Ugh, need to buy another laptop--help!

[Matt Meiser]

As you may remember, my wife's 5+ year old laptop died a few weeks ago. The most grueling thing she uses hers for is Excel, so I just ordered her something "cheap" out of the Dell outlet (Inspiron, i3, 4GB Ram, "Intel Graphics" 15.6" screen.) Now mine is acting up--suspect the display or a connection is failing. Its a 6YO Dell I bought second hand from work (previously it was my work machine) that has some mechanical issue and is definitely not worth fixing.

I did a little shopping but can't decide what to buy myself. My most demanding use is Sketchup. The current one can get slow with Sketchup especially when running in the reduced performance mode on battery. I can't decide what I NEED vs what I WANT.

I'm kind of looking at i5's, 4-8GB of RAM (many I've checked out are 6GB) and at least "Intel Graphics 4000" as opposed to just "Intel Graphics" Am I over-specing for what I really need for a decent performer for Sketchup?

Also, what and where--I've got a couple HP and Toshiba options I've liked at Costco and Office Max, but am leaning toward another Dell purchased direct because for about $90 extra I can get the same 3-year in-home service we put on my wife's and we'd be good hardware-wise for at least 3 more years.

Windows...Pretty much everything but a few clearance machines are Windows 8. I'd really like to stick with 7 for the time being since my shop PC and work PC are both 7. I'm considering ordering an SSD drive, pulling the factory drive, and installing Windows 7 myself. IF I ever have a problem, I can put the factory drive back in an let them do their thing, then swap it back. Anyone have thoughts one way or another on this idea? Don't bother suggesting *nix. Not interested--most of the software I want to run on this thing (MS Office--already own the licenses, iTunes, Sketchup, Cutlist Plus, and possible Visual Studio) won't run on it and if I wanted to run a VM I could do that on another computer I already have. I have considered a MacBook because it would give me the ability to do some iPhone/iPad development but I don't really want to spend $1200. And I'd still need to run a VM for Cutlist Plus and I'm not sure if my MS Office license includes Macs. And lastly, I run Windows Home Server which does a good job of managing all our PCs for me (4 between 3 people, not including the wife's and my work machines I'm not responsible for.)

[Jerome Stanek]

Have you checked out Microcenter they have some nice open box units

[Matt Meiser]

Online, yes.

Ironically, just was at Microcenter in Columbus yesterday, but didn't know I was shopping for laptops. The closest Microcenter to us is actually 130 miles round trip so not really a local source (yes I know they do mail order too.)

I can buy a Dell Inspiron 15R direct with a 3 year warranty for $700 with the following specs:

Inspiron 15R Notebook (Inspiron 5520)
Windows 8, 64-bit, English
3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-3210M processor (3M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz)
6GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
750GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Intel® HD Graphics 4000
8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Switch by Design Studio - Moon Silver
15.6" High Definition (720p) LED Display with Truelife
48 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Battery
Intel® Centrino® Wireless 2230, 2x2 bgn + Bluetooth
Dell Stereo Speakers with Waves MaxxAudio 3 audio processor
Integrated 10/100 Network Card

Add $125 or so for an SSD drive and load licenses I already own for Win7/Office 2010 and I'm good to go I think.

[Paul McGaha]

Hi Matt,

The last laptop I bought was a DELL from Costco.

http://www.costco.com/all-laptops.html?refine=30207%2b13020

I bought one 3 or 4 months ago. Has Windows 7 on it with a free (I think) upgrade to Windows 8, which I don't think I'll bother with. It's ok.

Good luck with it, Lot's of good choices out there. Personally I really like Toshiba laptops too.

[Lee Schierer]

Matt, Our ASUS U56E I5 has worked flawlessly right out of the box. It has a 640 gb hard drive and gets 8-9 hours of battery life.

[Graham Wintersgill]

Matt

Only question I have would be can the RAM be upgraded by adding RAM or does it have to be replaced?

You could also look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQuJrswnJ5g , swap the DVD for a hard disk, lets you use a smaller SSD.

