Being able to read legacy media is the sign of an excellent support centre.
I have a friend who has repair and support shop, he has many boxes booting into every OS.
He also has readers for 5.25, 3.5, Jazz, Zip and all HDD interface connections including SCSI 1,2,3.

Bumping this since it's a reasonably-current "new laptop" thread.

We're in the market for a new laptop...actually might buy two in the $500-600 range. Home use, no gaming. From reading this thread, the takeaway so far is SSD good, but Dell sucks Acer sucks Lenovo sucks HP sucks...so what's left? Starting to see Black Friday "sales" out, but I realize most of this is just framing/marketing spin.

Another option is to buy one slightly more expensive laptop and either try to rehab our old Dell (perhaps with a new SSD)or buy a cheap Chromebook. Something like this Lenovo: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops...0/p/20Q0S1RJ00

Generally aiming for something small and light but able to be connected to 2 large monitors when we aren't traveling.

I have a Lenovo T430 and a Lenovo X1 Carbon. The T430 has a noisy fan but theres an app for that but the fan will need replacing/greasing at some stage. I've owned them as work and personal and the Asus/Acers we have had just feel cheap in comparison. I also have a T61 still going strong. So, for me, Lenovo does not suck and when it is time to replace them I will look at Lenovo.

How do you like the X1 Carbon?

It's perfect for me. Light to carry around, not that I do much, doesn't take up much space, battery life is good, keyboard is a good size, and I am addicted to the little red nipple ! :) It's not getting heavy use in terms of gaming because I don't do that.

Details...Details...Details...

1. What do you want exactly?

2. Why do you believe certain brands suck?

3. What is your current laptop's specification?

1. Windows 10. SSD - at least enough to run the OS and apps. Good battery life. Screen can be anywhere in the 13-15 inch range, but needs to be able to support 2 additional monitors. Touchscreen not essential. We don't use it for high-end gaming but would like good enough graphics for occasional streaming, Teams calls, etc. Decent enough build quality that it will last a few years.

2. I didn't enter this thread with any preconceived notions of which brands were good or bad, but this thread seems to hate them all. ;)

3. Current laptop is a Dell Inspiron from about 2013. I don't have it with me now to quote its exact config. Only reason I suggest keeping it around would be purely as a streaming / email / chat machine for the kids. But it boots up sloooooow so the upthread idea of swapping out the storage, if that's even possible, is something I'd consider.

I will respond in reverse order.

As soon as your laptop is a Core i CPU, i.e. i3, i5, or i7, you should consider upgrade. Make sure you have at least 8GB of memory.

It sounds like to me that this laptop is not using Windows 10, but either Windows 7 or 8 (which were the OS options at that time). Make sure you have upgraded to Windows 10 first (for unknown reasons, it is still a free upgrade from Microsoft). Back up everything and have a fresh upgrade (i.e. keep nothing). Once activated, then you can upgrade to SSD and have a fresh Windows 10 install (Windows 10 uses digital license. The activation server will recognize the motherboard used.)

Also the model number helps.

I don't believe this is the case. FWIW - depending on their respective designs and history, some brands do make excellent computers and some do a very bad job. It all depends on what model you are going to get.

For example, I believe no one here will argue that ThinkPad is a good option for Lenovo. But IdeaPad? Good luck.

Unless you buy an Apple, the majority of laptops will ship with Windows 10 (with a few exceptions). It is a matter of Home vs Pro.

No laptop has good battery life. Specifically - power consumption depends on usage. But if you want a long battery life, then you will be forced to choose U CPU, which can impact the performance significantly.

While most laptops have 2 display connectors (HDMI and VGA), I am not sure if Intel HD Graphics will support 2 monitors. But if this is the case, why not a SFF instead? You don't really need a laptop for home use.

Model line often is the big difference, although for both Lenovo and Dell, their main business lines have been diluted quite a bit - their marquee machines (Latitude 7xxx series and Thinkpad T and X series) are both still superb high durability business machines, while they each have some suspect models selling under the Latitude and Thinkpad nameplates.

Ideapad/ThinkBook and Inspiron/Vostro (or for that matter, much of the Latitude 3xxx) are both no worse (and no better) than their competitors at the low end of the market -- it just very rarely makes sense to buy up to higher specs for those.

