Budget laptop

BAcon

BAcon

BAcon

Soldato
Joined
7 Apr 2004
Posts
4,740
Location
near Bristol
Hi all,

Will be building a desktop rig by the end of the year with some luck, but I also could do with a cheap laptop.
I currently have a 13yr old dell L702x with an i7, 6GB memory, 17" screen etc that was good back in the day but the hinges are broken, battery dead and it's ever more noisy. I will likely pull it apart, reseat the CPU with some fresh paste and re use it somehow.

But in the meantime I'd like a cheap used laptop to take it's place, in the region of £100 to £200 max.
My usage is web browsing, wifes work training, word docs/excel, managing my server, video streaming etc, so light usage only.

My research has led me to the Dell Latitude and various ThinkPad models, thinking T14, T480, T490, T495 etc.

Am I in the right ball park? Most have gen 8 or gen 10 Intel i5 CPUs, though I'd prefer a Ryzen based one if I can, though seems harder to find within budget.

Am I looking in the right direction? Anything else I should consider?

Thanks
 
Ok, pulled the trigger....hopefully didn't make a mistake here, but here goes:

Dell Latitude 5440, i5 1345u, 8GB memory, 256gb storage, power cable. Looks like new (on the images at least) used for a year for their child to do school work, so not ex corporate. £230 delivered.

I'll add more memory of course and will see if I can find a decent dock for it. I was looking at older t495 and t14 thinkpads with i5 8th gens for around £150, so this seems like a great deal for a 13th gen i5?
 
I can agree, but in my defence it will end up in a dock with a screen attached fairly often. I did my usual trick, set myself a low budget and went overboard.

Now have 2 x 16gb crucial ddr4 on its way for £30, opened but allegedly never used. £260 for it now in total. Seems decent and should last me a fair few years as my main device now and my wife's machine/backup later
 
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Laptop has arrived and it's pretty much immaculate, has 7 charge cycles on the battery with capacity above stated.

Nice well made little laptop. We use the 15" Latitudes at work and they take a beating so hopefully this will last well.
Memory should be here Thursday I believe!
 
Ok spoke too soon, it was sent with a fresh install of windows 11 pro, within which I noticed it wouldn't allow a Microsoft user account to login, was asking for a company one.
So I decided to reset everything in the hope I could start the user creation from scratch. Now I've not used windows 11 installer from within windows, I'm more a Rufus a s bootable usb kinda guy. But on this occasion decided to use the built in tools.
Upon reinstallation it was asking me connect to a network then following that it was asking me to log in to my work or school Microsoft account. So to me this now seems like the laptop is ex corporate and locked to that original company.

I've gone through various searches and it seems it's likely linked to a company and impossible to remove. Seller has offered a refund thankfully.

Will have to return the memory I bought in anticipation also, always the one to be too keen.... Oh well, at least buying this laptop made me want to repair my old one. Should have that going by the end of the week hopefully!
 
Ok back to the drawing board, would a lower spec machine such as a latitude 5400 with an i5 8th gen be sufficient for general day to day browsing, streaming etc?

Seems to be around £100 which is cheap!
 
Thanks all for your input.

In the end I ended up with rather tidy Dell 7300 latitude (carbon lid version), i5 8350, 8gb/256gb etc, 60Wh battery in good health etc.

I had 32gb memory here that I had bought for the 5440, intended to sell it, but l I've dropped it into this anyway and it's performing great. If a little overkill.
Tempted to upgrade the sata m.2 to an NVME 500gb to 1tb and it should be good for a while!
 
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