Regards

[Matt Meiser]

I don't need a big drive--pretty much keep everything on network storage.

I ended up ordering that Dell. Chatting online with a rep, he offered another $50 off, 2-day shipping, and 5% Back to spend at Dell.com. That's basically the same price as everything I looked at locally but a three year in home warranty. I wouldn't have gone for any extended warranty that required shipping the machine.

I also ordered a Samsung 128gb SSD for Windows 7 but might cancel that and give 8 a try. Need to retread the 7 vs 8 thread from a few weeks back.

[Jerome Stanek]

I thought that there was a Microcenter in Detroit

[Matt Meiser]

There is--almost as far north of Detroit as I am south.

[Brian Elfert]

Trying to reuse a Windows 7 key on a new machine is probably going to lead to a lot of troubles as Microsoft's activation system will see that the key has already been used.

[Matt Meiser]

I bought a 3-pack of licenses a couple years ago and only ever used 2.

[Michael Koga]

for future info, I purchased the family 3 pack of win 7. I'm constantly changing things around and reloaded win 7 a few times over the existing licenses. The family pack is not tied to a specific cpu/mb combo like the 'system builder' copies and licenses are thus moveable between systems. Google did not find me the phone numbers, but in the Win 7 activation window there's a choice that if you say you are not connected to the internet that will give you a phone number. Explain the situation and they gave me new activation numbers with minimal problems.

If the 3 pack is upgrades from xp, after loading Win 7, do a system backup, one of the options in the control panel. Then if you have a problem then you can reload from DVD's or file without loading xp or going thru the activation process.

I've been using Win 8 for a couple of weeks now. Avoiding Metro as much as possible, overall the desktop mode isn't too bad. Had a few glitches with programs here and there, but don't know where the fault lies, OS or program. Probably take a few more months before programmers get things clicking right.

[Matt Meiser]

I've been doing some reading and the only real complaints I'm reading on Win8 are the new UI. I'm thinking of going ahead making the system restore disc (or apparently the new way to do that is a USB stick) and loading the SSD with the image Dell ships with. Worst case if I hate it I can back everything up and rebuild the thing. I'm not running anything too crazy on it anyway--Office, iTunes (needed for syncing my iPad and iPhone), Sketchup, and Cutlist Plus.

[Michael Koga]

Metro would probably be alright if you had a touch screen or tablet. Using a mouse stinks, clicking and dragging from the top to bottom of screen to shut down a program is stupid. Doesn't MS know people have carpal???? Or want to use the keyboard shortcuts...

There's a couple of programs out there that gives back the 'start' button which I'm going to try soon. The biggest thing that irks me is shutting down, don't know why MS made it difficult. Go to upper right corner, move mouse 2/3 down to click on setting, more downward movement to click on 'power', then select power options. I just created a shortcut and parked it on the taskbar, now I have one click shutdown. Oh well, doing some ranting....

[David Weaver]

no more alt f4?

[Matt Meiser]

Really? No more Alt-F4? REALLY!?!

I do think MS is working on moving away from function keys. My new Microsoft wireless keyboard has a row of 12 buttons that have different app icons on them. F1 is "Mail" You have to press a button on the keyboard that's similar in concept to caps lock to turn them back into function keys. And they aren't in the right spot even if you do. If it wasn't for the 15% restocking fee at Office Max I would have returned it.

[Michael Koga]

Sorry, alt-f4 still works. I developed carpal and unfortunately I find it easier albeit slower to use the mouse for everything except typing. Ah, the good old DOS and Wordperfect days......so good they gave me this problem!!:(

[Matt Meiser]

Well, I signed for the new laptop at 4:41 PM according to Fedex. Its 6:41PM and Windows 7 install is 75% complete. I didn't make it an hour with Windows 8. Some might say I didn't give it enough time. I say, there's nearly an hour I'll never get back.

