guzziguy Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 My 4 year old HP Pavilion DM4 is starting to die. It's had too many bluescreens recently and the OS can't detect the DVD player (the BIOS does). So it's probably time for a replacement. Could you please suggest laptops, matching the following criteria, that you would recommend. Important: $500 to $750 tops 8M memory Either has SSD or can add one 1T disk Not important: Screen size (I mostly use a monitor) Weight (I don't travel much with it) Battery life (I mostly plug in) Thanks in advance for all your input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n_maher Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 If you can stretch the budget a bit this looks pretty decent. http://computers.woot.com/offers/hp-omen-15-6-intel-i7-gtx-860m-laptop-11?utm_source=Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=1f3105bd92-Daily+Digest+-+20150720+-+Shirt.Woot&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c5ca76da11-1f3105bd92-281438606#tracked Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grawk Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 If you're not gaming, I'd go with whatever the cheapest laptop that has everything you want. Last year I bought my daughter an asus laptop with a 15" screen for $200 from the microsoft store that is remarkably usable. I don't know that it has a dvd player tho. I'd get a usb bluray drive, and rip whatever you're wanting to watch when travelling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dusty Chalk Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Either has SSD or can add one 1T disk Not too many laptops have two drive bays, unless you mean mSATA for the SSD. As an alternative, you can always put in a hybrid drive, which is basically both in one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guzziguy Posted July 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 I think that Dan has definitely described my situation. I'm not a gamer and only need 8M memory because I leave too man tabs open in my browsers. So if anything, I'll tend to try to hit the low end of my budget. Anyway, I just got back from an appointment to find my computer dead. It reboot but it's probably closer to the end than I thought. So I'll visit Staples, Costco, Best Buy and maybe Office Max and purchase the best deal I can find. Thanks again for all the input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cetoole Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 8gb is for people who close their tabs. 16gb minimum, and 32 preferred. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skullguise Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Probably not worth TOO much effort, but do you have restore disks? If your Blue Screens are SW related (and having BIOS recognize the optical drive but the OS not makes me wonder/think that), maybe a restore and Windows Update keeps you going for a bit longer...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guzziguy Posted July 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 Stupidly, I don't have Restore disks. Is there a reason this Asus wouldn't work just fine for me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dusty Chalk Posted July 20, 2015 Report Share Posted July 20, 2015 I think that Dan has definitely described my situation. I'm not a gamer and only need 8M memory because I leave too man tabs open in my browsers. So if anything, I'll tend to try to hit the low end of my budget. Anyway, I just got back from an appointment to find my computer dead. It reboot but it's probably closer to the end than I thought. So I'll visit Staples, Costco, Best Buy and maybe Office Max and purchase the best deal I can find. Thanks again for all the input. If that's the case, there was a small discussion that Ed, Peter, and I had regarding Chrome being such a memory hog, and there's a plugin you can install that disables tabs that aren't active. Don't remember the name of the utility, perhaps ask Ed (edwood) and/or Peter (iron_dreamer). The discussion was on Facebook, and I'm vehemently Facebook-tarded regarding searching older threads. Once you do that, you'll definitely be fine with just about anything, if all you do is browse and email and whatnot. Also, a trick I do before I learned of the utility (or rather, still do, because I haven't installed the utility yet) is copy my profile (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default) to another directory (backup disk) (while Chrome is down), and then I can close all the tabs. If I want to come back to them later, I just swap this backup back in (it's all guitar porn and funny pictures and pics of cats and the occasional sexy picture of Oh Land and Kylie, anyway). And that way I don't lose any of my logged in sessions anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guzziguy Posted July 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 Well, I bought the Asus. I'm charging the battery now. The "manuals" are very basic. The "Quick Start Guide" is a single 6" x 8" sheet of paper folded in half. The first page is just the title. There are three instructions (in 5 languages each), one on each of the remaining pages. The Instructions are: 1. Change your Notebook PC. (for 3hours before first use) 2. Lift to open the display panel. 3. Press the Start button. There is a small diagram for each instruction. Hopefully, there will be a canned script to set things up on first power up. I'll also look for more detailed manuals on line. The only other "manual" was about warranty information. My current dying PC has a dual core I5-2410M @ 2.3 GHz. So I doubt that I'll notice any real change in performance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dusty Chalk Posted July 21, 2015 Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 ...or a hybrid. You might notice a small performance boost, due to starting with a new image, but that will be negated by the bloatware, so the first thing I'd do is uninstall all the bloatware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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