non-techie people expecting a "good" computer/laptop for £100-200

adolf hamster said:
the one that gets me is when you hear people complaining about poor performance and you look to see a million programs running at startup in the background, something that no tesco special laptop is built to handle, it's amazing really how even neat freaks in the real world just seem to accept that a desktop full of random links/documents and a pc full of unused software is just fine, and that any drop in performance is "because it's old".
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the other thing that bothers me (A friend of mine has just done this) is people who buy a new laptop and have their old laptop cloned over onto it. At the very least i would have thought, a new machine is an opertunity to do a thorough spring clean, at worst this strategy is going to transfer any software issues one might have had with the old machine onto the shiny new one!
 
Orionaut said:
the other thing that bothers me (A friend of mine has just done this) is people who buy a new laptop and have their old laptop cloned over onto it. At the very least i would have thought, a new machine is an opertunity to do a thorough spring clean, at worst this strategy is going to transfer any software issues one might have had with the old machine onto the shiny new one!
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indeed, the first thing i do with a new pc is clear out everything, fresh install with only files/folders i care about getting moved, old files get archived and any new software gets installed as and when it's needed. i'll also go through the windows settings with my tin foil hat on.

as a result my 6 year old i5 laptop is still going strong.
 
Orionaut said:
the other thing that bothers me (A friend of mine has just done this) is people who buy a new laptop and have their old laptop cloned over onto it. At the very least i would have thought, a new machine is an opertunity to do a thorough spring clean, at worst this strategy is going to transfer any software issues one might have had with the old machine onto the shiny new one!
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Same for people building a new system, i don't really understand the need to clone your c drive these days.

If you've got decent internet, it literally takes minutes to download the installers, even better, use something like ninite to automate the installation of most of the software that you'd install anyway. Then dump everything in docs/pics/music/vids onto a flash drive, and only copy the files over when you've needed them. After a year, go through and delete anything that's not important.

This problem will only get worse, and is referred to as the data explosion. It doesn't help that storage drives are becoming larger and larger, meaning people can get lazier at deciding whether to clear out old data they no longer need.
 
I had a similar discussion with my wife. We needed a new one, I wasn't keen on my work laptop being used for everyday things. I didn't have any particularly special requirements, but I knew something half decent would not be as cheap as she had in mind. She wanted something new to last for 3-4 years, it had to look nice ("like a macbook"), be slim, preferably metal case, small, quick and have plenty of storage with a backlit keyboard.

"300 to 400 GBP max" she said. "I don't want to spend too much and I don't want a stupid big fat gaming one, it needs to look nice, it'll be in the living room"
"Righto..." I said

My requirements were 256GB SSD, min 8GB ram.

We went around the normal high street stores looking at 3-400GBP laptops. The wife developed a bit of a face-on when she realised what was available in the 300 quid range.

"They're all horrible" she said, "plasticky".
"Here, what about this one?" she says pointing at a pretty looking 2GB ram / celeron / 32GB storage piece of turd,
"No." I said.
"What about this one?"
"No."
"This one's nice"
"No."
"What do you mean no? You just want a gaming one."
"None of these will play games, I just want a decent family one that works and won't be a useless lump 12 months down the line"
"You're not being helpful. Well sod it then, we just won't get one." She said....

To be honest, I was a bit shocked at what was available in that price range. Sub-500 feels about right for an everyday laptop, but there are some horrific offerings in that bracket. You could easily pick up a lemon if you don't know what you're looking at.

We ended up with an Acer Swift 3 i5 7200U / 14" IPS FHD Screen / 256Gb SSD / 8GB that I managed to pick up for 450 quid from a high street consumer electronics store through a well-known toasty deals site.
To be fair it has been top notch and is way better than what I thought I'd get in that price range. Light, quick, looks nice, aluminum case, backlit. Ticked all the boxes. Nobody is playing games on it (PS4 and proper PC already in the house) and it should last a while.

Just a few months previously we were about to pull the trigger on a MacBook for more than twice that and order one for collection, duty-free at a high street store in Manchester airport when we passed through. Thankfully we both realised it would be a massive waste of money for something that rarely gets used for anything other than internet, Office and Skype.

Our laptop before this one was a refurbed business machine. It was cheap and top spec, but bulky, power hungry and died after 6 months. I'll never do that again.
 