Also, I ended up picking up a 250GB SSD locally. The 128 I ordered from Amazon was shipped in a padded envelope and nothing more. The packaging was so mangled I didn't even bother opening the box...just sent it back.

Oooh...rebooting in 7. WOW...FAST!!

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Off hand, the specs look good. Good to see the Intel i5, I understand it to have more computing power than the i3. I consider you right at the edge for RAM, but you can likely increase the RAM if required.

If MS gives you license woes with office, try LibreOffice, it is pretty close in capabilities to MSO (some ways better, some ways worse).

[Curt Harms]

Off hand, the specs look good. Good to see the Intel i5, I understand it to have more computing power than the i3. I consider you right at the edge for RAM, but you can likely increase the RAM if required.

If MS gives you license woes with office, try LibreOffice, it is pretty close in capabilities to MSO (some ways better, some ways worse).

Supposedly LibreOffice 4.0 - recently released - has pretty good MSO proprietary file format support. I don't think there's any VBA support though. I installed it but don't have any complex MSO .docx or xlsx files to check it on.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

LibreOffice (LO) has been able to read and write the new MSO files formats for a while. Sadly, Apache OpenOffice (AOO) only supports reading, but plans to add writing in the future. I cannot say for sure who reads the format better. AOO has been integrating changes from IBM that they created for Symphony. It probably does not matter which unless you need to write files such as DOCX.

I heard that with MSO 2013 they made changes to what they write and are moving to a "the license is only good for a single machine and if it dies you buy another copy of MSO", but I have not verified.

I don't expect MSO macros to work in any of the OpenOffice variants unless they are trivial ( I know a bunch about OpenOffice macros, but very little about MSO Macros).

[Matt Meiser]

My Office key couldn't be activated online, because it had been done too many times due to computer replacements, but it did let me activate over the phone after confirmation that it was only on 3 computers.

I use Open Office for a while on my shop PC, but the differences were enough to drive me nuts. Maybe Libre has addressed those.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

My Office key couldn't be activated online, because it had been done too many times due to computer replacements, but it did let me activate over the phone after confirmation that it was only on 3 computers.

Which version?

I was reading about it today, but I don't pay for an MSO license so it does not affect me.


I use Open Office for a while on my shop PC, but the differences were enough to drive me nuts. Maybe Libre has addressed those.

I doubt it. If you like the latest interface and similar, then, I expect that all of the OpenOffice variants will drive you nuts. I assume that because I have been using both for many years, and many of the more advanced things that I do with ease on OpenOffice, I sometimes find difficult to do in MSO (assuming that it is indeed something that you are able to do with MSO, since some of what I do is not directly possible in MSO -- related to styles). If I spent most of my time exploiting the idiosyncrasies of MSO, then LO would also drive me nuts.

[Matt Meiser]

2010 Home and Student 3-pack.

I don't necessarily "like" the current Office UI, but I have to use it at work and using something different at home just confuses things. I could be remembering wrong, but hitting delete in a spreadsheet cell caused a popup which Excel doesn't do and that was a major annoyance since that's mostly what I use in the shop. When I got a new cheapo shop PC it came with the ad-supported basic version of Office 2010 which more than meets my needs there. I think there were some formula differences too that bugged me.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

2010 Home and Student 3-pack.

Ahhh, yes, of course you are fine with that...




I don't necessarily "like" the current Office UI, but I have to use it at work and using something different at home just confuses things.

I think that the UI in 2013 is better than in 2010; they just rolled that out where I work.


I could be remembering wrong, but hitting delete in a spreadsheet cell caused a popup which Excel doesn't do and that was a major annoyance since that's mostly what I use in the shop. When I got a new cheapo shop PC it came with the ad-supported basic version of Office 2010 which more than meets my needs there. I think there were some formula differences too that bugged me.

I think that used to be the case. I started hitting "backspace", because that accomplished the same thing without the popup.

In the latest version of LibreOffice, delete no longer displays a popup.
Backspace, however, now does display a popup, and asks you what you want to delete; this allows you to perform a selective delete, which is really really cool if you desire to do that.

