Get a refurb

Honestly you can get amazing value.

Memory: If your business involves mostly Word, medium-sized Excel workbooks and so on you might get away with less, but these days I'd consider 8Gb RAM about par. You only need more than that if you're doing lots of video work or hardcore gaming.

Processor: You don't need an i7 unless you're a hardcore gamer or render a lot of video. An i5 is plenty fast enough for pretty much everything. An i3 is too, unless you have Excel workbooks with a lot (>1000 or so) of rows or powerpoints with embedded video. I'd consider i5 par, and that will perform well for almost everything you're likely to do in the real world.

Disk: I'd recommend an SSD as you can get big ones for not too much these days, but you could go SATA instead if you wanted to save a few quid. SSD is only essential if you'll be rendering a lot of video/similar really, but it's a nice to have generally as everything just works that much quicker.

Wifi: You need at least 802.11n, in my oh-so-humble. 802.11ac is "better"; 802.11b and 802.11g are not as good (though if in practice you'll spend a lot of time sitting quite close to your wifi router, g might be good enough - I'd still go for n or ac though).

USB: the more USB2.0 ports the better (personally I wouldn't worry overly about USB3.0 unless you're definitely going to be using the extra bandwidth - 2.0 is plenty fast enough for most uses for most folk).

Monitor: whatever suits, really. I tend to use a smaller monitor for out-and-about because the lappy is really easy to carry then, plugging it in to a proper screen on my desk when needed; there's a case for a big lappy screen though which removes the need for external monitors at the expense of being heavier/more awkward to get from A to B.

GPU: irrelevant for a business box unless your business is gaming or very high end CAD.

Make: more or less much of a muchness. An advantage of refurbs is very often it just comes with the OS meaning you don't have to waste hours uninstalling the bloatware new laptops ship with these days. Packard Bell have reliability problems (in my experience), anything from Dell, Lenovo, Compaq, HP, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, you name it will be more or less the same as the same spec machine from one of their competitors.

Posted By: Old Man, Oct 31, 13:43:27