Laptop for my 13 year old

[Solomace]

Hi all,

My daughter needs a new laptop for school stuff, watching rubbish girly stuff, but really she's doing a sly one and wants it to play sims 4.

Any recommendations on specs to look out for please?

Budget is £550.

Thanks all.

 

[gradyhawks]

Not really going to find anything on OCuk I don't think, and we can't send links to competitors...

You want to look for something with HD 5500 graphics, an i3 or i5 processor along with 8gb of ram. I've found something along those lines for £400 - £500 at a certain specialist of PC's... (please dont ban me mods! Your laptop range just starts at £1,000 ...).

 

[meandu229]

I would say try and find one with an SSD and if not just replace the existing hdd with ssd as 1st thing you do out of the box. Daughter wont need a tb of space and the speed increase a 128gb/256gb ssd can give is amazing in a laptop. Cloning the OS etc is simple too.
I put a 256gb ssd into my GFs laptop and it went from a 1min 20 second boot up to ~ 24 seconds. Thats a last gen I5 too.

 

[Resa69]

I would say try and find one with an SSD and if not just replace the existing hdd with ssd as 1st thing you do out of the box. Daughter wont need a tb of space and the speed increase a 128gb/256gb ssd can give is amazing in a laptop. Cloning the OS etc is simple too.
I put a 256gb ssd into my GFs laptop and it went from a 1min 20 second boot up to ~ 24 seconds. Thats a last gen I5 too.

How do you clone the OS?

 

[meandu229]

How do you clone the OS?

Basically take out original hdd plug into PC, run Marcium reflect on it to create an image of it. Plug SDD into PC and then run Marcium reflect to put image from original onto SSD.
Plug SSD into laptop and everything will be as it was with HHD just much faster.

Other programs are available but Ive used Marcium Reflect a few times and the free version is ace.

 

[Resa69]

Basically take out original hdd plug into PC, run Marcium reflect on it to create an image of it. Plug SDD into PC and then run Marcium reflect to put image from original onto SSD.
Plug SSD into laptop and everything will be as it was with HHD just much faster.

Other programs are available but Ive used Marcium Reflect a few times and the free version is ace.

I don't really understand what you mean. I just bought a laptop but I want to mirror every thing onto my ssd. So I have my laptop (with hard drive inside it) and also the ssd in it's box.. how can I literally clone it? Will I need any additional wires or anything to clone it?

 

[meandu229]

I don't really understand what you mean. I just bought a laptop but I want to mirror every thing onto my ssd. So I have my laptop (with hard drive inside it) and also the ssd in it's box.. how can I literally clone it? Will I need any additional wires or anything to clone it?

So assuming your laptop only has 1 hard drive bay you will need
your laptop hard drive taking out,
ssd drive (with enough space to fit entire contents of hdd onto),
a PC with a spare sata port.
A spare sata /power cable.

Going from memory here so wont be perfect.

• Plug in your existing hard drive into PC
• Install Marcium Reflect Free Edition on PC.
• Within Marcium Reflect (MR from now) choose create a backup and select the laptop hard drive and choose create image.
• Wait for it to finish.
• Shut down PC and replace HDD with SSD connected
• Boot up and load up MR and choose restore and choose the image and drive set it going.
• Once finished shut down PC and put SSD into laptop.
• ???
• Profit

If your laptop has a ESata connection you may be able to plug your SSD directly into that (with correct cabling) and do this all from laptop.

Some other SW suggestions here
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18677852&highlight=marcium

 

[linktoinsanity]

If your laptop has a USB3 port you can use one of these: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-334-SV

 

[brendy]

HP Sleekbooks are pretty good for the money, I bought my 11 (was 10 at the time) year old one and have to say its great for what she needs. Minecraft etc plays flawlessly which is what she wanted really. Its a core i5, 4gb ram etc and does the job rightly. Certain home electronics companies have the occasional refurb on their site too which can reduce cost by another 50/100 quid.

 

[thepharcyde]

Samsung SSD come with cloning software and hardware.