What laptop should a starting online entrepreneur buy?

[VentureVoyager]

Yes, one of my IT friends has told me the same thing. I was lucky both when it comes to price and the condition. The big shock about the listing and price is that the reason he decided to sell it was that he wanted a bigger screen because.. *drumroll* he was a programmer. So you can imagine my confusion. Maybe someone else started this action for him? No idea, especially that there's an i7 sticker. I later asked him why he listed it so, and he didn't seem to care to elaborate on that ("hmm.. Yeah? I don't know") when we spoke on the phone as he wanted to ask if I like the laptop, how was the shipping etc. Weirdest and luckiest auction ever. Anyway, a recommend and looks like many people in this topic are on the same page.

 

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[JAJT]

I think a far better investment for you would be to get an USB powered monitor.

How have I not heard of this?!

This is going to be an instant purchase with my next laptop. That's Amazing.

It changes the game from having a "travel laptop" to having a "travel workstation". Thanks for this.

 

[Caramel]

Yes, one of my IT friends has told me the same thing. I was lucky both when it comes to price and the condition. The big shock about the listing and price is that the reason he decided to sell it was that he wanted a bigger screen because.. *drumroll* he was a programmer. So you can imagine my confusion. Maybe someone else started this action for him? No idea, especially that there's an i7 sticker. I later asked him why he listed it so, and he didn't seem to care to elaborate on that ("hmm.. Yeah? I don't know") when we spoke on the phone as he wanted to ask if I like the laptop, how was the shipping etc. Weirdest and luckiest auction ever. Anyway, a recommend and looks like many people in this topic are on the same page.

Most programmers I know are clueless when it comes to hardware. Which is okay, ofcourse. They're into software, not hardware.

Maybe he just looked up his laptop model on Google, and got redirected to a page displaying a newer or better version of his model.

Either way, win-win for you!

 

[JAJT]

My office PC is seriously nothing special. Spent less than $500 on it I think. Discount processor + 8 gigs of generic ram with a solid state drive:



With this discount build, I go from "off" to editing in Photoshop in 40 seconds:

Now, this isn't a laptop, but this is why I'm an SSD pimp when these subjects come up. I'd have recorded my Lenovo boot time but nobody has 10 minutes to watch that bullshit.

 

[biophase]

How have I not heard of this?!

This is going to be an instant purchase with my next laptop. That's Amazing.

It changes the game from having a "travel laptop" to having a "travel workstation". Thanks for this.

Just ordered this on Amazon.

I can't wait to never click between things again. Especially for typing customer addresses... what a pain!

This is going to save me several frustration-filled minutes a day

I found out about this when my brother got one. In fact, he is doing 3 monitors now. 2 USB powered and his laptop. You can look like a douche and take over the entire row of tray tables in an airplane if you sit in the middle seat! LOL

 

[biophase]

Question regarding SSD hard drives.

Is it just faster when loading programs like excel and word? How does it affect your web browsing? Is the bottleneck still the internet connection then?

I managed to fill up my 500GB HD on my desktop. I use dropbox and after all these years, my ecommerce businesses have amassed a ton of video and photo files. That's why SSD hasn't been appealing to me as the drives are too small. Can I do an SSD for operating system and have a 2nd HD in a laptop? I'm not interested in a external HD for a laptop.

 

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[Longinus]

Question regarding SSD hard drives.

Is it just faster when loading programs like excel and word? How does it affect your web browsing? Is the bottleneck still the internet connection then?

I managed to fill up my 500GB HD on my desktop. I use dropbox and after all these years, my ecommerce businesses have amassed a ton of video and photo files. That's why SSD hasn't been appealing to me as the drives are too small. Can I do an SSD for operating system and have a 2nd HD in a laptop? I'm not interested in a external HD for a laptop.

It's faster when loading all software since it has no "drive" that needs to turn like HD. For web browsing depends on internet connection.

It would be wise to use an SSD for your main workstation and programs like Excel and Word, and a huge HD for storing your files (like I do on my desktop). But I don't think you can have both in a laptop (and also the main reason why I own a desktop). Maybe NAS or homeserver would be an option for you.

Edit: see more specific and technical explanation below.

 

[lowtek]

Question regarding SSD hard drives.

Is it just faster when loading programs like excel and word? How does it affect your web browsing? Is the bottleneck still the internet connection then?

I managed to fill up my 500GB HD on my desktop. I use dropbox and after all these years, my ecommerce businesses have amassed a ton of video and photo files. That's why SSD hasn't been appealing to me as the drives are too small. Can I do an SSD for operating system and have a 2nd HD in a laptop? I'm not interested in a external HD for a laptop.