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adolf hamster said:
the one that gets me is when you hear people complaining about poor performance and you look to see a million programs running at startup in the background, something that no tesco special laptop is built to handle, it's amazing really how even neat freaks in the real world just seem to accept that a desktop full of random links/documents and a pc full of unused software is just fine, and that any drop in performance is "because it's old".
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How else can PCs be sold in any significant quantities? If you don't have self-inflicted obsolesence you need to have imposed obsolesence, e.g. artificially preventing an OS from running on hardware that could run it.
 
Angilion said:
How else can PCs be sold in any significant quantities? If you don't have self-inflicted obsolesence you need to have imposed obsolesence, e.g. artificially preventing an OS from running on hardware that could run it.
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oh that too bugs me, samsung pulled that on my tables "oh your tablet isn't capable of supporting the youtube 60fps update so you're stuck on 480p now"

bit of flashing later and not only did it run yt 60fps videos but you could even see the improvement in the screen....
 
The amount of people that come in to us in IT saying the laptop they bought 6 months ago for £250 is 'running really slow now, can you sort it out for me?' no, no i can't, it's got a 32gb mmc drive that isn't even big enough for windows to do it's annual update even with a clean install you cheap cheap #@"£$"!* 'But it's almost brand new i don't understand!'

Also get a lot of 'i bought my son/daughter a cheap argos one so they can game on' yeah don't let me know how that works out for you...
 
sovietspybob said:
The amount of people that come in to us in IT saying the laptop they bought 6 months ago for £250 is 'running really slow now, can you sort it out for me?'
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Are these people at work actually coming in asking you to fix personal laptops for free?

They wouldn't dream of asking the office cleaner to have a quick hoover of their car....
 
Agreed, a number of people come to me for recommendations hoping for <£300. Fortunately I have just been buying refurbs with 1 year's warranty, slap an SSD in it and you have yourself a fast and capable laptop for usually well under £300.

One thing that annoys me though - how are we in 2018 and laptops still come with 1366 x 768 resolution screens?:p:rolleyes:
 
sovietspybob said:
The amount of people that come in to us in IT saying the laptop they bought 6 months ago for £250 is 'running really slow now, can you sort it out for me?' no, no i can't, it's got a 32gb mmc drive that isn't even big enough for windows to do it's annual update even with a clean install you cheap cheap #@"£$"!* 'But it's almost brand new i don't understand!'

Also get a lot of 'i bought my son/daughter a cheap argos one so they can game on' yeah don't let me know how that works out for you...
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A guy in work did this but even worse it had a special offer to buy office with it at half price. After windows and office there was barley any space left on there, to be far to the guy it did have a 1TB storage sticker on it. With 'cloud storage' in very small writing after it.
 
What most people want is reassurance and an easy, cheap, fix for their problems. Greet them with the blunt truth about what has gone wrong and the true cost of putting it right, and next time they'll ask someone else.

What most people want is a cheap fix/replacement that's been recommended by someone else, so that when it goes wrong they can blame that person. They know deep down that you can't "fix" their 10 year old laptop for free, and that a <£150 supermarket special will be a pile of junk.
 
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I constantly get messages from people sending me links to random cheap laptops, tablets and phones asking me if they're any good.

My response is usually the same each time, No, it's low end junk but the price is right.

NEVER say it's good for the price because all they seem to take away is the good part and then blame you if for all/any issues they have.
 
What we class as good and what your non-techie classes as good are 2 very different things.

I always ask 2 questions "what will it be used for" & "what is your budget", I'll recommend a few that do what they want but always point out the weaknesses of each one, then let them decide which to get.
 
I hate the cheap but reasonable on paper laptops that are cripped with the headline 1TB HDD.

But that HDD is the slowest pile of **** avaliable so everything runs at a crawl when windows 10 is updating. Which it does a lot and takes agaes to do because the HDD is so slow. :)

My 12 year old single core Vaio has better HDD, 7200 rpm IDE drive. :/ (shame the cpu is slow)
 
Looks like that Mac guy will be showing up on r/choosingbeggars soon!

For the last decade or so, I have always told people - "a £250-300 laptop from Tesco, is fine for basic Office and internet duties", luckily enough, I've not had to deal with anyone who would demand top tier performance for peanuts.
 
My brother wants the same really, asking me to source a decent laptop brand new with SSD etc for less than £300. Also balks at the price of the budget ipad as was considering one of those too.

Spends hundreds a month on betting, alcohol, chinese and curry.

:rolleyes:
 
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