**Complete Noob requiring new desktop or laptop advice**

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › **Complete Noob requiring new desktop or laptop advice**

AvidRAcer

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#137944 13-Dec-2013 22:57

Hi guys,

I am looking at purchasing either a new laptop or a desktop and need some solid advice on what would be good for me.

I primarily use it for streaming movies and TV shows (8 hours a day average)
The rest of the use is music and general internet surfing i.e. trademe, Facebook. YouTube etc.
Very LITTLE gaming in fact no gaming really.

I have Fibre 100 internet plan (supposedly the fastest in the country)

My currant laptop is rather old and is a waste of our internet connection and will only give me around 25mbps down and 20mbps up, but a couple dif friends have tried their laptops on our connection and both were clocking 90+ mbps.

So, Could some one please suggest a good laptop or desktop that can take advantage of my internet connection, and be perfect for mainly home theatre viewing. I have a very small budget so price is everything.

Even just some advice on what possessor and size to go for and how many cores etc., how much ram and hdd space.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

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Ragnor

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#951997 14-Dec-2013 02:21

Hey mate, you need to state how much do you want to spend max.. then we can recommend the best bang for buck in that price range.

Batman

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#952031 14-Dec-2013 08:44

most new laptops will be able to to connect wifi athigher than hence will get the 90Mbps speeds of your fibre. but wifi is ever so slightly less reliable as cable, but it ain't going to matter at that speeds if you're not doing gigabytes of downloads

so the main question for you is

- do you need a big screen -> desktop
- do you need to move around the place -> laptop
(look I know it's more than just that but he declares himself as a noob but if you want you could still connect your laptop to a big screen via HDMI for example)

what is your budget?
if I were you I'd go laptop.
I haven't owned a desktop for 3 years and I'm not missing it. I can still do everything I want to do on a desktop.

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

stevenz

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#952044 14-Dec-2013 09:29

90mbs on 802.11n is much better than average unless they happen to have the magic combination of hardware compatibility to get boosted speeds. It may be your existing laptop is old enough that it's still running 802.11g which is a dog by comparison.

Any laptop you buy now will have 802.11n which "in theory" will do up to 300mbps, I've never seen it get any better than around half that because I've not found any client devices that support the required MIMO functionality to do this.

If all your network devices support 802.11n (or better) then you can usually configure the router to ignore anything older than that which will free up more bandwidth too.

RAM: 2GB is probably enough unless you're running "big" programs. 4GB is a small jump which is worth it though. Anything beyond that is probably wasted, and you can always upgrade later if need be anyway.

Hard drive: Anything you buy will have at least a 500GB drive in it. Not really a factor. If you need speed then you can get one with a flash-based SSD drive which is significantly quicker, but only really a big deal for startup times or in certain cases. I wouldn't bother, the tradeoff in price/cost/capacity isn't worth it IMO.

Processor: Intel i3 or i5 of some variety. Exact model is fairly irrelevant although the latest gen Haswell variants will give you more battery life.

Even the cheapest laptop you buy will be able to play any video content you throw at it and will be able to pull down as much internet as the bottlenecks outside of NZ will allow.

If you're watching TV & Movies on it for 8 hours a day though, maybe investing in a proper TV would be better?

Dick Smiths list an HP 2000 with a 15.6" screen, 500GB HDD, i3-2.4Ghz CPU, and 4GB RAM, for $800 which would be more than adequate.

@KnightNZ

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#952069 14-Dec-2013 10:00

2gb ram is NOT enough. Minimum 4GB. No exceptions.

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

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#952094 14-Dec-2013 10:49

may I add since we've touched on it you also NEED a SSD - otherwise your ultrafibre is bottlenecked by the extremely slow hard drive.

but you do need to be able to do some tweaking to get a SSD into a basic system otherwise you will have to pay thru your nose

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

AvidRAcer

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#952169 14-Dec-2013 13:57

Thanks Very much for all the advice guys,

Screen does not bother me as I have the 50" in the lounge and a few 30's so just run it through the HDMI ports.

Ideally I would prefer a laptop but in saying that I am not sure whether I could get better bang for my buck through a desk top. I don't really want to spend anything over 1k if I go brand new but am also considering buying off trademe hence needing to know what it is that I actually need to keep an eye ou for with regards to specs when purchasing 2nd hand.

Yea this laptop only runs the 801g thing not N.

With regards to the SSD drive, do most new laptops have them?

I am almost wondering if its worth picking up a cheap desktop via trademe and getting a guy in a local town to build me something that suits my needs, but I dont know if $1000 could do that.

My next question would be, is it cheaper to upgrade/build a desktop or a laptop?

Thanks heaps for all the advice guys, it really is appreciated.

billgates

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#952176 14-Dec-2013 14:15

Wait for the boxing day sale. Will get good discounts on touch screen ultrabooks.

Do whatever you want to do man.

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#952178 14-Dec-2013 14:27

AvidRAcer: Thanks Very much for all the advice guys,

Screen does not bother me as I have the 50" in the lounge and a few 30's so just run it through the HDMI ports.

Ideally I would prefer a laptop but in saying that I am not sure whether I could get better bang for my buck through a desk top. I don't really want to spend anything over 1k if I go brand new but am also considering buying off trademe hence needing to know what it is that I actually need to keep an eye ou for with regards to specs when purchasing 2nd hand.

Yea this laptop only runs the 801g thing not N.

With regards to the SSD drive, do most new laptops have them?

I am almost wondering if its worth picking up a cheap desktop via trademe and getting a guy in a local town to build me something that suits my needs, but I dont know if $1000 could do that.

My next question would be, is it cheaper to upgrade/build a desktop or a laptop?

Thanks heaps for all the advice guys, it really is appreciated.

you can get a decent laptop for 1k. you probably won't get a much better desktop for 1k - you have to add the monitor, the wifi card (assuming you really want to connect with wifi and not run a long cable to wherever you need to), the desktop desk and chair (assuming you don't have one) etc

but dollar for dollar the desktop will be much more powerful if you need to play games or edit video/lots of photos. you can chuck in giant hard drives. but all these you DON'T NEED.

so I say laptop. intel core type.

the next question is intel core ivy bridge (3xxx) or haswell (4xxx). for 1k you could get pretty decent ivy bridge or semi decent haswell.

I say go haswell. we can help you look out for one.

for 1k it will not come with SSD. you will have to download free macrium and clone the disk onto SSD (or clean install).

laptops are not upgradable. desktop upgrade possibility is endless, but for your needs you won't need to upgrade anything upgradable.

hence laptop.

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

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#952179 14-Dec-2013 14:29

in fact Lenovo has $600 off these laptops!

http://shopap.lenovo.com/nz/en/deals-and-coupons/outlet-clearance-laptops/?ipromoID=nzow_pub_deals_b6_clearance

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#952181 14-Dec-2013 14:34

or a dell http://www.dell.com/nz/p/deals?cp=1&s=dhs&~ck=mn#!popular-laptop-deals

everyone will ridicule all kinds of brands but you should google a specific model to see what is good/bad about it from other users (make sure it is the same generation model)

I have a feeling if you wait till next week you will get much better deals ... not sure about Lenovo but dell usually comes to the party

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.