The SSD removes the latency of the hard drive as the bottleneck to system performance. Any task that involves fetching data locally will be dramatically sped up. You also don't have to worry about windows fragmenting your drive, since data retrieval is so fast it really doesn't matter if it's spread across separate sectors. This means no more time spent defragging your system.

General tasks (such as loading software into RAM) will see some speedup from an SSD, although RAM is a bigger constraint there. Having more, and faster RAM, will give you a bigger boost than getting an SSD - though you do get a noticeable boost when switching from a hard drive to an SSD.

In web browsing the biggest constraint is network requests to and from the website. Very little data is loaded locally - even if you cache a bunch of images and revisit the same sites over and over again, the difference is going to be marginal.

You can certainly use an SSD for your OS and a regular hard drive for long term data storage. I'd recommend a 250GB drive for OS. 120GB is generally too small since windows is such a pig.

 

[JAJT]

Is it just faster when loading programs like excel and word? How does it affect your web browsing? Is the bottleneck still the internet connection then?

So the BEST option in your case would be a dual-drive setup.
An SSD AND a mechanical.

- The SSD gets used for all your programs. This means the OS, excel, photoshop, word, chrome, etc... everything that "runs" goes on the SSD.
- The normal HDD gets used for all your "data". This is video files, photos, and all the stuff you generally open in your programs.

The SSD significantly reduces load time. This is why in the video I posted a few moments ago my pc turns on and I can open photoshop in less than 40 seconds. Chrome opens instantly. Same with word, excel, etc... I barely see splash screens on opening anything because they just pop open right away. I can restart my pc and be ready to work again in less time than it takes to go to the kitchen, pour another coffee, and come back.

Accessing data, however, doesn't need to be that quick. Pretty much anything you do from a loading data perspective is already next to immediate, even on a normal hard drive.

A good work-around for this if you can't find a laptop that supports dual harddrives is to use a newer USB 3 external hard drive for data storage. Also means you can move back and forth between a work pc and laptop by just plugging in the hard drive.

To answer this question though:

How does it affect your web browsing? Is the bottleneck still the internet connection then?

It won't speed up your internet connection (downloads / uploads won't happen faster) but if you experience chrome being a bit slow, or your browser takes a while to open new tabs, open the program, etc... then all the "program" related stuff will be extremely faster.

 

[biophase]

Thanks everyone. I'm not quite there yet then. I don't usually sit there and complain about my PC speed in loading things. It's mostly web stuff that I think is too slow.

 

[LRG]

I managed to fill up my 500GB HD on my desktop. I use dropbox and after all these years, my ecommerce businesses have amassed a ton of video and photo files. That's why SSD hasn't been appealing to me as the drives are too small. Can I do an SSD for operating system and have a 2nd HD in a laptop? I'm not interested in a external HD for a laptop.

Buy a 1TB SSD for $300. That's what I did. Problem solved.

 

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[Azure]

What set up would you guys recommend for a PPC freelancing set up?

 

[biophase]

Buy a 1TB SSD for $300. That's what I did. Problem solved.

Yes, but that effectively doubles the price of my laptop. And I don't think I get $300 worth of efficiency out of it.

 

[Caramel]

Can I do an SSD for operating system and have a 2nd HD in a laptop? I'm not interested in a external HD for a laptop.

Maybe I missed it, but which laptop do you have?

A lot of laptops either have a second slot for a hard disk, or you could always bust out the DVD-drive and replace it with a hard disk.

 

[Van Halen]

Amazon.co.uk: Laptops: Computers & Accessories

 

[JAJT]

And I don't think I get $300 worth of efficiency out of it.

Yeah, dual drive is really the way to go. You can get two internal hard drives in most laptops. Sometimes it means losing the cd drive (which literally nothing NEEDS anymore - hell even Windows comes on USB drives now)

There's zero benefit IMHO to using a SSD for file storage. It's main and most important benefit is related to program load and run times. So any dollar spent on SSD storage is a waste.

That being said. I couldn't even put a price on how much more efficiency I get out of my 128GB SSD for running programs. Far more than $300. In fact at this point I just straight up will not buy a computer without one so the cost of not having one might as well be infinite.

So in short: I would never use a laptop/pc without a SSD for running programs on, but every dollar spent on file storage with an SSD is wasted. That's my 2 cents anyway.

 

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[amp0193]

and do light video stitching together for FB ads.

So I'm just about to start getting into making video ads for FB.

What software/programs do you use for video editing? Pros/cons of said software?

Just looking for something that is intuitive and easy-ish to learn, that is powerful enough to do whatever I would want to do.

