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TMG1961

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My laptop is getting slower and slower. Opening Lightroom takes about 2 minutes and the battery lasts for about an hour. So time for something new. My budget is €1000
I am thinking about maybe getting a refurbished iMac or 15.4 inch macbook, but i don't have any idea which models/years to stay away from and which are good.

Anyone got any knowledge about what to buy and if older macbooks/iMacs are any good in 2022?
 
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Jack

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Hello TMG1961 TMG1961 ,

Unfortunately I don't have IMac as these are really expensive and you pay more for brand. For the same I can get an Windows laptop with better specs.

What laptop you having?

Have you try to delete all unnecessary files? You also can try reseting the laptop to default which will delete everything from it.
 
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TMG1961

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I have a HP Notebook -15-da0636nd. It has a intel Core i3 7th gen cpu, 8GB ram, a 128gb ssd, a 1tb hdd and a Intel(R) HD 620 GPU. It is running windows 11. Normal work is good but when it comes to photos it is very slow, also the battery is very bad, from 100 to 1% in about an hour. I don't have anything unnecessary running on the laptop, last time i did a full reset was last month.

A good windows laptop is also not very cheap here, €1000 is most of the times not enough.
 
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TMG1961

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Would this be good enough for the next few years?

Dell Precision 7710 | Intel Xeon E3-1535M | 16 GB | 512 GB SSD | 17,3'' Full HD 1920 x 1080 | NVIDIA Quadro M3000M 4 GB
or this one
HP ZBook Studio G3 Core i7 6820HQ| 32 GB | 512 GB SSD | Windows 10 | 1920 x 1080 | 15.6'' | NVIDIA Quadro M1000M 4 GB!
Price is €800 for the Dell Precision and €900 for the HP Zbook it is a refurbished laptop
 
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Chavezshutter

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I havent used a Mac since I stopped doing IT, they are for sure great when it comes to multimedia but rather pricey, for me though the bigger issue with Macs is that once you buy Apple they look for ways to keep you buying Apple but anyways, before you go down the path of buying a new machine you may want to look at what I think is an obvious bottleneck on your laptop which is 8 GB RAM, I used to run 16 GB and it was ok for editing but my pc ground to halt doing video editing, doing really well now at 32GB. I would recommend seeing what options you have to upgrade the existing ram you have in your laptop before considering an upgrade.

Most likely your battery is past its best, Lithium based batteries hold less charge everytime they are recharged, their internal resistance goes up at the same time and eventually wont hold any charge, happens to all batteries sooner or later.
 
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Jack

Love Macro
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Would this be good enough for the next few years?

Dell Precision 7710 | Intel Xeon E3-1535M | 16 GB | 512 GB SSD | 17,3'' Full HD 1920 x 1080 | NVIDIA Quadro M3000M 4 GB
or this one
HP ZBook Studio G3 Core i7 6820HQ| 32 GB | 512 GB SSD | Windows 10 | 1920 x 1080 | 15.6'' | NVIDIA Quadro M1000M 4 GB!
Price is €800 for the Dell Precision and €900 for the HP Zbook it is a refurbished laptop
If you have money, I would recommend this one:

HP ENVY 15-ep1001na 4K OLED Touchscreen Laptop NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 – Core™ i7​

  • Windows 11 Home
  • Intel® Core™ i7-11800H (up to 4.6 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 24 MB L3 cache, 8 cores, 16 threads)
  • 16 GB DDR4-3200 MHz RAM (2 x 8 GB)
  • 512 GB PCIe® NVMe™ TLC M.2 SSD
  • 39.6 cm (15.6") diagonal, 4K UHD (3840 x 2160), OLED, multitouch-enabled, UWVA, edge-to-edge glass, micro-edge, BrightView, 400 nits, 100% DCI-P3
  • NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Laptop GPU (6 GB GDDR6 dedicated)

My current laptop is HP Envy and very happy with it, yes I had same issue as you being slow, but I've deleted all unnecessary files, uninstalled useless applications, and works ok now. Apart when I edit videos :D
 

Jack

Love Macro
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I havent used a Mac since I stopped doing IT, they are for sure great when it comes to multimedia but rather pricey, for me though the bigger issue with Macs is that once you buy Apple they look for ways to keep you buying Apple but anyways, before you go down the path of buying a new machine you may want to look at what I think is an obvious bottleneck on your laptop which is 8 GB RAM, I used to run 16 GB and it was ok for editing but my pc ground to halt doing video editing, doing really well now at 32GB. I would recommend seeing what options you have to upgrade the existing ram you have in your laptop before considering an upgrade.

Most likely your battery is past its best, Lithium based batteries hold less charge everytime they are recharged, their internal resistance goes up at the same time and eventually wont hold any charge, happens to all batteries sooner or later.

A good laptop will last at least 5-6 years. And yes agree with you, buying Apple is expensive and you paying more for brand. Instead of buying a MacBook pro , I would go for windows laptop.

TMG1961 TMG1961 if you really want a strong laptop, look for Alienware, they made for gamers which means you should not have issues when editing images, but be aware, they aren't cheap :)
 

TMG1961

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I havent used a Mac since I stopped doing IT, they are for sure great when it comes to multimedia but rather pricey, for me though the bigger issue with Macs is that once you buy Apple they look for ways to keep you buying Apple but anyways, before you go down the path of buying a new machine you may want to look at what I think is an obvious bottleneck on your laptop which is 8 GB RAM, I used to run 16 GB and it was ok for editing but my pc ground to halt doing video editing, doing really well now at 32GB. I would recommend seeing what options you have to upgrade the existing ram you have in your laptop before considering an upgrade.

Most likely your battery is past its best, Lithium based batteries hold less charge everytime they are recharged, their internal resistance goes up at the same time and eventually wont hold any charge, happens to all batteries sooner or later.

I checked to see if i had some extra ram that i could use. I was lucky that i had the same as was installed in laptop (from previous laptop). So installed it and checked to see if laptop recognises that there was now 16GB installed and it does. Should make it a bit easier for the old girl now. I will read up on building your own computer, haven't done anything since i stopped working 10 years ago.
 
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TMG1961

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A good laptop will last at least 5-6 years. And yes agree with you, buying Apple is expensive and you paying more for brand. Instead of buying a MacBook pro , I would go for windows laptop.

TMG1961 TMG1961 if you really want a strong laptop, look for Alienware, they made for gamers which means you should not have issues when editing images, but be aware, they aren't cheap :)
Never heard of Alienware before. Will have to do a google search for that.
 
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Chavezshutter

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I checked to see if i had some extra ram that i could use. I was lucky that i had the same as was installed in laptop (from previous laptop). So installed it and checked to see if laptop recognises that there was now 16GB installed and it does. Should make it a bit easier for the old girl now. I will read up on building your own computer, haven't done anything since i stopped working 10 years ago.
That's a great outcome, should run a little better for you. CPU and GPU are rarely a bottleneck unless of course you run very old versions and push your laptop with hardcore programs and games, most of the time as long as you have decent RAM and good disks ( operating system-ie Windows should be on an SSD, I would look into that as a possible next upgrade if possible) you can get decent performance from most machines for a good number of years.