Usage patterns vary a lot, also. Some people love their Macs, or machines from Dell's XPS line. Many other people are going to have that the machines are physically more fragile than a conventional business laptop, less upgrade-able and maintainable, and the choice between a short-stroke vs. more traditional keyboard is also very personal. (And the traditional business machines have been moving in that direction, with more soldered ram, harder to replace keyboards, etc.)

I haven't seen many current machines still shipping with VGA. Intel HD graphics supports up to 3 monitors at some resolutions as far back as they've had processor graphics (the i5-520M and others of its generation) assuming you have connections to allow for it.

To the original question of the thread:
Hard drives have been obsolete in laptops except at the very bottom of the market for a very long time. By 5 years ago, it was already the case that the only reason to consider buying a laptop with an HDD in it, post about 2012, is if it's cheaper to buy the machine with an HDD in it and drop in an aftermarket SSD. These days, it's rarely worth doing that (although for build-to-order it's often worth it to get the smallest drive and then swap in your own.)

A few other notes:
This. Also, at the high-end and for some workloads, the particular SSD model matters a lot. For most people, the big advantages of jumping to SSD aren't going to be mirrored by jumping to an SSD, even if on paper an NVMe one reads 5-6x faster than an SATA one and depending on the model can write anywhere from no faster to 5x faster.

(There are a few machines at the low end of the market with eMMC drives which are horribly slow, but they they at least share the following advantage

The *biggest* advantage of an SSD over an HDD in laptops is durability: with an HDD, it's kind of a toss-up whether the drive or the screen is the most easily damaged part of the machine if the machine is off (and if dropped when on and you don't have a free-fall sensor, there's no contest - you can kill a drive with a fall that doesn't seem like it should damage anything) - and havingto replace a screen won't lose your data. With an SSD (outside of a few awful machines where it's soldered to the motherboard) it is very nearly the hardest part of the machine to damage.

If you don't need the performance, that's a perfectly fine option - although battery life and expandability are terribly when you get enough older. Right now, the sweet spot for very-used machines is around 5 years old; anything older than Haswell (i5-4xxx) will be terribly slow if it has one of the more battery efficient U processor. Something like a Dell Latitude 7240/7250/7440/7450 or a Lenovo X240/X250/T440/T450 are all great choices, and should be findable well under $350 even with COVID gouging. That said, a replacement aftermarket battery, RAM, and an SSD will add to that a bit.

Because of the big performance boost with the 8th generation Intel processors, for relatively heavy users who actually care about battery life, it is very hard to argue for anything older (those came out in Q3 of 2017.) For heavy users, a 2009 i7-920 desktop or a 2011 i7-2620QM is likely to be the slowest tolerable machine, and there isn't something comparable with modern battery life that doesn't weigh a ton until you get to the 2018 generation of machines.

I've had some professional workloads that burned through an SSD's entire write lifetime, which is very predictable (and usually seriously over-spec'ed; a number of drives that hit 0% on their internal meter on test servers several jobs back lasted for 4-6 more years in external cases), but the most common failure case is a board component that ISN'T one of the flash chips going which is unpredictable if your machines thermals are adequate.

In stable/desktop use cases with HDDs, that's true, but the drop case is often unpredictable. I jumped on the SSD train very early, but I was replacing laptop drives from mechanical damage more than once a year between 2003 when I started traveling a lot and late 2008 when I started upgrading all of my laptops to SSD (I still have my first SSD; not really a useful size and slow as anything these days, but it still works in an external USB case and couple times a year I check on it for amusement value.)

---

BTW if anyone is looking for an inexpensive, durable machine for travel or kids' use, I am a huge fan of the Dell 3190 2-in-1; the new direct to consumer prices are horrible, but the Dell outlet ones with same-as-new warranty run $330-350 depending on configuration and there are often 10-16% off coupons which will bring the price to around $300. They're not fast (although the N5000/8GB configurations are genuinely tolerable even to this heavy user), and the screen is a mixed bag (small - the same chassis takes a 13" in the more expensive 3300/3310, and low-resolution, but reasonably bright and contrasty), but the battery life is nearly all-day, the keyboard is truly pleasant, and they are both compact and built like tanks for the education market. If you get one with a non-eMMC disk (I'd avoid the ones that do) the SSD is upgrade-able or can be pulled if needed if the machine is damaged. Oh, and the cooling is passive - no moving parts to break or fan noise - and the battery while "not user serviceable" is easily removed if you need to replace it in a few years.