[Matt Meiser]

OK, this thing is screaming fast with the i5 and SSD! Windows 7 never finishes the spinning Windows logo on startup and most applications you barely see the splash screen if at all. A reboot is maybe 20s.

And my dad emailed today, then called tonight...his ancient desktop which I've been warning him is going to up and die one day did so last night. Dell is going to have a good quarter. He's not going to buy as fast a machine, don't think Solitaire needs it, but we're going to take the same approach with Windows 7. Trying to talk him into an SSD too. Guessing mom's is next--about the same vintage as my wife's and my old laptops but it sat pretty much unused about 4 years.

[Brian Elfert]

Dell would have a lot better quarter if their pricing was realistic on their corporate laptops. My employer bought several hundred laptops from Dell in 2008. Under $900 each with four year warranty, docking stations, and 4 year accidental damage protection. Dell wants $1600 each this year and we aren't even getting accidental damage protection this time. HP is probably getting the order unless Dell drastically cuts their price.

I always thought PC pricing is supposed to go down, not up.

[Matt Meiser]

I don't do much business buying anymore. I didn't do a lot before, but almost never now. I do know we are buying servers for a project and went with HP because that's the customer (a well known consumer products company) standard for servers. For PC's they use Dell and we spec'd a Latitude 10 tablet too. Looking forward to getting my hands on that thing (despite Windows 8.)

For consumer laptops right now, its hard to beat them. Prices are about the same before the warranty as Lenovo/HP/Toshiba in the stores, but the ability to add the 3-year in home warranty is a big bonus in my opinion--no letting the Geek Squad mail it off. For damage, we can get them covered under our homeowners insurance with special rider cheaper.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

So, Matt, you figuring out windows 8 OK? I know little to nothing about it, what I do know I don't like..... and if my Mother gets a windows 8 box I will likely need to support it. You are probably about half way between me and them.

[Matt Meiser]

Nope. I pulled out the original drive put it in a box, installed the SSD and loaded with 7. I was considering loading the SSD with the restore media created off the laptop, but I couldn't get through creating that without a bunch of frustration so I didn't go any further.

[Dick Strauss]

Matt,
Be extremely careful with the AC/DC pin connectors on the Dells. We had 3 Dell laptops (Inspiron 15 series) that all developed the same issue a couple of years ago. All of the power connection issues were within the first 18-24 months of life but obviously not covered under the std warranty. I discovered that the inside DC connectors are poorly designed and aren't soldered well causing them to eventually work themselves loose (on both the connector to the outside and the connector to the circuit board sides) as the laptop is plugged/unplugged. I was able to fix one twice but decided it wasn't worth it on the other two. The one that was fixed has developed the issue again. Dell also uses a third pin on the AC/DC connection to verify that you are only using a Dell AC/DC converter. If this connection goes bad internally (the case in all 3 computers), the computer will not allow you to charge the batteries (even using the OEM charger). We also had 2 of the 3 laptops AC/DC converters go bad during this same 18-24 months of life period

Dell will fix the issue for $175-200 which we opted not to do for roughly 2 year old laptops.

I do have a 8 year old Dell home pc that runs just fine with no issues.

Given these issues, we have decided not to buy Dell laptops unless they make some design changes. We have several 4-5 year old HP laptops with no issues to date.

[Myk Rian]

Trying to reuse a Windows 7 key on a new machine is probably going to lead to a lot of troubles as Microsoft's activation system will see that the key has already been used.
Not really. I've used the same XP on 3 machines that I've built over the years.

[Brian Elfert]

Not really. I've used the same XP on 3 machines that I've built over the years.

Microsoft's activation system has changed with each release of Windows. They are making it stricter in each version. I had an experience with Windows XP where I had to call Microsoft because I changed some of the hardware in my PC.

I've also heard rumors that Microsoft deleted their activation database for Windows XP and is just allowing activation of any Windows XP key now.

