Must be POST taking so long. Had a Lenovo Yoga with some WD slim line drive with a proprietary connector. Took about 40-60 seconds (I forget) from power-on to Windows log-on screen. Eventually got a SATA connector cable and replaced it with a Samsung EVO. Now takes 6 seconds from power on to log in screen. That's the fastest of the bunch I have. Even the Lenovo S30 takes longer (have to wait for BIOS).

My personal experience is that every laptop I've had since 2011 has had only a SSD and has been perfectly fine. The SSD make the laptop feel much faster. The cost difference is so minimal now that it's not even worth the question.

Thanks so much everyone for your comments and ideas. Things have changed immensely since I was last in the market (when cheap as possible was my only requirement). My budget is around $500-600, and looking at prices and options offered on the Dell website is what prompted my question.

You can get a decent laptop for around that price on the Dell site. This is slightly above your range, but a good spec.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell...op/nn5593dssfh

If you go to the Dell Outlet website, you'll get similar specs for around $150 less.

There’s a big difference between consumer lines and business lines, which is not unique to Lenovo. I always prefer laptops from the business side for value and reliability/durability, even if they’re not the most stylish. And for Lenovo, even the business lines aren’t what they used to be back in the IBM days, though they’re probably still second place for me after Dell.

One more tangible benefit of SSD over HDD besides faster Win bootup (16s down to 5s) is the battery life has gone up from just over 2 hrs to almost 3.5 hours.

With a $500-600 budget, you can get a laptop with SSD, no need to think as low as eMMC. In that price range, you could definitely get a 128GB SSD with 8GB of memory and a screen size that should fit your needs--for my needs, I wanted a smaller screen (11-12 inches), but if you don't intend to travel with your laptop, go for a bigger screen.

And since this isn't just a travel technology forum, but the one at points-obsessed FT, you may qualify for one of the frequent Amex Offers with the current one offering either 12K Membership Rewards points or $120 back if you spend $599 or more. I wouldn't let that be a decision maker, but if you're going to consider a Dell, then I wouldn't miss out on the offer if you have an eligible Amex.

Why?

Asked already

Let's just say you DON'T need a traditional hard drive as an external drive for most laptop situations and leave it at that.

but not answered.

"Why would you need a rust disk for external storage rather than an SSD?"
"Personal Experience"

That is not a useful answer. That's no different than parents who say "because I said so."

MY personal experience is that rust drives are great for long term storage, and are painfully slow for near-term external storage. I do a lot of photography, and there's a LOT of difference between transferring 250+GB of large files over USB to a spinning drive vs an SSD.

SSDs are excellent for external storage, with HDDs as a long term backup. I currently store all my photography in the near term on an external NVMe and back that up every couple weeks to large HDDs overnight, because I don't really care to sit and wait for two hours while large amounts of data are written through a tiny bottleneck.

Are you trying to regulate what I can say? Or are you trying to regulate my life?

Helpful or not - personal experience encompasses how we deal with things daily. Because many FTers are judgmental, like this, so I would say personal experience is sufficient. Once I share the so-called personal experience, the judgmental nature will re-appear to judge my experience.

Clear enough for you?

Someone was asking for useful advice, you gave them a vague "because I said so" answer. I would love to know what your personal experience was that lead you to that decision. I may well realize you hit upon something that had never occurred to me. That helps everyone. This is not judgemental. This is a fact, you gave a vague answer that really didn't answer the question, and thus is unhelpful. Don't get your feelings hurt, it's not personal.

If you're going to be spending $500-$600, look for used enterprise-grade laptops. Computers depreciate worse and faster than luxury cars. Enterprises (large companies) routinely lease hardware for 2-3 years, so there's usually a ton of it to be had. In general, enterprise hardware's designed for TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), so they're very reliable, easily field-repaired/upgraded and often there are complete service/shop manuals available for download on them that will show you how to do everything, step-by-step, right down to the last screw. There's also a ton of CHEAP spare parts available for them off Amazon/eBay. Cheap enough to keep on-hand. Extra genuine Lenovo power bricks - $10. You can't even get an Apple USB cable for that price.

I can't strongly enough recommend the Lenovo Thinkpad T (standard), X (ultra-light), P/W (Performance/Workstation) lines of laptops. My users absolutely beat the snot out of their computers, some in a literal sense, and they still run quite nicely. Almost half of the user desktops/laptops here are > 8 year old Lenovos, all upgraded to SSDs with max'd out RAM. I think we're going to cull the 10-12 year old ones this year, not because they're giving us trouble or aren't fast enough but rather before old-age problems like dried-up capacitors and dried-up heatsink paste become issues. We usually buy top of the line (new), max it out, run it forever. People end up becoming rather attached to "their" computer after having it for so long.

I do pick up used laptops for users' secondary (cross-border) computers, spares, etc. Similarly, all of our back-end runs on used enterprise gear. Switches, routers, IP phones, cell phones, servers. All used.

On the SSD vs HDD.. SSD is the right option almost every time. BUT, as with all storage, BACK UP OFTEN! The 3-2-1 rule of backups is a good one to live by. SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, hands-down. BUT HDDs give much more warning before they fail. Every SSD I've had fail died suddenly, without warning.