PC Laptop for business: 16gb & refurbished/used is ok. Recommendations?

[Sam5281]

Hey guys!

Looking to buy a dedicated PC laptop for work with 16gb of ram & 500Gb Hard drive. Not entirely sure what processor would be best? Mostly looking in the refurbished/or certified refurb range, and not looking to go over the $500 price. Looking for a rugged, time proven, okay to be beat up around the edges but tried and tested for the long haul. Will be running 64bit programs. Would prefer buying from a business that has laptop pre-installed with all updates, drivers,and software etc.

TIA!

 

[pshufd]

Hey guys!

Looking to buy a dedicated PC laptop for work with 16gb of ram. Mostly looking in the refurbished/or certified refurb range, and not looking to go over the $500 price. Looking for a rugged, time proven, okay to be beat up around the edges but tried and tested for the long haul. Will be running 64bit programs. Would prefer buying from a business that has laptop pre-installed with all updates, drivers,and software etc.

TIA!

I would try to find a place that refurbs business PCs. These places don't advertise and, when you walk in, you see PCs (including Macs) all over the floor, on tables, racks, etc. They take in stuff coming off leases or that have been expensed and refurb them and sell them. I bought my 2015 MacBook Pro 15 from one of these places and I got a great price and it's performed perfectly. You can often haggle too.

If you're looking to save money, it can help to look at Craigslist. Sometimes people don't know what they have and you can upgrade RAM and HDD to SSD and wind up with a very nice system on the cheap. Just make sure you get a good CPU.

You can also look at the ForSale forum here at MacRumors.

 

[Sam5281]

Hm.

Guess I was looking for peoples hardware recommendations.

 

[Aoligei]

Hm.

Guess I was looking for peoples hardware recommendations.

Well, it is depends on what you want do with the laptop. Would you run processing intensive application? Would you do video editing? Or you just need a PC laptop for basic web browsing, office works etc?

If you just need a laptop to do lightweight task, any new laptop with decent processors, like Core i3 or AMD Rzyen 3 will do the job. I got a HP laptop with Ryzen 3, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD (You can upgrade if you want) and 1080P display for around 500CAD (it will be way less than 500USD)

If you are going to do things need processing power, you would then looking for refurbished or used laptop with at least Core i5 or even Core i7 processors. I would recommend against AMD for laptop if you are going for old laptops.

 

[nearfield]

I recently bought a used Lenovo T460p, 14 inch FHD matte screen, quad core processor. Something like this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thi...654215?hash=item54934e9787:g:dJcAAOSwfOhf9hXt

It was a lot more expensive here in Germany. Even though it was refurbished, crystaldiskinfo showed that the SSD was not doing well, and I had to replace it, which is really easy to do with these laptops. In another thread I collected a few links on that. There are detailed manuals from Lenovo and many videos on Youtube. You can even upgrade the RAM to 32GB, if I am not mistaken. The quad-core processor and the little 2GB graphics card work well for 2D CAD software, and even for games. The keyboard is great, and these Thinkpads have a reputation for being durable and able to take a beating.

 

[pshufd]

I recently bought a used Lenovo T460p, 14 inch FHD matte screen, quad core processor. Something like this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thi...654215?hash=item54934e9787:g:dJcAAOSwfOhf9hXt

It was a lot more expensive here in Germany. Even though it was refurbished, crystaldiskinfo showed that the SSD was not doing well, and I had to replace it, which is really easy to do with these laptops. In another thread I collected a few links on that. There are detailed manuals from Lenovo and many videos on Youtube. You can even upgrade the RAM to 32GB, if I am not mistaken. The quad-core processor and the little 2GB graphics card work well for 2D CAD software, and even for games. The keyboard is great, and these Thinkpads have a reputation for being durable and able to take a beating.

Lenovo is the current go-to Windows laptop provider in corporate America. US corporations used to buy Dell and HP but HP's quality took a big nosedive around 2004-2006. Dell had some problems though I don't know exactly when corporate customers abandoned them. Lenovo seems to make solid equipment based on this. I have never owned nor used a Lenovo. My favorite vendor for PC hardware is Dell but that's kind of a personal bias after using their hardware for a long time.

 

[nearfield]

Lenovo is the current go-to Windows laptop provider in corporate America. US corporations used to buy Dell and HP but HP's quality took a big nosedive around 2004-2006. Dell had some problems though I don't know exactly when corporate customers abandoned them. Lenovo seems to make solid equipment based on this. I have never owned nor used a Lenovo. My favorite vendor for PC hardware is Dell but that's kind of a personal bias after using their hardware for a long time.

That is the reason why you can find refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads in large numbers, as they are sold after a few years of use.

I had a Dell Latitude laptop for work that I ordered around 2007 or so. It was assembled in Poland, when Dell still had that big manufacturing plant in Texas, and they had expanded to Europe before everything moved to China. That laptop was built like a tank. At the same time, one of my students bought of one the first XPS 15, and it died after 2 years; we never figured out what was really wrong with it.

Instead of the Lenovo I had also considered buying the HP Zbook 15 G3 with a 4GB "professional" graphics card, but eventually decided against it.