Laptop Advice - in Need of Something to Tide Me over (Ex-Lease?)

Madao on 12/05/2022 - 18:41

Hi

So, I'm changing jobs next month and will have to hand back my Iphone 11 Pro and Dell laptop (i7 1.8Ghz, 16GB). The new job will come with new gear too but as I don't own a phone or a laptop myself I'm thinking of getting both.

I've always been a Windows user but have an Ipad Pro and cant stand Android so I'm keen to go Macbook Air / Pro (and perhaps Iphone SE) but some research says the 13 inch versions of the Macbooks have been out a while and almost guaranteed to get a refresh this year. I therefore don't want to jump in on these now.

So, given time is of the essence as I want to back up photos / docs etc, I'm thinking to stick with Windows for the time being. Does anyone have any recommendations for a company that does quality ex-lease / cheapie laptops that could tide me over?

Cheers

General Discussion

Comments

  • Avantime on 12/05/2022 - 20:26

    You can lease laptops yourself for a month. Or just go to the library or an internet/gaming cafe. For backups just use a USB drive, external HDD or a cloud service.

  • NovaAlpha on 12/05/2022 - 22:19

    Just look at Trademe. I've got plenty of good laptops for around $350 or less. A couple of years ago, got myself a HP Envy 15 with touchscreen and i7-4712HQ, 16GB of RAM and Nvidia Geforce 850M and 500GB SSD. Runs like a champ for all my work needs, no issues at all. Still use it to this day, although not for work anymore.

    It's easy to do a backup of your entire PC using something like Veeam (free to use as well). I can easily do an image backup of the whole system within 10 mins and restore it within 13 mins. I'm talking about dissimilar hardware restore. I can change to a new job at anytime and be prepared within 30 mins. No need to download and install my apps, everything is good to go. Pretty sure you can do something similar on a Mac using TimeMachine, but I'm not a Mac guy.

    Same goes with Android. Use Titanium Backup to easily backup and restore your apps, OR use a custom recovery to backup all your Android partitions. I can easily get an identical phone and restore the partition backup from the previous phone (as long as they're the same model). All my data will be there, my apps already installed, etc.

    Also, one should always have a personal phone and working PC. I'm surprised you even found a job in the first place without either of them.

    For blob data such as photos and documents, my recommendation has always been to store it on a different drive than your OS drive (C:). You can easily change the default location of your Pictures, Videos and Downloads folder to point to another drive. If you've only got one drive in your laptop, that's fine. Just partition it so you have D:\ drive or maybe even an E:\ drive. Once you get this set up correctly, all your non app related data will be stored in D:\ or E:\ and you can easily copy those to an external hardrive. The benefit of doing this is that when you do an image backup of your OS drive (C:), it'll be quick and it'll only be actual apps that you're backing up. There's NO point to include a 2TB movie + song library in your image backup.

    You can always backup your blob data separately, but for regularly system image backups, keep it small and easy to maintain. Alternatively, you can store your blob data to a NAS or to the cloud (OneDrive or Dropbox or whatever). Anyway, there's lots of guides and tools you can use, maybe Google a bit?

    • NovaAlpha on 13/05/2022 - 12:41

      You can also have a look at Cheapies for any laptop deals.

  • Drcspy on 13/05/2022 - 07:33

    "one should always have a personal phone " I have to agree with that. In my job one guy has a work phone which is the main point of contact and when others are on shift, (theres usually only one of us at a time on shift), then the phone gets forwarded to whoever is on. This is an absolute P.I.T.A at times as we get personal calls and etc a lot thru that phone.

    • NovaAlpha on 13/05/2022 - 12:40

      The phones I got just so happen to have dual sim support and so it's always really easy to just chuck in a work SIM and make calls or text from the work SIM. I keep all my data, easy.

      And if required, just create a work profile to separate the personal data from work data. Can do this easily on both Android and iPhone.

  • wearnes on 13/05/2022 - 09:08

    I have a Asus Vivobook Flip 14 TP412. its a nice 13 inch i5 10th and has a nice wide gamut display. pm if interested.

  • Madao on 17/05/2022 - 16:54
    +1

    Thanks all for the replies.

    Despite my initial post, at the weekend I bagged myself a second hand but immaculate condition 2020 Macbook Pro M1 13inch / 8GB / 512GB / 100% Battery / 4 cycles for what I think is a very sharp price ~$1000. I'm almost convinced the retailer I purchased from had it marked up incorrectly, or didnt know what they were selling, given Apple is still knocking them out at $2379 (education store price)

    • Avantime on 17/05/2022 - 19:24
      +1

      That's a steal for an M1 Macbook Pro, you should be proud :-)

      Any chance you'll give us the name of the retailer?

      • doubledippps on 19/05/2022 - 22:33

        Yes keen to know the retailer too!

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