[Scott Donley]

Last year I tried to install Office 2002, could not activate it and it gave me no number to call After spending an hour or more just trying to find a number to Call I called Corporate Office in Redmond, they transferd me to someone else who told me they no longer support 2002. I said I don't want support just want to be able to install the software I bought and paid for, nothing in the license said a thing about it becoming unusable in x amount of years and if I had to go to smaal claims court to get the money I spent on it I would. He put me on hold a couple minutes and came back and gave me a code that would work one time.

[Matt Meiser]

I consider you right at the edge for RAM, but you can likely increase the RAM if required.

I found out 8GB is < $50 so I went ahead and upgraded.

A side-effect of the SSD: I'm getting around 5 hours of runtime on the battery. :eek: At least I presume that's why as short runtime is a complaint on the Inspiron 15R from what I read. Not a big deal since I probably won't use it truely mobile but apparently not even a concern.

[Brian Elfert]

Last year I tried to install Office 2002, could not activate it and it gave me no number to call After spending an hour or more just trying to find a number to Call I called Corporate Office in Redmond, they transferd me to someone else who told me they no longer support 2002. I said I don't want support just want to be able to install the software I bought and paid for, nothing in the license said a thing about it becoming unusable in x amount of years and if I had to go to smaal claims court to get the money I spent on it I would. He put me on hold a couple minutes and came back and gave me a code that would work one time.

Most Microsoft products are only intended to be installed on a single computer. The whole reason to have activation keys is to prevent installation on a second PC. As you found out, you can usually call Microsoft to do phone activation if the online activation won't work.

Good luck suing Microsoft in small claims court. I'm pretty sure Microsoft would spend a lot of money defending their practices.

[Curt Harms]

....
I'm pretty sure Microsoft would spend a lot of money defending their practices.

They already have, and not in small claims court.

[Scott Donley]

Most Microsoft products are only intended to be installed on a single computer. The whole reason to have activation keys is to prevent installation on a second PC. As you found out, you can usually call Microsoft to do phone activation if the online activation won't work.

Good luck suing Microsoft in small claims court. I'm pretty sure Microsoft would spend a lot of money defending their practices. It was one computer. If you had a brand new copy you just never used, it is now worthless.
As far as court goes I have no idea if I could win but for $25 filling fee it would have been worth it to me to have them spend the money to defend it.

[Brian Elfert]

It was one computer. If you had a brand new copy you just never used, it is now worthless.
As far as court goes I have no idea if I could win but for $25 filling fee it would have been worth it to me to have them spend the money to defend it.

Are you saying it had never been used and it wouldn't activate? I really don't blame a software company that doesn't keep activation servers running forever although it seems they could keep them going for at least 10 years. Are people going to be complaining in 20 years because they can't reinstall their Office 2002 anymore?

There is some business software that is actually licensed by the year. It quits working when the license expires if it you don't renew it.

[Scott Donley]

Are you saying it had never been used and it wouldn't activate? I really don't blame a software company that doesn't keep activation servers running forever although it seems they could keep them going for at least 10 years. Are people going to be complaining in 20 years because they can't reinstall their Office 2002 anymore?

There is some business software that is actually licensed by the year. It quits working when the license expires if it you don't renew it.Yes, it had never been used. IT was not a business license, when I bought it I bout 2 thinking I would install on to of my computers, never got around to the second computer. My point was as to Matt's having to call to activate his MS software. There is nothing in the license agreement saying it would be unusable in 10 years.

[Brian Elfert]

Office doesn't have a license that expires. There is other software from other companies that is licensed by the year.

[Scott Donley]

Office doesn't have a license that expires. There is other software from other companies that is licensed by the year.

And that was my point !

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Office doesn't have a license that expires. There is other software from other companies that is licensed by the year.

Everything I have read indicates that they desire to move in that general direction. this is their current subscription based service, which does expire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_365

[Jim Becker]

Matt, I have the SSD in my 13" MBPr and the battery life is indeed outstanding. The nearly "instant on" is also a great benefit. I'd do that again in a heartbeat.