Laptops

[Chuckster]

I'm looking to buy SMT new laptops.

 

They need to be robust, light and durable. Does anyone have any recommendations where to start the search?

 

I'm a HP fan but in the past I have heard good things about the Lenovo Thinkpads. Our budget is around £700 per laptop.

[sonofsanta]

ThinkPads are not necessarily light, but they are certainly robust and durable, and very simple to work with from an IT perspective - no daft unclipping of the whole keyboard and twenty screws to put an SSD in, all the drivers are easily available on the site, built like tanks.

 

We have half a dozen ThinkPad Edge 540C (Core i3-4000M, 4GB RAM) that we upgraded with 120GB Samsung 840 EVO SSDs and they are things of wonder. I bang on about them a bit too much round here, in fact. About ten seconds to boot to login, really solid keyboards, sturdy power connector (no silly pins involved, more like a thick USB connector); the only thing I don't like is the trackpad, but I don't like any trackpads. Decent wireless mice aren't expensive though.

 

BT Business have them for £315 ex VAT, stick a 256GB SSD in and you're sorted for less than £400 all told. Only downside is they're not ultrabook light 'n' shiny, which as we all know is of the utmost importance to SMT...

[mtillbrook]

we have been supplying a few of the new HP 350's recently. The higher end spec of them would be suitable and they are reasonably priced.

[strawberry]

Here is some out of the box thinking. Let SMT pick some laptops. This way when they fail you are not to blame and SMT feel like they are getting what they want. Maybe give them a list to chose from?. Include some macbooks and tablets and let them choose, if they can justify the expenditure then on their head be it.

[Dkeen94]

I know you are a HP Fan but speak to @Stone_Charli at Stone! The NT310-H's are brilliant laptops we have had 16 from them and they have been nothing but brilliant!

[localzuk]

I recently bought a HP ProBook 650 G1 and compared it against the @VeryPC ThinBook. The ThinBook worked out roughly half the price and build quality is just as good. So, I'd recommend giving them a call!

 

Bearing in mind I've been buying pretty much only HP laptops for 6 years, that's a big deal to me. The HP quality has dropped in the latest generation IMO. An example - the hard drive caddy is mostly made of paper now, and the SATA connector isn't a fixed job in the case, its now on a flimsy wire.

 

Oh, and you can also get a custom skin designed/printed that goes on the cover - which is a bonus.

Edited January 20, 2015 by localzuk

[Stone_Charli]

Thanks for the shout-out @Dkeen94! @Chuckster, here's some more info on the NT310-H: NT310-H | Notebooks | Stone Group Are you coming down to BETT? You can come and see one for yourself!

[vyperz]

plus one for the Very PC ThinBooks - we bought some recently and have been really pleased with them so far

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

For £700 @Chuckster you could buy a VeryPC laptop that could probably think for itself, cook your tea and tell you what shopping you need to buy.! Feel free to get in touch and I'll do you proud. Cheers, Col

 

Thank you @vyperz and @localzuk for your mentions. :-)

[mrbios]

£700 per laptop you say?

 

Wait for the Lenovo refresh (they've gone back to the old touchpads, yay, that 4th gen one was awful) and go for a Lenovo E550. New core i5, 500GB SSHD, 8GB ram should be about £650-700 i imagine when it's released around March time.

 

http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/edge-series/e550/

 

Lenovos (on the thinkpad side) real major strength is their awesome onsite warranty. Used it a few times with some T410s, stuck a ticket in on low priority, had a guy there the next day with parts ready to repair. Was pleasently surprised.

Edited January 20, 2015 by mrbios

[StevieM]

Another vote for @VeryPC laptops. I bought a Thinbook last year to replace the head's aging Dell and it certainly earned me some brownie points as he loves it. I also switched from HP to a VeryPC Pocket Rocket for my own upgrade, and for less than £700 I got an i7 Quad-core 2.5GHz processor, 120GB SSD, 8GB RAM and dedicated 2GB Geforce GTX graphics. Am I happy with it? You betcha!

[witch]

I have some very nice Fujitsus but I am considering Very PC and Stone for my next purchases as well

[Edu-IT]

How do Toshiba fair nowadays?

[m25man]

I have over 30 Toshiba's in our Academy Staff Pool. They are worked hard, very hard dragged all over the country bounced around in trains, planes and automobiles.

They are probably the most reliable laptops we have in our fleet.

Their warranty service however is not the best, on the rare occasion I have had to deal with them they are always quick off the mark to deny any liability and try to blame the users for abuse/damage or Liquid ingress...

Effectively they do have a very high survival rate in the field, therefore when one does fail it must be the users fault!

[truebluesteve]

We have been using HP Probooks for the last 5 years and have found them to be very robust and reliable. The odd problem that we've had have been sorted very quickly.

 

I looked at Lenovo but after the terrible support we had with them for some AIOs, I decided to pass them by.

[m25man]

I looked at Lenovo but after the terrible support we had with them for some AIOs, I decided to pass them by.

 

Now my experience with Lenovo has been the opposite however there are completely different procedures dependent on models.

 

 

Desktops/AIO/Laptops with 3 yr on site - IBM handle the warranty and always been 1st class prompt and in most cases NBD

 

ThinkPad Laptops with 1 Yr RTB has always been Call Support get an RMA, send to Teleplan get it back in 2-3 days.

 

However, this apparently has now changed! You call, get the run around test this update that etc etc... then when they finally decide it needs to be returned the will "POST" you a DPD Returns Label (Takes 2 days) then you call DPD to arrange collection (Can take another 2 days) if your lucky it will get to the depot within the week... then you wait!

Its as though they have stepped back into the dark ages of Postal Services...