Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Our team for the first time is going to buy a windows laptop for the drivers station. It will be the primary coding laptop. It will interface with github. It will be 64bit windows.

Does anyone know which windows version?
How much memory?

I have a tiny budget and don't want to make mistakes.


Thank you in advance

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Windows 10 seems to be testing out just fine for the Beta test teams experimenting with this coming season's software.
That's going to give you the longest supported OS life span.

More memory is always better, but look for the price breakpoint where more memory gets expensive.
16GB of memory will support you for a long time to come.

Disk space is usually fine with what they sell nowadays.

Better graphics cards are only necessary if you plan on using it for CAD work, but even then you can go with a lower-end gaming graphics card.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Windows 10. It is the newest, and in my opinion, the best. (I have been using it since January as a Windows Insider).

I would get at least 8 GB of RAM, more if budget allows.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

It's good to hear that folks are having success with windows 10. I've also been messing with it for quite a while as an insider, and so far, I have no desire at all to move from windows 7 on my "real" computer.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

I recommend something with a Solid State Drive (SSD) and a full HD (1920x1080) screen, and 8GB or more of RAM. The SSD is a big factor, in allowing you to launch programs, start up, and reboot quickly. Also, since it has no moving parts, it is not as susceptible to damage as you are moving it around, if it gets dropped, impacted, etc. On laptops nowadays, I recommend a 1080 screen. 768 pixels in height is just not enough for modern day workflows. 1080 will allow you to see more lines of code at a time, and to get more on the screen. I recommend 8GB of RAM or more so you don't ever approach dipping into virtual memory space, which is much slower. By the time you load the OS, a browser or two, and some programs, it's easy to max out 4GB these days.

If you were really on a budget, you might consider this laptop. It's essentially the lowest priced laptop with a 1080 screen on the market currently. While it lacks 8GB of RAM and an SSD, those things can be added with a bit of work involved, however it does take someone technologically inclined to do it.

As a disclaimer, I have no direct experience with this particular laptop.

The good news is, you're in the right time of year for buying laptops. This is right when all the deals are to be found.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

If you can swing $600, consider something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...6551-_-Product

. durable
. easy to get parts for
. 8GB RAM
. SSD
. good screen resolution

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

A solid machine with good specs, but I'd be weary of shelling out $600 for a 3-year old refurb.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Costco often has great deals on (new) laptops that in the past has rivaled prices I've seen for refurbished ones. I think they have something new on sale every week / 2 weeks.

It's $100 more than the laptop linked above, but they currently have the Lenovo Ideapad 500s on sale for $699 + $25 shipping. The sale ends 11/15 though.
Link: http://www.costco.com/.product.100226901.html?
Specs: 8GB RAM, i7, 256GB SSD, 14" screen (1920x1080), windows 10

If you don't mind replacing out the hard drive yourself or are okay with a regular one, and don't mind a 1366x768 display, they have the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 for $529.
Link: http://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiron-...100232353.html
Specs: 8GB RAM, i5, 1TB hard drive, 15.6" screen (1366x768), windows 10

You can also get the same laptop for $429 if 4GB RAM is enough (http://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiron-...100156017.html)


Their entire list is here: http://www.costco.com/all-laptops.ht...y=PriceMin%7C0

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

I'm a fan of those T series Thinkpads, as much for the ability to string them along through repairs as I am for the specs. My goal is to get something that can withstand some abuse.

Rachel's Inspiron idea (hi Rachel!) is a good suggestion too. If you swap the HDD you can recover ~$50 on Ebay for it.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

I'm on Windows 10 now, upgraded from 8.1. But I'm only on those because my laptop switches to a tablet mode. Windows 7 is still a much better desktop system. You won't have driver incompatibility problems and it's a more intuitive desktop GUI.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Oh you kids with your new fangled Win 7 :rolleyes: Did steam powered XP go out of style?

to the OP

Win 10

I love my SSD drive, it makes slow systems fast. Samsung is my brand of choice. Buy new, the $19 you save on referb isn't worth it,

Sanddrag says 8 GB of memory. Good if you are doing CAD, for Labview/Java/it's our driver station, 8GB is overkill. So 4GB is fine.

I'm a road warrior, so I drive Lenovo Thinkpads. The current one is a T61. Old, but did you know that 16+ of them are on the ISS? This one has 17 months on it, some keys are starting to show wear.

You can buy referbs from a known dealer, but buy 2. When the first one dies (and it will) pull and slam the SSD drive into the new system. Then look again for replacements. Why yes, there is a spare T61 in my robot lab, thanks for asking. Actually there are two....

Your price point is about $300, that way when you buy two it's not an ouch moment.

Get a used t430 off eBay with an ssd 8gbs of ram and at least a 3rd gen i5.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Our team is Beta Testing this year's LabVIEW and having no issues with windows 10.

Anyone looking for a laptop who is on a strict budget, I HIGHLY recommend arrow direct.

4GB will run LabVIEW quite well, and I run it on several labtops that have a pentium core 2 duo with no issues.

www.arrowdirect.com

I just priced a nice Dell I5 with 8 gigs of ram for $200. I wish I had the contacts to connect Arrow Direct with FIRST Choice.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Word of warning, be weary of Lenovo, as they are notorious for adding malware (like Rootkits and superfish,) which will mess with your usage on the internet and the data it takes. If you get one, make sure there is nothing out of the ordinary on it.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Apparently, it did not!

