is this a good deal for a laptop?
1I need a new laptop and saw this one that looks nice (to me) on sale: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/t490/p/20N2S3GQ00
I also get some discounts through my employer, so the final cost will be $801, and I’ll get a $80 amazon gift card in a month or so.
Worth it, or am I better off waiting for thanksgiving week deals?
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No doubt the tech kids that follow all this more closely than I will have much more reliable opines…
In the $900 price range (sale price pre-employer incentives/discounts) I would have expected a bit more baseline power. That i5 has a solid, but lower-end benchmark score.
16GB RAM is good, but make sure that’s not maxed for the physical configuration. I anticipate situations where you may want more RAM in the not-so-distant future. You should expect to see a min of 3 years, but for the price, at least 5 years of life from that machine. It’s very conceivable you’ll want more RAM eventually.
512GB SSD is probably sufficient for most people. Examine what you plan to do with the machine and decide if that’s enough. But honestly, in the price range, I would have expected a larger drive.
1080p display is weak for the price range.
It’s a good solid system, but I’m feeling like it’s too much money for what it is. I would expect $900 to be the “not-on-sale” price.
@ruouttaurmind ah ty! The ram is soldered in, so if that’s likely to be an issue soon probably best avoided. I don’t really know anything about consumer tech anymore, I still though 16gb was future proof
@Seeds 16GB is now. 32 is future proof. But much of that depends on what you’ll be doing with it. If it’s going to be an email and web browsing terminal, 8GB will suffice, 12GB would be good. 4GB is totally inadequate. My production graphics workstations all have 32, with the workstation we use for Adobe Premier video editing equipped with 64GB. I conceive a near future where even that will not be enough.
RE: 16GB RAM… evaluate what you plan to do with it, and what you might do with it tomorrow, then decide if 16GB will be future proof for you.
@ruouttaurmind @Seeds
I don’t follow this stuff. Haven’t touched a win machine in more than a year.
But even 2 years ago I would have wanted an i7, and expandable ram at the price?
(I’m prob full of … You know.
)
@f00l At this price point, yes, I agree.
@Limewater makes a fair point about business class vs. consumer class systems, and I absolutely agree. Taken into consideration in my original post. Had this been a consumer class system I would expect the everyday price to be around $500-$600 occasionally dipping below $350-$400 on a deal.
That is a business-class laptop. You pay extra for a for the higher build quality, more rugged design, better keyboard, matte screen, better battery life, easier serviceability, and pro-level OS.
If you’re just looking for specs and the laptop isn’t going to be moved around too much, you might want to look elsewhere. If you’ll be moving it around a lot then it is definitely worth the premium to go business-class, in my opinion.
Also, if you do go business-class, it might be worth your time to look at the Lenovo outlet or the Dell Business Outlet.
Also, I think only 8GB of the RAM in that machine is soldered. You still have a slot where you could install 16GB to get you up to 24.
@Limewater I do love thinkpads, it’s why I keep going back to them. Have you seen the lenovo outlet recently? I liked it better when it was a poorly formatted mess- the deals seemed much better
@Seeds I’ve never really liked the Lenovo outlet, but when I was just checking it I was a little surprised at the prices.
I haven’t bought a refurbished computer in a few years. I’ve felt like I’ve been able to get slightly better deals with Dell Latitudes.
That said, I don’t have much experience with Thinkpads, so it’s possible I don’t know what I’m missing.
@Limewater good surprised or bad surprised?
I did like my business dell from an old job, just didn’t think about them I guess because I usually just buy refurbished thinkpads since they used to be cheap and great . I’ll check dell out too. Thanks
@Seeds I guess bad surprised, like you said. The deals don’t seem as good as they used to be. It is a little easier to navigate than it used to be, though. The site used to be almost amateur.
@Seeds Oh yeah, also I will mention the one failure point I have seen on Latitudes-- the video cable.
I bought a refurbished E6400 in early 2009. By mid-2011 I started having trouble with the display, but it was within the warranty period and they fixed it. The connector where the video cable attaches to the monitor just came loose. Easy fix. After that it was reliable until I retired it at the beginning of 2019 except for expected stuff, like replacing the power cable and battery.
