[Riley Beale]

Hi! My name is Riley and I am in need of a new laptop. Mine has failed again. I have had 2 Dell's that had the same problems. not looking for Dell, HP, Mac or anything Apple, or Acer. Need something reliable with at least 1 tb of hard drive space, but more would be welcome. 16 gb of ram and runs Windows. Not looking for a tablet as I don't care for them personally. I do not game. I mostly listen to music and surf the web on my laptops. I have over 41,000 songs in my music library and i do like to watch YouTube videos on occasion and I run Media Monkey, Music Bee, Itunes (just to see what new music is out in the store), Jriver and Foobar 200. I also have a large photo collection. I might not know of a lot of brands that are of good quality. Please suggest away keeping my needs in mind.

Thank you

Riley

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Hi! My name is Riley and I am in need of a new laptop. Mine has failed again. I have had 2 Dell's that had the same problems. not looking for Dell, HP, Mac or anything Apple, or Acer. Need something reliable with at least 1 tb of hard drive space, but more would be welcome. 16 gb of ram and runs Windows. Not looking for a tablet as I don't care for them personally. I do not game. I mostly listen to music and surf the web on my laptops. I have over 41,000 songs in my music library and i do like to watch YouTube videos on occasion and I run Media Monkey, Music Bee, Itunes (just to see what new music is out in the store), Jriver and Foobar 200. I also have a large photo collection. I might not know of a lot of brands that are of good quality. Please suggest away keeping my needs in mind.

Just by process of elimination the only other laptop brands left are Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Sager, and Razer. If you need 1TB storage in a thin form factor you practically have only the Razer Blade Pro (not sure if you can upgrade the Stealth to get that much storage), but you have to upgrade the storage on it. The thing is though unlike the Stealth you'd be paying a lot since it's a thin laptop with a powerful NVidia GPU. Sagers are a little cheaper but larger, although they have more space for storage drives, but again these come with, at minimum, a GTX 1050 and only i5 processors.

if you want to save a lot of money and don't need that kind of graphical processing you can just look at the mainstream 15.6in laptops from Lenovo and Asus. They typically come with 1TB drives, 8gb RAM upgradeable to 16gb (if you get it from MicroCenter of Fry's they can open and confirm if you can add a second 8gb stick or just replace it with a single 16gb), and an AMD APU. Multicore for multitasking plus an iGPU for faster photo editing than ultrabooks and Macs using Intel CPUs (especially the clocked down but high boost clock M-/Y-series processors) that have slow integrated GPUs. At this price range though the screen sucks under bright sunlight but if you work around that you just need to use a Spyder to calibrate the screen and they're good enough for photo editing. If you can wait, Ryzen-based APUs will come out soon, and these likely will have longer battery life than the old architecture.

And regarding the photos...do you really need 1TB to store the photos in the laptop? Because given that the laptop is more often in use that makes it more susceptible to data loss due to viruses or plain storage drive failure vs saving them in an external drive as soon as you're done editing and deleting the exposures you don't like and can't be salvaged in post.

 

[Riley Beale]

I am not looking for any DIY kind of things. I don't have the skills to do it and don't know anybody that can do it. is my ad luck with Dell laptops just a coincidence or are Dell laptops not as good as they used to be? I have a Dell desktop computer I got for Christmas last year and I only have on problem with it. The headphone jack sometimes, but not too often says I removed my headphones or won't connect to my headphones. My headphones are wired by the way.

The problems I had with Dell laptops

Headphone jack could not detect or would randomly eject and connect headphones

Same with all USB ports and sd slots

one channel in the headphone port would not produce sound half of the time or would be very quiet on one side of headphones

I only have a few gb of photos . Most of my stuff is music. over 350 gb I love different music.

Thank you

Riley

 

[domsch1988]

Could you specify a budget?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I am not looking for any DIY kind of things. I don't have the skills to do it and don't know anybody that can do it.

That's why I mentioned MicroCenter or Frys. They can open it up and put in the HDD you want. Other laptops like Sager are easier to configure and order from the manufacturer and you'd receive it with the parts you need, but again, getting a Sager with more storage also means getting a larger Sager with a discrete GPU.

is my bad luck with Dell laptops just a coincidence or are Dell laptops not as good as they used to be?

Dell sucked for a few years after they kicked Dell out but he's been back on the Board since the XPS series came out.

I have a Dell desktop computer I got for Christmas last year and I only have on problem with it. The headphone jack sometimes, but not too often says I removed my headphones or won't connect to my headphones. My headphones are wired by the way.

The problems I had with Dell laptops

Headphone jack could not detect or would randomly eject and connect headphones

Same with all USB ports and sd slots

one channel in the headphone port would not produce sound half of the time or would be very quiet on one side of headphones

Seems like bad luck - the only time I hear about those problems it's usually on a beat up laptop or old desktop.

I only have a few gb of photos . Most of my stuff is music. over 350 gb I love different music.

Going by the specs you listed - 1TB, 16gb RAM, not any of the brands listed - this is the only one that came up on B&H.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1328138-REG/lenovo_80xa0009us_14_ips_fhd_t.html

There are a bunch of others that still use 2.5in drives but they're coming out of the factories with 256gb by default, and even if you order customized configurations on Lenovo's website, they're mostly limited to 12GB DDR4 even on i7 processors.