I'm a late adopter, I admit. I usually use stuff until it doesn't work well anymore.

I would do a full reinstall anyway regardless whether I'm buying new or used. Lenovo is one of the better ones have you ever opened up a stock HP laptop. Asus and Gigabyte are 2 of the only brands that ship their laptops clear of bloatware.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

They supposedly kept their business-grade computers clean, but any manufacturer will add bloatware. If you order from the Microsoft store, you will get a clean Windows install. If not, you can use the reset feature in Windows 8 or 10 to get rid of the bloat.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

There are definitely some good deals here. Thanks for sharing! One thing I dislike about the site though is it does not seem to mention screen resolution anywhere. That's a deal-breaker to shopping here for me. I would also not go as far back as a GEN1 processor if buying a refurb. There were significant performance (and battery life) gains seen in GEN2 and onward.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

I'd go for a used/refurb Dell Latitude E6xxx unit if durability is of concern. While Lenovo T series is good too, I've always had better luck with latitudes (less fussy with hardware changes, etc.). They're very durable and will (probably) only need replacement due to obsolescence.

I'd avoid Dell latitude E5xxx however... I had an E5530 that went through screen hinges and lids like potato chips. The E6430 I moved the guts to has been a lot better.

Last, Just my opinion, but I'd be wary of anything HP, acer/gateway, or Lenovo. I've never had good luck with any of those.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Windows 10 (assuming you get the latest version) is not exactly clean by any means. I know im stretching it a bit, but i dont think i need candy crush on my computer.

Back to the thread, you have some great options here. Make sure you pick a good computer for your team!

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

HomeDepot and Target had point of sale systems based in Windows XP - all you had to do was look at the POS back in 2014 to know they were using an OS which had gone end-of-life years before. HomeDepot's IT department even went so far as to blame Microsoft. The IRC channels had some pretty funny memes at that point. Subway also had issues but that was more due to them not updating the point of sales since the hack happened while XP was still receiving a few security updates.

So yep, XP went out of style. ;)

... Also, this ...

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

I'm not alone in using windows 7 still....

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Thank you all for replying on this thread. This is very helpful to choosing a laptop. My concern was the 2016 DS and supporting software would be windows 10 only. Apparently that won't be the case.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Most of my machines are Windows 7.
I also have three XP's still in active service.
I even have a couple of Mac OS 10.4's

The 2016 s/w works great on Win 7, too. Not so much XP though.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Way back to 10.4 eh? :) I still have a few machines running 7.5, although I pulled those from active service in 2005. Shoot, I still have my Apple IIC+ I should fire up, and a family member has an Altair 8800 fully functional, but kept in storage.

Although we're diverging from the thread's original topic, a good lively discussion of operating systems is always a fun one. I still have two frequently-used XP systems running very well. It's incredibly fast on an old Pentium D with 2 Gigs of RAM. One is on a network, the other is not. The use of USB flash drives in each does scare me a bit. Both are CNC machine controllers, and I find XP better suited to this task, especially on the older hardware, than a more modern OS. One of the CNC machines used to run MS-DOS, and even that worked pretty darn well, and was incredibly fast even on a Celeron 400MHz machine. In fact, my little CNC mill at home still runs MS-DOS, although if I were to do it again today, I'd go for LinuxCNC.

I ran XP daily in my Intro to Engineering class up through June of 2014, and it still worked quite fine for our purposes at that point. We still have middle school tech classes and computer labs running XP, but we've essentially eliminated it from our high school campus, aside from the aformentioned machine controls. The problem with XP was that around 2014, software companies stopped supporting new versions of their software on it, and XP's days were quickly becoming numbered. The other problem was that it was 32-bit, and could really only practically address 3.5 Gigs of RAM. There was 64-bit XP, but it was never really a thing for the typical desktop user.

These days, it's getting kind of difficult to install a fresh copy of XP from scratch and fully patched, since I believe they've taken down the update servers. Last time I did it was a couple years ago, and it took a few days to install and update everything, even starting with an SP1 install CD. There was a total of something like over 600 updates between SP1 and a fully patched SP3 system.

As for 8.1, I have it on a Surface Pro 3 and although I consider myself very proficient and fast in 7, I feel like a bumbling idiot trying to use 8.1. People say it's not that different, and it isn't, but some of the simplest tasks are so convoluted to do or access in 8.1. It's UI is honestly a huge step backwards. I do wish 7 had the same Window snapping and resizing that 8.1 had though. Other than that, 7 is excellent. I used 10 only once on a laptop on demo in Costco. It seems okay, but the start menu still does not provide the power and function of the Windows 7 one.

Anyhow, OP, please let us know if we can help you any further with your team's specific needs in specifying a new system.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

Fun is a matter of opinion. I work with a mission-critical system having client software deployed at many locations across North America that will not function on anything more recent than Windows 98. A need for hardware access to the serial port keeps an important part of it from working in a virtual machine.

Re: Windows operating system for new team laptop
 

That sounds like fun! Like the fun the guy had who bought my Tektronix 4010 so he could have a hot spare for a system that still used one...and they didn't want to spend the money needed to redesign the system to use something modern.