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Laptop build for academic purposes. (Resolved)


Best Answer Locla , 07 February 2016 - 08:21 AM

Hi Phillpower2, I know it's a few months late but I thought I should post the end result! I managed to find a second hand HP ENVY Ultrabook 6-1010sa for £265, which has served me well so... Go to the full post »


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#1
Locla

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Hi everyone :)

 

I will soon be starting my course at university and would like to have a laptop for its duration. I've built desktops but never a laptop so I'm really looking for general/initial advice and suggestions. The build should not be able to play games (I'm suceptible to distractions!) and has a budget of circa £500. I'll probably want to go for an internal SSD and would use an external HDD for the storage. Any advice is greatly apprectiated!

 

Cheers in advance,

 

Dan


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#2
phillpower2

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SSDs are great for speeding up boot times but they are still too expensive for the larger capacity that would be needed for storing the OS and data on.

 

No SSD but you can fit one at a later date if you really feel the need to Acer Aspire E5-571 get rid of all the bloatware on the HDD (including the trial version of McAfee) and that will help to speed up the boot times.


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#3
Locla

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Hi phillpower2,

 

I've been using a £50 128GB Sandisk SSD in my desktop build without storage issues, I'm really loving the boot up times and general zippyness. Now everytime I use a PC with an HDD I find it infuriatingly slow :P

 

Many thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to compare it to a few others and get back to you after I return home in a few weeks time.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan


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#4
phillpower2

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You are welcome Dan and fully understand what you say about the speed of an SSD compared to a stock HDD  :thumbsup:

 

Some light reading for you here and here


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#5
Locla

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✓  Best Answer

Hi Phillpower2,

 

I know it's a few months late but I thought I should post the end result! I managed to find a second hand HP ENVY Ultrabook 6-1010sa for £265, which has served me well so far and is now running windows 10:-

 

http://support.hp.co...ument/c03431453

 

With the excellent savings from that purchase I was able to add a 240GB SSD for £60, which worked fine after a reboot. I recently added another 4GB or RAM for £15, so the total cost was £340.

It's a great system considering the price, but the track-pad and low screen resolution receive the most criticism in any reviews, as well as the lack of a backlit keyboard. These factors aren't ideal but personally I haven't had much trouble despite them.

 

Hope everything's good!

 

Cheers, 

 

Dan

 

P.S. Sorry for bumping the post!


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#6
phillpower2

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Hi Dan,

 

No problem, always good to hear of success stories, bargains and folk letting us know how things turned out  :)

 

Glad to hear that in the main you are happy with the computer and good work on your behalf with sourcing and fitting the parts  :thumbsup:


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