 

[domsch1988]

Yeah, since most "decent" notebooks come with SSD's nowadays, 1TB is still rather expensive. Also, 16GB of Ram is still kind of niche. With those two specs you're basically looking at either highend business workstation or gaming notebooks. In both cases (if you really, really don't want to change anything yourself, which is really easy) you're paying a graphics Card you don't need.

The already mentioned Razer Blade stealth can be had with 1TB and 16GB Ram. At 1,999$ it isn't even a bad deal for that hardware. Plus it's considered one of the best ultra portable notebooks atm.
The current Dell XPS's are way better than Dell of a few years ago. I have no Problem recommending those. The XPS 13 is great, can be configured with 16GB Ram, but is limited to 512GB. It's also a tad cheaper than the razer. Throw in a external ssd with USB3.1 (basically faster than an internal spinning drive) and you should be golden.

In the end, it all depends on your budget.

Edit: The Inspiron Gaming can be had with 16GB Ram and 1TB of Spinning disk (plus 256GB SSD for OS) for even "cheaper". Reviews have been really good for this one.

 

[Riley Beale]

Thank you everybody for your replies. My Dell laptops were bought 2 April's ago and the one before that was bought A year or so before it. They were Inspiron 5000 Series if that helps.

Keeps the suggestions coming.

Thanks

Riley

 

[Riley Beale]

I also do not have a Fry's near me. The closest one is well over a hundred miles away. Not going that way anytime soon.

Thanks

Riley

 

[OldDude04]

Here are a few that match your criteria:

https://www.amazon.com/GL552VW-DH71-15-Inch-Discrete-GeForce-Metallic/dp/B01578ZKPO/

https://www.amazon.com/Alienware-AW15R3-3831SLV-Generation-GeForce-GTX1060/dp/B01LY2I7B6

https://www.amazon.com/Strix-G-SYNC-Gaming-Laptop-i7-7700HQ/dp/B01NALTGWN/

 

[Riley Beale]

Thanks OldDude will be looking at those. Does it sound like just a coincidence that I have had a couple of problem ridden Dell laptops given one was bought 2 April's ago and the other was bought roughly a year before or was that when Dell was having problems?

Thanks

Riley

 

[domsch1988]

Thanks OldDude will be looking at those. Does it sound like just a coincidence that I have had a couple of problem ridden Dell laptops given one was bought 2 April's ago and the other was bought roughly a year before or was that when Dell was having problems?

Thanks

Riley

I admit that all my experience with dell has been from my job as a it-support and project guy. So i have mostly experience with their business lines. Those have always been solid.
I can totally understand if you don't really want to get one again after your experiences.

In the end, if money is no object, i'd highly recommend the Razer. For the more "Budget" orientation there have been several great suggestions. But the truth is, most customers are demanding less and less from their Laptops. So 16GB Ram and 1TB Storage is harder and harder to find. Sadly.

 

[Riley Beale]

I admit that all my experience with dell has been from my job as a it-support and project guy. So i have mostly experience with their business lines. Those have always been solid.
I can totally understand if you don't really want to get one again after your experiences.

In the end, if money is no object, i'd highly recommend the Razer. For the more "Budget" orientation there have been several great suggestions. But the truth is, most customers are demanding less and less from their Laptops. So 16GB Ram and 1TB Storage is harder and harder to find. Sadly.

So do you think my bad luck would continue if I bought a new Dell laptop? Did I buy my 2 problematic ones during bad times in Dell's history?

Thank you

Riley

 

[OldDude04]

Thanks OldDude will be looking at those. Does it sound like just a coincidence that I have had a couple of problem ridden Dell laptops given one was bought 2 April's ago and the other was bought roughly a year before or was that when Dell was having problems?

Thanks

Riley

Well, most of my experience with Dell is in servers or Windows tablets, so I can't say for sure. But no one could blame you for being skittish after having 2 bad ones in a row with similar issues.

 

[Riley Beale]

Well, most of my experience with Dell is in servers or Windows tablets, so I can't say for sure. But no one could blame you for being skittish after having 2 bad ones in a row with similar issues.

Thank you OldDude. I have never actually owned or even used a tablet or a server so I would not know anything about them. The only thing I know about tablets is that they do not really suit much of my needs.

Cheers friend

Riley

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I also do not have a Fry's near me. The closest one is well over a hundred miles away. Not going that way anytime soon.

Your best bet would be to order them from the manufacturers, check out which ones allow for customizations. Maybe Lenovo's Y300 series. I can't see options for that though - not sure if they totally removed it or just because of my current IP address. Those options were available just months ago before I finally picked up a Yoga 700 (saved me from getting a Macbook or Air, although I really wanted the Thinkpad 12, but it's 3x what I paid for the Yoga 700 in Costco).

Speaking of which why not check Costco? No customizations there but 8gb DDR4 (which runs faster than DDR3) is kind of a standard with Skylake and newer processors, so i7's will likely get around 12gb on average. And anything large enough might still have a 1TB drive, but due to their power consumption, speed, and physical damage vulnerability vs SSDs, newer ones tend to come with 2.5in SSDs (and people used to swap out the platter drive for one of those). Costco might have something older back when 1TB was the standard for i7 Skylake laptops, and at a discount too (Yoga 710 came out and I got the Yoga 700, which still has an SD card slot, for $499).