O.T., But Would Appreciate Any Guidance

[MasterBlaster]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'll let you know what I come up with. Spoiler alert: I've always been a Dell fan, and Lenovo is my close second. I built MANY desktop machines, but am leery of opening a notebook - just have a fear of not getting all those tiny parts back in the case.

 

[dmroeder]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'll let you know what I come up with. Spoiler alert: I've always been a Dell fan, and Lenovo is my close second. I built MANY desktop machines, but am leery of opening a notebook - just have a fear of not getting all those tiny parts back in the case.

The parts are big enough, it's those tiny screws that get ya! I have these large flat rare earth magnets handy when I open one up. The screws go on that so I don't accidentally scatter them.

You really won't go wrong with Dell IMO. There are other brands that might get you a little bit better bang for the buck, however Dell's are always solid.

 

[MasterBlaster]

The parts are big enough, it's those tiny screws that get ya! I have these large flat rare earth magnets handy when I open one up. The screws go on that so I don't accidentally scatter them.

You really won't go wrong with Dell IMO. There are other brands that might get you a little bit better bang for the buck, however Dell's are always solid.

That’s my buying philosophy - quality and dependability and service above price. I used to tell vendors - Look, I’m not sayin price is no object, I’m saying that quality and dependability are more important than price. Nobody ever got fired for buying Allen-Bradley if it was within the budget. Served me well for over twenty years in potable water treatment.

 

[CX_Luigi]

I am a big fan of the Lenovo ThinkPad line, at least the T and P series which have great build quality. X1 Carbon also have a fanbase but I haven't used one. I think the X1 is a lighter model where you lose some power and features for less weight, like a MacBook Air. Some of the Yoga models look enticing but I don't know much about them. Other series are not as well built and I wouldn't consider them. Custom builds have crazy long lead times nowadays, and many stock models are in short supply.

A friend has a touchscreen that took me a while to get used to. I would try to point at things to explain and select things when I didn't want to. Once I got a touchscreen and got used to it, I think it's great.

I have four 14" T series, all with touchscreen. My work laptops are 14" T series without touchscreen and I miss the touch. I also have a 17" P series. If touchscreen was available on that with 4K, I would have got it. I did consider a Dell XPS 17 to have a touchscreen, but that would have cost about a thousand more than the P17.

If you can go through Perks at Work, it's the best Lenovo pricing I've seen, at least for me. Lenovo is our current corporate supplier which might help.

seconded your recommendation in full, am already on the 3rd purchasing cycle with Thinkpads. Older ones are all with me, and the oldest of the lot (Thinkpad T410) is my current home workstation, doing perfectly fine for my purposes. My current workhorse is a P52 well beefed up (64GB, 2x1TB SDD, 1x1TB HDD), excellent for the tasks i need to have. Working colleagues are mostly on Dells, while I think they are also good, building quality and service are often hit and miss.

 

[James Mcquade]

we use a Dell Lattitude 5420 - Rugged.
it has 2 removable batteries. 512 Gb pull out hard drive, sd card slot, (3) usb 3.0 ports, usbc display port, hdmi port, ethernet port, and best of all, a built in serial port.
i would use vm's for my programming and other things.
no complaints so far.
james