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Laptop Help
« on: March 01, 2021, 12:10:52 PM »
A client of mine needs to invest in a new laptop as their accounting machine. They want to spend less than $500 CAD and the machine only needs to run quick books, excel and surf the internet. I know Lenovo’s are reliable and reasonably priced, which are ideal qualities. So I found a refurbished 2017 Thinkpad or a new Ideapad at comparable cost, both from Newegg. Anyone have an opinion on which will be better value?

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Offline Iceman

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Re: Laptop Help
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2021, 01:05:46 PM »
Im by no means a techy guy, but I've been issued a Lenovo for work every other year for the last 7 years. They're pretty good for the majority of what I need them for. Decent battery life, pretty quick processing for 'everyday' tasks (I doubt quickbooks would cause one to struggle).
 They dont handle aggressive multi tasking very well.... if I have two GIS programs up and then fire up chrome to troubleshoot issues I'm having, things slow down to a crawl. And they're pretty heavy.

But if they dont want to go over 500 beans they're gonna have to settle.

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Offline xasop

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Re: Laptop Help
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2021, 03:24:16 PM »
So I found a refurbished 2017 Thinkpad or a new Ideapad at comparable cost, both from Newegg. Anyone have an opinion on which will be better value?

Refurbs are almost always better value than new laptops. Unless you want to run the latest AAA games or bleeding-edge video editing software, hardware doesn't advance rapidly enough that you'll notice a difference between what they can do, and the older laptop will have depreciated in price.

That said, look at the specs before making a decision. My suspicion is that the refurb will have better specs (or perhaps comparable specs and better build quality) if it's comparably priced, but it's good to be sure.

They dont handle aggressive multi tasking very well.... if I have two GIS programs up and then fire up chrome to troubleshoot issues I'm having, things slow down to a crawl. And they're pretty heavy.

This really depends on which model you have. Lenovo is a brand, and they produce a very wide variety of laptops. My previous laptop (an X1 Carbon) was extremely lightweight, and my current one (a T14 AMD) has an 8-core Ryzen that handles parallelism very well.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2021, 03:26:46 PM by la xasop »
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Laptop Help
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2021, 04:03:35 PM »
*worked on lenovos the last 2 yeara*

What models?
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

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Re: Laptop Help
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2021, 04:13:01 PM »
*worked on lenovos the last 2 yeara*

What models?

The refurbished Thinkpad is a L470
The new Ideapad is an Ideapad 1 14ADA05 82GW0030CF

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Laptop Help
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2021, 05:34:29 PM »
The L470 is less powerful than a T470.  No usb c port either.  Docks are probably out of the question.  But so is the degenerative flaw in the usb c port.
8gb is way too low but it only has 2 dim slots.  Its also gonna be sluggish on windows 10.  Workable but not for big number crunching like 10k line excel sheets.

Make sure you can buy ram for it and add that it.  8 is bare minimum these days.  I'd push for 12.


I know nothing of the idea pad.  Also you didn't link it. :P
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.