Advice on Purchase of a Laptop

[stevenwjrichards]

Wow, thanks for that CatKiller, much appreciated. I almost fell into the trap of thinking I could add ram as in my desktop!

[mastablasta]

. Note that the low-power RAM used for laptops is soldered on, so your choice of RAM may be fixed for the lifetime of the machine.

not necessarily. they usually do this on cheaper models. Lenovo, Asus and Acer are known to do this. HP & Dell usually can be upgraded. on business grade laptops they would have separate latch for upgrading RAM and RAM is not soldered.

however many laptops still have 16GB ram max, though there are new models with 32GB appearing now.


more ram means less disk is used. however nvme disks are quite fast. it it might not matter as much as on hard disk. still i would get as much as i could afford. min 8 GB, if possible 16 GB. laptops will use 2 GB of ram for GPU chip.

[stevenwjrichards]

Thanks for that Mastablaster, much appreciated, I will take it up to 32 to be safe.

[CatKiller]

not necessarily. they usually do this on cheaper models.

Quite the opposite, actually. The fat ones have room for access hatches, significantly thicker replaceable modules, and fatter batteries so they're less reliant on squeezing the last bits of power. It's the expensive, very thin ones, that need to use LP-DDR.

[stevenwjrichards]

Thanks very much CatKiller, much appreciated

[mastablasta]

The fat ones have room for access hatches, significantly thicker replaceable modules, and fatter batteries so they're less reliant on squeezing the last bits of power.

that's a much better definition of what to avoid when looking for a machine for serious work. "the fat ones" are proper computers.

no wonder management here uses these surface like thin pads. i bet they never had to type anything longer than a short sentence on them. and mostly on meeting they just toy with their frame rather than writing down what they should take care of or where the issues are.