Does your business need a new laptop?

Hardware No Comments

Recently, number two son headed off to study at University. He needed a laptop and since I’m a techie-geeky type, I decided that I’d look for the best value for money I could get.

I started out looking at the normal retail and online stores and they all sold pretty much the same laptops for the same price. I couldn’t see anything that was particularly good value once I delved into the technical specifications.

Lets backtrack a bit and look at the type of laptop I was looking for.

The purpose is to be the main computer for a university student. This means that it has to have a comfortable keyboard and a moderately large, sharp screen, as well as be easily portable. Computing power and memory had to be the best for the money so an Intel i5 or i7 would be preferred.

Graphics is usually the first compromise in a laptop with low specification graphics chips and shared memory. That is, the memory used for graphics comes out of the total installed memory on the machine. This is usually more of an issue with only 4GB memory when half or one GB is used by the graphics. It is rarely spelled out in the advertising, and if you don’t realise what “shared graphics” means you might miss it. With 8GB memory then sharing with the graphics card is less of an impact as there is still plenty of memory for programs to use.

So I was looking for an i5 or i7 with 8GB memory, minimum 500GB hard disk, with a 15 or 17 inch screen. On a budget. This specification would also be a good laptop for a business start-up.

Not satisfied with the retail offerings, I recalled that a work colleague had purchased a refurbished HP laptop for a great price and had been more than happy since it came with the full manufacturers warranty.

I looked online and found a variety of new and refurbished laptops at GraysOnline. The one I chose was the ASUS K56CM-XX011H 15.6″ for around $560 delivered. It was still a compromise but less so than the regular retail outlets. The main features that made this good value were the Intel i5 CPU and the 2GB dedicated graphics RAM. The main disappointment was 4GB of memory and the screen resolution but I couldn’t find anything in the same price range with a better screen. I can always upgrade the memory later if it turns out to be a limitation.

This specific model is no longer available but laptops come and go and it is well worthwhile checking out the value of a refurbished laptop or tablet.

For those interested, here are the technical specifications:

  • Intel® Core™ i5-3317U (2C, 1.70GHz, Turbo Boost to 2.60GHz)
  • 4GB DDR3 RAM
  • 500GB SATA HDD
  • DVD SuperMulti Drive
  • 15.6 inch HD (1366 x 768) LED Backlight display
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 635M with 2GB RAM
  • 10/100/1000 LAN
  • 802.11 b/g/n WLAN
  • SonicMaster Lite audio with Altec Lansing® Speakers
  • Webcam (0.3 Mega Pixel)
  • Digital Media Card reader
  • HDMI (1), VGA (1), USB (3), RJ-45 (1)
  • AC Adapter, Battery, Power Cable
  • Windows® 8 pre-installed
  • Warranty: 12 Months ASUS Certified Refurbished Products Limited Warranty