I got one as a knock-around laptop before COVID and now have three of them with one for each kid and my travel one. I haven't used the 3190 non-2-in-1 but it looks like the same machine without the 2-in-1 hinge. Those haven't shown up on Outlet recently.

Lenovo has some similar education machines; I don't have personal experience with them but have heard good things.

I’m a fan of getting my money’s worth out of PC’s, but what I don’t do is buy low end. Windows 10 is fast when backed up by enough, but worthless on an old PC that wasn’t great new. We have 3 separate offices in my home and while that seemed a waste when we purchased new, Covid changed that and now I’ve spent the last month upgrading things within me home, my wife working from home, and now figuring out a fourth location with kids in school but also learning at home.

We initially looked at laptops, and I like the LG Gram laptops; super light, very powerful and incredible battery life. However; whether it’s real work or kids homework, majority is done in a fixed location within the house and with that I prefer desktop computers as they are easy to fix/upgrade.

Ive mostly done two screens for each, but I’m switching gears and going to wide screen formats instead. Actually in one office we are switching to a 55” screen that will be a hand me down from the great room. It’s almost 10 years old, but super thin and looks and works great. Mainly because I can’t stand clutter of cords, and using a 1080p flat screen means a simple hdmi cable hidden in the wall and none of this external speaker wires..., and a plus, the desk now will look cool again. We don’t play games, just a crap ton of zoom calls.

So for travel, I get by just fine with my iPad, and possibly one laptop or two that we share, but at home desktops are my preferred computer. That LG I mentioned seems to get good reviews on CNET, I’ve been looking at the 17” which is under 3 lbs and more 15” in physical size. Costco has it at a good price, $1099 if memory serves. More than you want to spend, but they have other smaller screen models that might work for you, or even drop down to I5 instead of I7.

Cool...thanks everyone for the great information.

The old laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15R 5537. It has an i7 4500u, 8GB RAM, and a 1TB HDD. I'm going to first take a shot at upgrading this to the point where it can be the kids' streaming machine. I ordered a $50 Samsung SSD and an external enclosure for the existing HDD. (I've also backed up all the data I care about on the HDD.) I'm hopeful that simply the act of installing faster storage and a clean OS will be good enough for our needs.

After that I'll keep an eye on the BF deals for ThinkPads. There seem to be some decent options in my price range...for not much more $$$ than the cheaper consumer-grade lines.

The SSD will likely be a night and day difference. If you hadn't planned to already, a clean OS reinstall is likely to help a lot as well.

Might be worth checking if the 8GB is 2x 4GB or 1x 8GB - probably not worth the $90 to replace 2x4GB to go to 16, but might be worth dropping in another 8GB DIMM at around ~$45 if it's already got 1x8GB

Laptop upgrade complete - it is indeed night and day! Boots in under 30 seconds with the SSD. Installing a clean OS from a USB drive took less than a half hour.

The memory is unfortunately 4x2 so I'll probably just leave it as is.

This machine will definitely suffice for the kids. If I see a truly great Black Friday deal, I may still buy a new one. Well probably look at the Thinkpad line and ignore the rock-bottom entry level machine deals.

If I had to buy a general-use personal machine right now, I'd probably get a Lenovo X13 AMD or T14 AMD - the 6 core Ryzen 5 version of either specifically. Blazingly fast compared to the current low-midrange Intel chips, at the expense of a fairly hefty hit to battery life relative to Intel, and really cheap for the power level.

The base model of the X13 with only a screen upgrade is going to suffice for many/most folks (quad core Ryzen 3 - better on battery life than the 6-core and still faster than most comparable Intel machines -- but the base 1366x768 screen is best ignored and upgraded) is a whopping $670 right now, and upgrading to the 6-core and 16GB RAM brings you up to all of $807. The T14 adds expandable memory and starts with the Ryzen 5 6-core. With the better (400-nit) FHD screen, 6-cores, 16GB, it's about $125 more than the comparably-equipped X13 (which is lighter and will have slightly better battery life) so for most people the X13 is going to be the better choice

(The other option I forgot to include in the prices above are a backlit keyboard and maybe the fingerprint reader - about $30 for the two of them.)

And an SSD is even better! <ducking>