sufficient, especially when you’re only working with 150Mbs. A ethernet port on an laptop will just tie you down and will make the laptop thick.

K Douglas said:

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad. My first and I'm not impressed. Absolutely hate the trackpad. Core i5 processor has lagged from the get go. Ethernet port situated too close to the power cord input causes issues. I do like the keyboard though.

Best laptop I ever had was a Toshiba. Worst was a HP. I will be replacing this Lenovo soon not sure what I will get next.

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Same issue. Trackpad is the worst....the WORST. Everything else about it is great, but that alone is enough that I will NEVER buy another.

Any laptop can break, but some manufacturers have a better track record than others. A study by SquareTrade, that looked at failure rates over the course of three years, found that Asus' electronics broke the least often (followed very closely by Toshiba) and HP's broke the most often. In fact, with HP, you had more than a one in four chance of getting a broken laptop in those three years. That may seem high, but even the best couldn't achieve a failure rate below 15%. Let's take a look at the rankings, from best to worst:

Asus: 15.6%
Toshiba: 15.7%
Sony: 16.8%
Apple: 17.4%
Dell: 18.3%
Lenovo: 21.5%
Acer: 23.3%
Gateway: 23.5%
HP: 25.6%

some of the toshibas come with 3 year warranty.
ive owned a couple toshibas and have had very good luck with them.
dells were a complete failure

Unless CAD had changed in recent years I don't think it benefits from more cores, I've found it likes flat out speed as in GHz. Same with the graphics card, AFAIK only a workstation card would make an appreciable difference. I use AutoCAD a ton for 3D modelling but I don't do any rendering so maybe I 'm wrong with all this but worth looking into. I'm curious though if you are willing to be tethered by a network cable why aren't you looking into a desktop? They are better/cheaper in every regard, except portability of course.

I'm not too into laptops but one thing I would strongly recommend which is something I've done with the last few laptops I've setup; don't spend extra to get one with an SSD. Just get the vanilla 500GB drive or what ever it comes with. Go buy you own SSD. Start the new laptop and go through the start up bullshit and activate Win10. Then shut it down and swap the drive with the SSD. Download Win10 and install fresh off a thumb drive. Once you are back up and running Win10 with activate again since when you did it the first time it was tied to the MAC address on the mobo in the laptop. Zero bloatware and you have a probably cheaper and better SSD then if you got the laptop with one already installed. Stash the original drive away for warranty and trouble shooting purposes.

Last thing, I wouldn't play brand favorites. They all make the odd lemon and once in a while turn out a gem so there are no guarantees either way. Once you see one you like read a ton of reviews on it to see if there are any recurring issues.

Hope that helps!

How about I sit on your lap top and you use your fingers to play with my mouse and keys

I too am looking for a new laptop. My current laptop is a Lenovo T530, the touchpad really blows on that laptop but it is not a big deal to me as I usually prefer the nipple pointer. The problem with the T530 is that it is heavy as f*ck and it only gets 3 hours out of a single charge even when new.

If you are thinking about the lenovo T470, I suggest you wait for the T480 using the new generation intel CPUs, the new intel mobile CPUs offers double the CPU core count WRT the previous version.

I have always had lenovo thinkpads, but I am pretty much over them now as I see more innovative laptops from other vendors these past few years like the Dell XPS 13 and the Asus Zenbook line.

I am currently eying a HP spectre, the reviews on it are quite good, uses the new intel CPUs, slim and light, 10+ hours of battery life, and you can charge it using a USB type-c power bank so you can get maybe another 15+ hours if you carry around a power bank.

HungSowel said:

I am currently eying a HP spectre, the reviews on it are quite good, uses the new intel CPUs, slim and light, 10+ hours of battery life,

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I just quickly read a couple reviews on the Spectre and battery life isn't nearly that good. Reviewers were getting 6-7 hours and that is just surfing the net or playing video... so basically idling along. Even a celeron would handle this type of use with ease. Throw in some cpu intensive tasks to warrant the i7 under the hood and I'd be impressed if it could last even half that long. Processing power needs power period. A powerful machine is not going to have good battery life if used to its capability.