I feel like I’m starting to be in the need of a new laptop. Currently I’m using an almost 10 year old Asus K53sv laptop with 8GB and a sandy-bridge quad-core i7. The two main issues with this laptop is its lack of battery (lasts around 45 min on a full charge) and the size (15.4"). I’m very blank when it comes to the laptop market, so some recommendation is much appreciated.
I’m currently doing a lot of commuting and traveling, so it would be nice with a size around 14" with similar performance to the old laptop with a minimum of 8gb ram. The laptop will mainly be used for some coding on the go, browsing the web and power point…
I will dual boot windows and Linux, so at least a drive size of 256 gb is nessecary.
The budget is a bit tight arround 600-700 USD at max. I live in Denmark so there might be some difference in price compared to the US, but first of all I just need some direction on what to choose…
Thank you, that seems very promising. Haven’t given lenovo any attention, thought they would be more expensive. The E495 is quite tempting with the 3500u…
Stay away from the ThinkPad E495 if you run or plan to run Linux. There are BIOS/UEFI issues that still have not been resolved. The E595 is a better choice. All it needs is a recent kernel, a kernel option, and a mesa update.
Yes, but only in subset of their business class laptops last I knew. I’m writing this on one of those Precision laptops. Some of the Latitudes can come with Ubuntu pre-installed. I have never seen an Inspirion with stock Ubuntu. Not sure about any of XPS series.
The XPS 13 seems to go for way more in my area as compared to the e595. So, if Linux support is OK, as the other thread seems to indicate, the thinkpad is promising. I’m also a big fan of the upgradability of the lenovos.
is it possible at all to get a thinkpad e595 without the spying windows 10 on it?
to avoid giving any money to this tumor called microsoft.
lenovo’s websites show only windows 10 options of course…
This is a bit off-topic, but I’ll amuse you and hopefully end it here.
If you are looking for a “Lenovo” PC without Windows 10 “spying” on it, you should just stop.
Lenovo multiple times in the past has been caught pre-installing spyware and shit in their laptops, if that sort of thing worries you, you need to reconsider Lenovo all together.
Before you say “but it is only one specific line of laptops,” even if it is one specific line of laptops, the company has breached the public trust by even doing it, at this point, looking to buy from Lenovo and saying you don’t want “Windows 10 spying” is a bit hypocritical of you don’t ya think?
Here are a couple of sources for ya:
In this thread is a person looking for a laptop recommendation that he can dual boot off of, no mention of security or spying.
i live in DK as well ;).
For work i bought a cheap’ish acer swift using the 2500U amd chip, for work, and it aint bad, it’s not the best, but not bad at all.
You can get a similarish laptop with that chip from lenovo at proshop, at a low price. https://www.proshop.dk/Baerbar/Lenovo-IdeaPad-330-15ARR/2743496
I havent really tested it gaming etc etc. but for desktop it deffinetly works for me, since i mainly just do desktop kind of work when at work.
i recollect i did some valley tests etc, when i got it, but it’s like 6 months ago, but i recollect it being descent scores of the APU, i mean you wont be 4k’ing it, but for some 1080/medium gaming im guessing it’ll hold it’s own.
i know lenovo does shit, however still thanks for the links.
my issue is, that a laptop, that isn’t 50% glue and is without drawbacks doesn’t exist.
librem 15 starts at 1600 dollars and comes with an intel israel supporting cpu, i can’t afford that and i don’t want to support intel.
i’m long past looking for a perfect laptop, reliable, roll cage, 16:10 screen, kill switches for wlan, camera, mic, windows 7 and gnu + linux bootable, with minimum quadcore, sold without os, etc…
so buying a lenovo thinkpad would be a compromise, that would be ok to me, if it comes without windows 10 and without intel, but i guess that isn’t an option, but as u said, shouldn’t talk about that on a thread for a person looking for a good dual boot laptop.
I did a fair amount of research back in Oct 2018 for black Friday and I found the HP 14-ce0068st (this is specifically a staples model but I think any with a similar model number are the same) to actually be surprisingly pretty good for the price you pay.
The good:
-I paid $400
-cheapest 8th gen i5 I could find (i5-8250U, quad core, hyperthreaded, TDP 15 W!)
-back lit keyboard
-metal palm rest
-Vacant* NVME (not just SATA) connector on motherboard (in addition to space for a 2.5" SATA drive)
-HDMI, headphone, X1 USB-c. X2 USB 3.0 and Ethernet port, disk activity and charging indicator lights (some computers don’t have all of these surprisingly)
the less good:
-battery is internal but not glued in like some newer laptops so easy enough to replace
-Came with a crappy spinning 1 TB SATA HDD (rather than SSD or NVME drive)
-case is easy to open aside from two screws underneath the rubber feet
The bad:
-Screen and bottom are plastic and seem cheap
-screen is only 1366 X 768
-Only 1 DDR4 SODIMM RAM slot (mine came with 8GB*)
-I think the cooling is under powered and CPU set to TDP down of 10 W (it does get hot at full CPU)
-Battery has a non-configurable charging termination point of 100% (where 80% would maximize charge cycles) Although I have not updated to the most recent BIOS.
*=may vary with model
Motherboard also has space (only at factory) to solder on a dedicated GPU so there are some (potentially more expensive) models out there with that.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS has been OK on it aside from issues with sleep/hibernate (but isn’t that with every laptop that runs Linux? lol).
@pega, the company that makes librem 15 seems like they have an awesome philosophy about hardware and privacy but you’re right–probably too expensive for slightly dated hardware.
I would suggest getting the Thinkpad T480. Powerful device with good battery life (External battery) which means you can get the larger capacity and stay on as long as your trip. You can edit videos if you get the model with the external GPU. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it has Intel CPU while the T495 has AMD Ryzen but no external battery. You won’t go wrong with anyone.