Next was on a Latitude 3380, which is geared for the education market. Laptop purchased late 2017. In 2019 the video started having trouble. In this case, the video cable needed to be replaced. It had gotten messed up in the hinge. I did it myself and haven’t had a problem since.
Thanks everyone, I decided not to get it. I wanted to tag you all, but I broke my right arm and copy-pasting each name with my left hand sounds terrible. I appreciate the help!
@Seeds hope you heal well and quickly!
@djslack @Seeds
Gosh, so sorry re arm!
Heal up!. Try to be comfortable till then!
Hope not too much pain.
Business line thinkpads are nice, but those prices are Morningsave level comparisons. 8th gen i5 is a couple years old already. That web price was probably MSRP when it was brand new, but it’s smoking crack out in the back alley in 2020.
It’s probably a fine machine for most use cases, but i don’t think it’s an amazing deal. For that money I would want a current gen processor, and I wouldn’t shy away from a better display. The larger than usual SSD is a good point for this machine, though.
If a laptop has 5 years useful life at inception, this one has spent its first two on the manufacturer’s shelf.
I just thought of this, though: I haven’t shopped for laptops in 2020, and I know there have been supply issues. Market influences may be responsible for this being a couple hundred more than I’d like it to be. $900 is too much, your $800 is ok, but I’d like it better at $700.
You will see a lot of deals next month, but many of them are on lesser machines built for a price point. There is value in the sturdy construction of business line machines, and there won’t likely be a lot of big deals in that sector. So if you’re going to lug it, it may be worth the cash. If it’s mainly going to see cush duty on your coffee table, you might try to snag something with better specs that may have more plastic parts as the holidays roll around.
I think we are missing the base questions.
I wouldn’t say no to seeing some system monitor shots of resource load when you have everything running. Most consumers will not need more than 16 GB of RAM for a long time… My work laptop has that cause I need it and have to have so much open. By the time any average consumer needs more than that the CPU would be way out of date so there’s no reason to future proof a laptop with soldered components, in my opinion. But I always prefer non soldered memory anyway
And You of course may not be average.
@unksol
pretty much exclusively work. I’m still technically enrolled in grad school where there are some more demands on my personal laptop (as opposed to everything running in cloud), but I haven’t taken any classes the last two semesters so I doubt I’m going back. I try to avoid the computer as much as I can when I’m not working/schooling. I do have to lug it around with me regularly, and I’m not always as careful as I should be.
Honestly? The bulk of it will probably continue to be aws workspaces + rdp + chrome + slack. Maybe I’ll fire up android studio again one day. Current specs are i5-6300u, 16 GB ram, 475 GB ssd.
Sometimes with the four programs running above it stutters badly, but the main reason I want to replace it is if you touch it wrong (there are a lot of wrong spots) the screen freaks out and it resets.
~5 years
Here’s a screenshot of everything but slack- I don’t have any meetings until Monday, and sales end Sunday so I can’t show that.
@Seeds @unksol You currently only have a dual-core processor. Going to 4 or more would help a lot with the stuttering you mention.
Chrome seems to have memory leaks and will eat up every resource available after a while, but that will be true on any machine.
If you’re going to be carrying it around a lot, I’d definitely shell out a little extra for a Thinkpad or Latitude. Most Latitudes have a trackpoint, if that’s important to you. Outside of Thinkpads and Latitudes, you are unlikely to find one.
From the failure mode you describe, it sounds like you have a power problem, and it’s likely that something will be obviously broken or frayed if you open your laptop up and start examining it. So it may be fixable. Trying to fix your only computer when you need it to be working in shot order can be pretty stressful, though.
In the meantime, I would suggest you set it up in one spot and try to move it as little as possible. What you are describing is a problem that is likely to get worse with continued movement and opening and closing, and you don’t want your current machine to get even worse before you have a replacement.
@Seeds so basically the specs are probably fine but it’s just broke. @Limewater points are good. I’d be cracking it open but if it’s your only work pc…
I would guess we are in the best you can get for x price territory?