New notebook and Windows 11

[jj2007]

My current Acer box is Win7-64 and over ten years old. A new Core i3 is twice as fast as my old i5, so I reflect if I should spend 500€ (600US$) for a new notebook.

Here is an overview of differences between Win10 and Win11. It doesn't look so bad, although I guess I will cry bitterly when saying bye-bye to Windows 7.

My rough idea is as follows:
- Core i3 (i5 is 200€ more - is it worth it?)
- 8 GB RAM
- 512 GB SSD (or 256 GB SSD plus 1TB harddisk)
- big screen, i.e. 15.6 inches
- touchpad with buttons (yes, that's important)

What worries me are the reviews of various models on Amazon. HP "extremely slow", Asus "webcam like 15 years ago", false specs all over the place, etc. Often they write that the machine simply didn't start at all. None of them has Windows 11 preinstalled. No idea whom to trust... should I wait half a year?

[mineiro]

should I wait half a year?

Hello sir jj2007, how are you!? I hope fine.;
Well, the world is in inflation, waiting more you can't buy what you can afford these days. Maybe some promotion in Marry Cristmas.
I will wait 3 or 4 years to stabilize inflation.
Why not try linux? You don't need pay for windows license and can buy a better hardware with that money. Most Linux distros detect hardware fine and have live cd rom to try. I can run most windows programs with wine.

[Vortex]

Hi Jochen,

If Windows 11 permits, what about a dual installation? A solid state drive could host the two operating systems, Windows 7 and 11.

[hutch--]

I don't know the market in Italy but somewhere along the line I would want to have a good look at one running before I payed for it. I would talk you into a desktop but you may not have room for it. This much, don't settle for 8 gig of memory, it makes your performance marginal where 16 gig would make it run reasonable.

The lowest amount of memory I have in a current box is 32 gig and Win10 64 runs well on it. If it can be done, install Win10 as it is now a mature OS and wait until the upgrades for Win11 have become reliable. The shift from Win7 to Win10 is traumatic enough, start with a new OS that is not fully debugged yet and you will have to suffer the quirks for some time.

You should have some backup solution for all of your work, a USB plug portable disk or similar. This means with whatever new box you end up with, you can transfer all of your data to it safely.

[jj2007]

Thanks, mineiro, Erol & Hutch, for good advice

I'll wait and let my ideas (and Windows 11) mature. So far the old box is doing fine, the only real problem is the charger, which requires tender loving care and a lot of fumbling to do its work. The local dealer says it's probably the motherboard and would cost more than a hundred bucks to fix, with no guarantee that it really works.

It seems the price of a notebook is pretty much dependent on a) the price of Windows (chromebooks cost nothing) and b) the price of the cpu. The latter is very high right now, due to some bottlenecks in the industry. Cpu prices may fall in the near future. I'll wait...

[BogdanOntanu]

JJ,

Nothing is going to become better in time those days...
Things are going to get worst each day and year to come, hopefully slowly
Supply chain disruptions, energy problems, plandemic, etc

Maybe some new i18 CPU will be marginally better at performance but with a huge gain of price.

Also some laptop hardware is very badly recognized by modern Linux (mainly Asian made ones like ASUS for example) but works perfectly with Win10.

Win7 to Win10 is a brutal transition, be ready for a lot of conceptual issues.

My advice would be:
- i7 or i9 with 4-8 cores and 8-16 threads
- 16Gb RAM minimum or better 32Gbytes as Hutch said
- 1T SSD or M2 PCI SSD


i3 or i5 will be painfully slow with Win10, HDD is also too slow, SSD is better but for normal performance you need PCI / M2 SSD
256G or 512G SSD is not enough over time with Win10, you need 1T

Best regards,

[hutch--]

Have a look around at any AMD Ryzen powered laptops or notebooks as they tend to deliver more bang for your buck than low end Intel i3 and i5 CPUs. I don't know the Italian market where you should be a lot more familiar than I am but AMD have been making some very good low priced CPUs recently.

[mineiro]

Also some laptop hardware is very badly recognized by modern Linux (mainly Asian made ones like ASUS for example) but works perfectly with Win10.

Yes, it's necessary try other distros and check whats recognize our machines from user point of view; most motherboards come with device drivers to be compiled from programmers point of view.
Years ago a hardware forum detected what you told; they mapped hardwares sold in Latim America and agregate device drivers modules to their linux version called Kurumin linux; debian/QT/knoppix based.
Was the most used linux version in Brasil that time.

