Laptop recommendations

mtroup85

First, let me say I’m not technically savvy at all and know very little about laptops. I need help narrowing my search. I'm interested in buying a laptop to use for school only. I'm not a gamer and I don't watch movies on a laptop. I don't want the most expensive model, just something reliable. It'll primarily be used for papers, powerpoints, excel, internet searches. I don't want some Flintstones device but I'm not a gamer and won't be making videos/movies and doing elaborate things on this laptop. I want it to have good "speed." When I turn it on, I want it to fire up quickly. When I get on the internet, I need it to do its thing quickly. I'll be in school for 5 years so it needs to last 5 full years. Any recommendations?

TSTonyV

If you just need it for basics like this, honestly you have quite a lot of options available. If speed is your primary concern, I'd look for something with an SSD, at least 8GB of RAM and an i5 or Ryzen 5 processor. 

 Do you have a price range in mind? That would help us get a better recommendation for you. 

TSTonyV

Papers and powerpoints don't take up much data, it's usually photos, videos or music that take up the most space, so even if you only went with a 256GB SSD you'd probably have enough space. Of course, it's always nice to have more, and there are a lot of laptops with 512GB SSD's that are in that price range. Here's a couple I would look at:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/621349/lenovo-ideapad-5-156-laptop-computer---grey
https://www.microcenter.com/product/622881/acer-aspire-5-a515-44-r2hp-156-laptop-computer---black

Between these two, I'd personally be partial to the Acer because the Ryzen 5 CPU in it has six cores as opposed to the Intel i5 in the Lenovo with four cores, however Lenovo is probably a little better/more consistent than Acer when it comes to quality assurance on their products. That said, I think you would be happy either way. 

Ian

For HP and Dell, here are similar models to what was sent to you above:
https://www.microcenter.com/product/613087/hp-15-dy1037nr-156-laptop-computer---silver

https://www.microcenter.com/product/625255/dell-inspiron-15-3593-156-laptop-computer---black

mtroup85

Around $500 or less would be ideal. $1,000 max. The other thing is I’d want it to have enough storage so I could easily store 5 years of papers, PowerPoints, etc. I don’t think that should be an issue in 2020 but it’s important. 

mtroup85

Sounds good. How about a HP or Dell recommendation that fits all this criteria?

mtroup85

https://www.microcenter.com/product/613087/hp-15-dy1037nr-156-laptop-computer---silver?storeid=095 I’ve been looking at this laptop for awhile now and just realized it’s sold out at the Brentwood location. Will you be getting this model back in stock anytime soon? If not, what do you have that’s comparable? Thanks. 

TSTonyV

We should be restocking that model relatively soon, though I don't know exactly when the Brentwood store will be getting shipments. 

This link will give you a list of similar computers at a similar price that are currently in stock:

https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?Ntk=all&sortby=match&N=4294967288+4294818011+88+43&myStore=true