My work provided this laptop suggestion list for WFH. Any thoughts on which one to go with?

  • Antique_Commission42@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    The first five are untenably awful. The sixth is untenably overpriced and overpowered. I would send this list back to your boss and ask him for a better one.

  • Grisstle@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    What is this? A bunch of anemic consumer grade laptops and a couple of gaming laptops? Why aren’t they providing business grade laptops as options? This seems like a really odd list. Is this what their IT department has recommended? Is this provided as a recommendation for you to purchase for yourself? If you’re supposed to buy your own laptop at your own expense I understand but I’d recommend since it’s your own money that you buy something better than anything on this list.

      • Grisstle@alien.topB
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        11 months ago

        My personal go to, and what I put into policy is Lenovo Thinkpad. T and P series are great. There’s a price premium but in general I know they’re going to survive 5 years and most often more. I have a 7 year P series and 5 year old T480s sitting on my desk that I still use though I recently just transitioned to a new T14. If you are going with Dell, Inspiron is consumer grade but Latitude is a decent business class laptop. These recommendations look the part, they’re not flashy but they’re sturdy. Common points of failure on consumer grade laptops are the hinges and the top case breaking away because the plastics are cheap and can’t handle the long term stress of opening and closing and flex through the unit because they aren’t sturdy enough. If you really want an HP, I used to approve ProBooks as they tick most of the boxes for long term durability though I stopped using them at one point because in my last org we experienced a high rate of premature battery failures. Sorry for the wall of text but I don’t feel like formatting.

        • zfs_@alien.topB
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          11 months ago

          Seconded. My ThinkPad T470 is still my daily laptop.

          HP EliteBooks are also great. NOT ProBooks.

  • _h20melon_@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    Depends what you are doing. If you just need it for office and web browsing, Id get the xps 13. It’s the most premium one here, they are quite nice to use.

  • mkaszycki81@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    Maybe they’re checking if people automatically go for the most expensive laptop on the list?

    Seriously though, it’s the only one with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB storage, it’s a no brainer, unless there’s an option to upgrade any of the other packages up to $1,499? You can get a configure-to-order (CTO) option for less than $1,499 on other laptops and have a more capable laptop (except for the lack of a discrete GPU).

    • JustNota--@alien.topB
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      11 months ago

      well as a para they shouldn’t be storing much on the laptop but some personal crap everything else should be on an access controlled shared drive or onedrive and not locally stored. so storage isn’t that big of a concern but ram on these is horrible the only real option that I see is the alienware but with all the alienware bloat it’s going to suck as much as the 8gb i5’s… Man this company tho is making my eye twitch and makin my IA side scream in geek…

  • TheEvilBlight@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    If this is a work computer that they’re paying for and that they’ll have admin privs on go for the cheapest HP. You won’t be able to want to do much on a computer their IT can snoop on at will.

  • Patient_in_a_Cabin@alien.topB
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    11 months ago

    For me, 16” is the sweet spot. You didn’t indicate what you do. If you do engineering/Cad or need high graphics, go with the Alienware. Otherwise the Inspiron may work. I didn’t look at the individual computers, but another decision driver for me is whether it has a numeric keypad, because that’s something I use all the time.