Suggestions for a new, not to expensive, laptop for retiree.

[thailand49]

On 8/17/2024 at 11:47 PM, dddave said:

Pretty much every brand has it's fans and detractors.  Locally, ASUS seems to have a good reputation for build quality. 

 

If you are an older person, then display size may be more important to you than portability. 

The cheapest laptops have Intel Celeron processors which are their lowest end processors.  They will do what you describe pretty well but for not too much more money, a laptop with a 7th or 9th generation Ryzen or Intel I-3 or I-5 will give far better performance in the long run. 

For now, 8gb of RAM is sufficient but may not be 3 or 4 years from now as applications get hungrier and hungrier for memory.  16gb of memory would be a good investment.  If you like to download torrents, then a 512gb SSD is ok but if you download anything 4K, it can use a lot of space so a 1 terabyte SSD will again, make you more future proof.    A 15" laptop with a Celeron processor 8gb Ram and 512SSD will be between B12,000-B16,000.  Upgrading to a Ryzen-7 or Intel I-5 with 16gb ram and 1TB SSD will be 20,000+

Both Banana and Advice computer stores in many malls have decent reputations.   If you want to shop at  a very reputable online store who will give you excellent advice if you ask,  I personally recommend: www.invadeit.co.th   

LAZADA sells a lot of laptops but beware as many of the lower priced units are refurbished corporate machines, often 6 or 7 years old.  They would actually do what OP wants but may not be very dependable in the long run.

Very helpful!  Im in that category my 2016 HP 19inch is on the last leg.

Recently had to replace the hard drive here in Pattaya. While it was being worked on I stepped into Tukcom to look, Im kind of set on a Dell, 14 inch price was like 14,000 another upgrade I forget 12-16 gig also more memory for another thousand baht?

This Feb back in States I went to Best buy nothing too pricey some stores dont stock have to order then you need to buy a membership for like 250USD crazy. 

I figure with not having to pay sales tax 9% here I could spend up to 20,000 baht with favorable exchange rate I could get a better printer too.

At the airport going through security TSA girl joked pops whstvyou got there a T.V.

 

 

Edited August 21 by thailand49

[rickudon]

One word of advice  - cooling. Every laptop i have brought to Thailand has died within 3 years, due to not mich air-conditioning at my home. Laptops get too.hot to keep on your lap.  I swapped to a refurbished desktop 5 years ago and stand a fan next to it for cooling. Still going strong. My current laptop is now 3 years old and already has problems even though not used much (asus).

[connda]

On 8/17/2024 at 12:44 PM, khaepmu said:

I need to get a new laptop not  too pricy. I don't do much on it except YouTube, emails, google searches and download an occasional torrent or document to print.  No graphics or detailed spread sheets etc.

Give us a price range.  Also, do you need MS WIndows or can you get by using a Linux version.  MS Windows is hardware intensive, Linux is not.  You will not need anything but a basic graphic card which will bring the price down as well.

 

So again:  what is your definition of "not too pricey."  From the minimum to the maximum you'd like to spend in THB?

[connda]

39 minutes ago, rickudon said:

One word of advice  - cooling. Every laptop i have brought to Thailand has died within 3 years, due to not mich air-conditioning at my home. Laptops get too.hot to keep on your lap.  I swapped to a refurbished desktop 5 years ago and stand a fan next to it for cooling. Still going strong. My current laptop is now 3 years old and already has problems even though not used much (asus).

None of my laptops have "died," they just become too slow when I know there are significantly faster systems - so I upgrade to faster hardware and generally give my old system away or keep them as a backup.  But I do use these consistently.  Many of them are thin enough to fit in your laptop bag with the laptop.  No reason not to use them unless you're trying to conserve battery power.

 

[connda]

On 8/17/2024 at 11:47 PM, dddave said:

Pretty much every brand has it's fans and detractors.  Locally, ASUS seems to have a good reputation for build quality. 

 

If you are an older person, then display size may be more important to you than portability. 

The cheapest laptops have Intel Celeron processors which are their lowest end processors.  They will do what you describe pretty well but for not too much more money, a laptop with a 7th or 9th generation Ryzen or Intel I-3 or I-5 will give far better performance in the long run. 

For now, 8gb of RAM is sufficient but may not be 3 or 4 years from now as applications get hungrier and hungrier for memory.  16gb of memory would be a good investment.  If you like to download torrents, then a 512gb SSD is ok but if you download anything 4K, it can use a lot of space so a 1 terabyte SSD will again, make you more future proof.    A 15" laptop with a Celeron processor 8gb Ram and 512SSD will be between B12,000-B16,000.  Upgrading to a Ryzen-7 or Intel I-5 with 16gb ram and 1TB SSD will be 20,000+

Both Banana and Advice computer stores in many malls have decent reputations.   If you want to shop at  a very reputable online store who will give you excellent advice if you ask,  I personally recommend: www.invadeit.co.th   

LAZADA sells a lot of laptops but beware as many of the lower priced units are refurbished corporate machines, often 6 or 7 years old.  They would actually do what OP wants but may not be very dependable in the long run.

Nice write-up! 

[connda]

On 8/18/2024 at 6:39 AM, jaywalker2 said:

Even then you're probably better off with a portable ssd drive for storage and backup

External SSD drives are expensive little suckers.  I still just use HDD for backups and storage.  That's all they are - backup and storage - so there really isn't any need for speed.  Well, imho.  I just bought another 2TB HDD USB 3.0 drive to store some virtual machines backups.  They're plenty fast for just backing stuff up.

[donmuang37]

I bought a laptop from Amazon.com because I don't need a Thai keyboard.  Shipped to Thailand free (I'm a Prime member.)

AND no duty to import computers to Thailand.  Arrived in about 10 days; no problems.

 

Mine was a high end 17" so more expensive than you want, it cost 50% of a similar mode in Thailand.  Good luck!