Laptop choice

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Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

Yes Fluids,, anything with an i3, SSD and lots of ram. [ just. dont. skimp. ]
good for another 5 years,,:cool:

or this?
Asus' Pascal Laptops To Feature SLI GTX 1080s, Water Cooling Docks

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Wow ... water cooled laptop ... for real ? What sort of coolant does it run ? Glycol or OAT ?? :p

Yes, SSD + RAM+RAM+RAM .... The Tecra has more SSD but an older CPU with 16GB Max (should be plenty for my needs) ... The Dell has the newer Skylake with a 32GB (doubt i'll ever need that much) theoretical max but 128GB SSD, and costs more ... add the price difference + a bigger PCIe SSD (Dell can take a PCIe which is fater than m.2 SATA) and the Tecra is looking like a much better value for my needs. Also has the better 1600x900 display & better video

... 5yrs ?? ... at my turn around time it better be more like 7-10yrs !! :p

... still thinking .......... wife & 2x kids all had Dell laptops some years back that didn't go the distance so I'm a bit wary of Dell, with all my Toshiba's giving zero problems.

The Tecra A10 i'm using is SATA ... does XPPro play well with SSD ?? I know the A10 will run Win7 64 bit OK but it's max is 4GB Ram ... and i'd like to keep it as an XP machine.


Can anyone tell me which of the two machines I listed is the outright better spec' machine ??

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Originally Posted by Fluids

Can anyone tell me which of the two machines I listed is the outright better spec' machine ??

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The Toshiba gives you the older generation processor and slower DD3 Ram - but i7 rather than i5 and twice the size of SSD.


The Dell gives you newer generation processor and DDR4 RAM - but only 1/2 the SSD size and lower spec processor

One is Win 7 the other Win 10..... Looks like you can get windows 10 drivers for the Toshiba so if the OS was a concern you could upgrade easily enough.

I doubt you will pick a huge difference between them to be honest.

Personally I'd lean to the Toshiba - have you got hands on with them both?.... which one do you like?

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Originally Posted by Bytemrk

The Toshiba gives you the older generation processor and slower DD3 Ram - but i7 rather than i5 and twice the size of SSD.


The Dell gives you newer generation processor and DDR4 RAM - but only 1/2 the SSD size and lower spec processor

One is Win 7 the other Win 10..... Looks like you can get windows 10 drivers for the Toshiba so if the OS was a concern you could upgrade easily enough.

I doubt you will pick a huge difference between them to be honest.

Personally I'd lean to the Toshiba - have you got hands on with them both?.... which one do you like?

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Thanks Mark .... No, can't get hands on, so unfortunately it's purely down to research & advice.

My current A10 is a 1680x1050 15" and the Toshiba is a 1600x900 14" ... research again seems to place both close, whereas the Dell is only 1366x768. The Toshiba has a Nvidia GeForce 16S-GM 2GB video, the Dell only the onboard GPU, so in theory, the Toshiba should have a better video capability.

Checking the CPU's against one another online seems to have them about on a par with one another ... much of a muchness performance wise as I see it.

Both can be docked. My A10 lives in a dock at work. My 2x older SatPro4600 PIII's are docked as well.

DDR3 vs DDR4 .... 33% faster on the Dell and a CPU than can go 32GB ... jury's out on that one for my use. Don't think it matters too much. Extra 8GB in the Toshiba will be around $50-60 and 16GB is plenty.

The Toshiba out-of-the-box means I don't have to root around upgrading the SSD and re-install the OS ... and Win7 Pro 64 bit will be just fine as it's more business use oriented ... can update to Win10Pro at a later date IF I feel the need (but all the extra crap Win10 seems to have is just stuff I wouldn't need or use), and since both have a 3yrs warranty (Toshiba is a prepaid return/deliver - Dell is onsite) it covers me until the end-of-support for Win7 anyway and maybe by then I can get a newer machine with Win10 ??

Yes, my feeling was it's a case of 6 or one 1/2 doz' the other, with the Toshiba being around $100 cheaper with an easy Ram update for $50 ... Which one do I like ? ... The Toshiba, based on my good run with the current A10 and 2x previous Toshiba's .... both have 4G/LTE which I wasn't looking for, so that's just a bonus, and the Toshiba is still listed on the Toshiba Aus website at $2805 ... I'm paying $879, so nearly a $2000 saving ... the Dell site shows as current, but with 256SSD + 4G/LTE options makes it $2750 ... I'm paying $990 with 128SSD ... add Ram and 256SSD upgrade by me and its around $1240 ... $360 more + my time to get it sorted & setup.

... thank you very much for your thoughts ... kind of confirms what I've been thinking ... the Toshiba's looking good I think. Hope the 14" screen is workable as I've been used to the 15.4" for a long time ... ??

Hey! It's only money !! :cool:

So I pulled the pin on the Tecra ... and since we had a 20% off Fathers Day Sale happening I also bought an extra 8GB ram for $48 and a 500GB Samsung EVO 850 mSATA SSD for $207.00. I'll pull the 256GB mSATA and use it in the A10 or maybe into the 2nd laptop I purchased for use in the workshop at work. Still have to install the RAM and SSD, just waiting on an external enclosure so I can clone the 256GB mSATA.


So far I'm pretty happy. Win7 x64 and happily running all the stuff I was running on the A10 under XP ... some of it is 16yrs old :p I like my old software ;) Microsoft must hate people like me ...


Boot times are unbelievably quick!! I'm sold on SSD's now :) ... and I'm getting uptimes on battery of up to 11.5Hrs under light use before recharge.


I also scored a Satellite Pro R50 i7-5500U 8GB 1TB HDD for the workshop ... $399 !! (refurbished - factory packaging and looks new) ... I think someone made a mistake ! :)


Thanks for the help people.


Sent from the new Tecra z40.