Choosing the right laptop

[Whynd1]

I have noticed that there are some forum regulars who seem to be very knowledgeable about I T. My old Toshiba laptop has gone to laptops in the sky according to my little computer man.

We have a nexus tablet but would still like a replacement especially for printing those all important cruise tickets and luggage labels. Have been looking on John Lewis and Amazon and am struck by the choices available. Chromebook etc which not all of them are printer comparable.

Where to start, may have to go to into a store and ask for advice.

[Raybosailor]

Its horses for courses I'm afraid Whynd1, if you do a lot of video or graphics editing or play high end games on the laptop then one with loads of ram and storage plus a fast processor and good graphics and sound cards are the order of the day. But if you just want to send and receive emails, search the web and print out documents any cheapo laptop with a usb port will do.

In my opinion a low spec laptop with average use can last longer than a high end one that is worked to death with the work that is expected from it.

If you have a Curry's store or P.C. World near you just pop in and tell the techies in there what you want from a P.C. and how much you want to pay for it, they will give you all the info you want if they think they might have a sale. Don't buy straight away but compare what they say on websites like P.C. Advisor and Which then go round the shops and see who has the best price for the make and model you decide on.

And haggle, yes haggle every shop you go in and ask them what the best deal is, I even have Curry's and P.C. World competing against each other and they are the same company.

[GillD46]

We find we hardly ever use our laptop these days. We each have iPads and use them for everything, apart from uploading scanned documents.

[Raybosailor]

We find we hardly ever use our laptop these days. We each have iPads and use them for everything, apart from uploading scanned documents.

I don't own an iPad Gill they do not have the facilities that I need, I have CAD software for doing drawings and plans that would not work on the pads. Cheryl has one and she loves it but not for me.

[Whynd1]

I just need a basic one really to print off things. You are probably right raybsailor just a low spec one for access to internet for printing off. The tablet we have is great but I need something to access the internet to print off.

Will have to wait this week as our washer/ dryer is on the blink and although we have an insurance on it the engineer says the frame that supports the drum is cracked. They are coming back on Tuesday as its a 2 man job. If the job cannot be done we may have to consider buying a replacement.

[Raybosailor]

One more tip I will give you is if you buy a low spec lappy don't store too many photos or video on the hard drive, instead upload them to Cloud storage like Onedrive which is free on Outlook, or you can buy a USB drive.

I have loads of ram and hard disk space on my laptop but anything I can store externally goes either on the Cloud, a memory stick or my external hard drive. It's like taking a heavy saddle off an old donkey if you know what I mean.

I swear by Cloud storage as you can access it from anywhere in the world from any P.C. or iPad. If your P.C. crashes you still have your important data for a restore later.

I have terrabytes of files on remote storage which my laptop would not be able to cope with.

Try this link for Onedrive https://onedrive.live.com/?invref=f6896 ... &invsrc=90

[Kendhni]

While I agree about storing photos in the cloud I wouldn't use OneDrive ... I would look at Google where you can get infinite storage for free for both videos and photos ... or another good one for photos is flickr. For data storage I would suggest either Cubby or Bitcasa that (on paper) are both more secure than OneDrive ... or if you do not trust American sites try HUBiC (based in France although it does not currently encrypt data at rest).

A different suggestion for you since you say you are happy with your Nexus is to buy a wifi printer (about £50) and print wirelessly from your tablet ... or if your printer current printer supports it you can actually email anything to your printer and it wlll print it off for you.

If you really want a laptop, primarily to surf the web and print stuff off, then just look out for a good offer.

[Andrea S]

I have a wifi printer and I can print from both my I phone and I pad. They are not expensive and as I only used it to print off holiday stuff it works fine. For loads of printing it may not be suitable but do go to a store such as Currys to get their advice.

[Raybosailor]

Like Ken says there are many storage sites out there, I just gave Onedrive as an easy to find and sign up to example because a lot of people use Outlook or Hotmail for email so by having a MSN account you are already signed up. You can get 30 gig of storage if you click on the camera roll button and that is sometimes enough for holiday snappers.

I can come home from a weekend out with a couple of gig of images so as I said I use several online storage sites, I've even hijacked Cheryl's iCloud account but she never uses it.

[Whynd1]

Thank you all for the information, I have a lot to research and the think about. It's very good of you all to give me your tips.