[jj2007]

My advice would be:
- i7 or i9 with 4-8 cores and 8-16 threads
- 16Gb RAM minimum or better 32Gbytes as Hutch said
- 1T SSD or M2 PCI SSD

Sounds good, but I didn't want to spend more than 500 Euros. After all, I am hanging around here because Assembly is fast even on crappy hardware and crappy OS versions

[LiaoMi]

Hi jj2007,

Intel® Core™ i5-11300H - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/de/de/ark/products/196656/intel-core-i511300h-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz-with-ipu.html

Innovative technische Funktionen
Intel® Gauß- und neuraler Beschleuniger
2.0
Intel® Image Processing Unit
6.0
Intel® Smart Sound Technologie
Ja
Intel® Wake on Voice
Ja
Intel® High Definition Audio
Ja
MIPI SoundWire*
1.1
Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost)
Ja
Intel® Adaptix™ Technologie
Ja
Intel® Optane™ Speicher unterstützt ‡
Ja
Intel® Speed Shift Technology
Ja
Intel® Turbo-Boost-Technik‡
2,0
Intel® vPro™ Plattformqualifizierung ‡
Nein
Intel® Hyper-Threading-Technik ‡
Ja
Intel® Virtualisierungstechnik (VT-x) ‡
Ja
Intel® Directed-I/O-Virtualisierungstechnik (VT-d) ‡
Ja
Intel® VT-x mit Extended Page Tables (EPT) ‡
Ja
Befehlssatz
64-bit
Befehlssatzerweiterungen
Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512
Ruhezustände
Ja
Thermal-Monitoring-Technologien
Ja
Intel® Stable Image Plattform Program (SIPP)
Nein
Intel® Volume Management Device (VMD)
Ja

EDell Vostro 5410 Laptop Intel i5-11300H 8GB Ram Core 256GB SSD 14" FHD Win10 Pro
Ricondizionato
EUR 649,96
https://www.ebay.it/itm/403262145732?hash=item5de44c04c4
https://www.ebay.it/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Intel+i5-11300H&_sacat=0&_sop=15

Intel® Core™ i3-11100HE - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/de/de/ark/products/217371/intel-core-i311100he-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html
Innovative technische Funktionen
Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost)
Ja
Intel® Speed Shift Technology
Ja
Intel® Turbo-Boost-Technik‡
2,0
Intel® vPro™ Plattformqualifizierung ‡
Nein
Intel® Hyper-Threading-Technik ‡
Ja
Intel® Virtualisierungstechnik (VT-x) ‡
Ja
Intel® Directed-I/O-Virtualisierungstechnik (VT-d) ‡
Ja
Intel® VT-x mit Extended Page Tables (EPT) ‡
Ja
Befehlssatz
64-bit
Befehlssatzerweiterungen
Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512
Anzahl der AVX-512 FMA-Einheiten
2
Thermal-Monitoring-Technologien
Ja
Intel® Volume Management Device (VMD)
Ja
Intel® Gaussian and Neural Accelerator 2.0
Ja
Intel® Image Processing Unit
6.0
Intel® Smart Sound Technologie
Ja
Intel® High Definition Audio
Ja
MIPI SoundWire*
1.1

i3-1120G4 - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/de/de/ark/products/209736/intel-core-i31120g4-processor-8m-cache-up-to-3-50-ghz-with-ipu.html
Innovative technische Funktionen
Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost)
Ja
Intel® Optane™ Speicher unterstützt ‡
Ja
Intel® Speed Shift Technology
Ja
Intel® Turbo-Boost-Technik‡
2,0
Intel® vPro™ Plattformqualifizierung ‡
Nein
Intel® Hyper-Threading-Technik ‡
Ja
Intel® Virtualisierungstechnik (VT-x) ‡
Ja
Intel® Directed-I/O-Virtualisierungstechnik (VT-d) ‡
Ja
Intel® VT-x mit Extended Page Tables (EPT) ‡
Ja
Befehlssatz
64-bit
Befehlssatzerweiterungen
Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512
Ruhezustände
Ja
Thermal-Monitoring-Technologien
Ja
Intel® Stable Image Plattform Program (SIPP)
Nein
Intel® Volume Management Device (VMD)
Ja
Intel® Image Processing Unit
6.0
Intel® Smart Sound Technologie
Ja
Intel® Wake on Voice
Ja
Intel® High Definition Audio
Ja
MIPI SoundWire*
1.1
Intel® Adaptix™ Technologie
Ja

You can wait another year and take Core i5-12600T  , depends on how tired you are of working on an old machine 

- touchpad with buttons (yes, that's important)

- it is extremely difficult to find one now 

[jj2007]

You can wait another year and take Core i5-12600T  , depends on how tired you are of working on an old machine 

- touchpad with buttons (yes, that's important)

- it is extremely difficult to find one now 

Yep, it's difficult to decide. Thanks for your advice

[hutch--]

Could you be talked into building a desktop ? So many advantages, more grunt from desktop CPUs, easier to put more memory in, stick an extra HDD, SSD or a spare USB plug in can or three. You could keep it for serious work at home and fix the old laptop for travelling.

[jj2007]

Could you be talked into building a desktop ?

I do have one, Hutch, and I didn't use it the last 7 years. It takes too much space, and I often take my notebook spontaneously to go for a walk. So it must be a notebook.

[hutch--]

Depending on how old it is, there are often tricks like putting the can under a table or putting it on a shelf then you only have the monitor and keyboard/mouse taking up space. I understand portable computers if you need one but it would be handy if you could do both. You could network the two together to move data around between them via wifi or a normal network cable.

If you remember, what CPU, memory and HDD does it have ?

[jj2007]

The old desktop machine has Windows 98 on it...

My current notebook has a 447GB harddisk, with 105GB free. So it seems I need at least a 512GB SSD, which means the 256GB models are out; same for those without touchpad buttons.