 

[amp0193]

I found out about this when my brother got one. In fact, he is doing 3 monitors now. 2 USB powered and his laptop. You can look like a douche and take over the entire row of tray tables in an airplane if you sit in the middle seat! LOL

Holy cow, this monitor is so light, and it came with a soft case... bonus. I think I literally wouldn't notice it if I put in my backpack with my laptop. Perfect mobile workstation.

 

[biophase]

So I'm just about to start getting into making video ads for FB.

What software/programs do you use for video editing? Pros/cons of said software?

Just looking for something that is intuitive and easy-ish to learn, that is powerful enough to do whatever I would want to do.

The GoPro app Splice on IOS is super easy to use and comes with a lot of background music.

I can make video and put it all together using just my iPhone. It makes "good enough" video for short FB ads. Nothing fancy.

Ironic that I end up recommending using the phone after all this laptop talk.

 

[Van Halen]

Holy cow, this monitor is so light, and it came with a soft case... bonus. I think I literally wouldn't notice it if I put in my backpack with my laptop. Perfect mobile workstation.

Is it a standalone computer or a dual screen? Looks nifty

 

[Sequential]

SSD is pointless for storage UNLESS you are hosting a server, where they become pretty pointful due to super quick random file access times (no spindle to power up for example) they also don't require defragmentation like a HDD with a lot of writes does.

 

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[blong00]

Dell - Inspiron 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti - 1TB Hard Drive + 128GB SSD - Black

I just bought this and waiting for it to get shipped in a week. I'm basically trying to do the same thing you're doing (build websites, video editing, adobe photoshop and illustrator, and maybe some light gaming) and was buying in your price range. This laptop can do all of that and the new shipment comes with a nice IPS screen.

 

[amp0193]

The GoPro app Splice on IOS is super easy to use and comes with a lot of background music.

I can make video and put it all together using just my iPhone. It makes "good enough" video for short FB ads. Nothing fancy.

Ironic that I end up recommending using the phone after all this laptop talk.

That's really interesting. I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

 

[amp0193]

Is it a standalone computer or a dual screen? Looks nifty

It's just a USB screen that plugs into the laptop. Super light. It's whichever one @biophase recommended earlier in the thread.

 

[lowtek]

So I'm just about to start getting into making video ads for FB.

What software/programs do you use for video editing? Pros/cons of said software?

Just looking for something that is intuitive and easy-ish to learn, that is powerful enough to do whatever I would want to do.

I've used open shot a fair amount ( it's free and works on Linux ) and think it's solid for simple editing. It won't get you into the pro tier of video editing, but the price is right and it's straight forward to use. It's very similar to camtasia, if you've ever used that.

 

[FreeMan]

Holy cow, this monitor is so light, and it came with a soft case... bonus. I think I literally wouldn't notice it if I put in my backpack with my laptop. Perfect mobile workstation.

Been looking for a USB monitor as well.

How do you find the color accuracy and viewing angle / glare?

In some reviews they said it can be an issue for photo editing because the colors looked different compared to other monitors and the viewing angle was limited due to anti-glare surface.

 

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[amp0193]

Been looking for a USB monitor as well.

How do you find the color accuracy and viewing angle / glare?

In some reviews they said it can be an issue for photo editing because the colors looked different compared to other monitors and the viewing angle was limited due to anti-glare surface.

Angle/glare doesn't seem to be an issue at all. Looks to be a wide range, and it's veiwable from the entire range.

Colors look the same to me as on my laptop... but I'm no pro photographer. I have no complaints though.

 

[lowtek]

Been looking for a USB monitor as well.

How do you find the color accuracy and viewing angle / glare?

In some reviews they said it can be an issue for photo editing because the colors looked different compared to other monitors and the viewing angle was limited due to anti-glare surface.

I think ASUS makes some that have an IPS panel - those will probably be better for color accuracy and viewing angle. The one that biophase posted is a TN panel I believe, which is great for low price but not so great for quality

 

[CommonCents]

i have a 17" toshiba i carry to/from office with 27" monitor at office, and a 32 at home. i'm holding off getting reader glasses by having larger screens SSD is nice, heck my samsung phone came with a 256g microsd card. unreal. i think the latest USB is plenty fast access so 1TB external USB storage (i think now under 100 bucks) is fast as mechanical hard drive, in addition to server at the office. tons of storage options not to mention online, and just keep active files on SSD for quickest access.

i bought a few new acer 15.6" just under $400 for employees with new processor that brags a 12 hr battery life as they are more mobile around the my manufacturing facility.

i got 100Gigabit coming into office but recently found out we were using an old 10Gigabit hub. cutting 90% the speed at the front door, ooooops.