Looking for new laptop

[rosijayne]

Hi there
so I have had my Acer Aspire windows 10 laptop for around 7 years now and it is beginning to be a bit slower with loading programmes etc. 
I'd like to get a new one now, but would like some advice please.  I would probably stick with another Acer for familiarity, and would like it to be Windows 11, so my main questions are:  Should I get a Windows 11 pre installed, more expensive, but perhaps easier than downloading it myself?
And also, my current laptop has 1TB of storage, of which I have only used 180 GB of storage, so  should I stick with a 1TB storage or settle for a cheaper version with 256GB storage?
I would just like to add that I mainly use my laptop for Family History software programmes of Roots Magic and Family Historian, of which I am in the ongoing process of scanning and attaching photographs too, and family history documents, and surfing the web, microsoft word etc.
I am certainly not techy minded at all, and am looking for a budget of around £500-£600.
I would appreciate anybody's input here. Thanks in advance.
Gill

[Gadget]

Hi

If you want to stick with Acer and price range, a  consumer mag recommends the Acer Swift 3 SF314-43 @ £599

Reviewed Dec 2021

I've been happy with HP so don't know much about Acer

Gadget

PS - only thing they raised was the sound quality.

[rosijayne]

Thanks Gadget

[arthurk]

I have an Acer Aspire 5 which I bought at the beginning of last year, and am very happy with it. (Still on Windows 10)

Before that I was using a Lenovo, and initially I was quite happy with it - so much so that I encouraged my wife to get one too. However, the second one was a bit of a lemon and had some power/battery management issues, so we got a refund on it. She then chose an Acer, and as she was happy with it, in due course I got one too. My old Lenovo is still going as a spare, but that might now be developing power issues too.

The amount of storage might vary according to what kind it is. A traditional disk drive (HDD) may well be 1TB, but SSD's cost more so are typically less than that. SSD's are faster, and I thought it was worth compromising on size to go for one of these. Mine has 500GB and I expect that to be plenty, but if not I should be able to offload some lesser-used things to an external drive.

If you're already using 180GB, and there's a chance you might keep this laptop for 7 years, I'd suggest that you aim for 500GB too (or more?). Any new software you get in that time, plus more scans or bigger file sizes, will all want a chunk of your drive, and 256GB may not give you much leeway.

[andrewalston]

Before you lay out your cash, consider upgrading your existing box.

SSDs are a great way of improving speed when compared with traditional "spinning rust" drives. A good technician would copy the entire contents of your existing drive to the new one. Your existing software licences would still be valid.

Next best value is to take the amount of RAM up to its maximum. 4GB is now seen as a minimum.

At 7 years old, the battery will be tired. Replacing that will return its off-mains runtime without a large outlay.

The total cost of this would be about 1/4 that of a new machine.

Windows 11 has seen a dismal take-up since release, and with good reason. One recent industry analysis showed that there are now nearly as many Windows 11 installs as there are copies of Windows XP still in use. Another shows that Windows 11's share of the world's machines grew by 0.4% last month, while Windows 10's share grew by 6.6%.

[bluesofa]

I agree with Andrew that, if you can, upgrading to a SSD hard drive would improve the speed of your machine at the fraction of the cost of a new laptop.

However, if you are looking for a new machine that you may upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 in the future, do check that the laptop is Windows 11 compatible.  Windows 11 has stricter hardware requirements than Windows 10.

[stormi]

Just make sure you get an SSD hard disk (solid state) Get Win11 pre-installed on the machine if possible. It will cause you issues later on if the default operating system is 'last generation', ie; if you ever have to restore the machine to defaults.

[stormi]

After looking at all the best machines in your price range and specifications (on currys website) the following looks like the best value for money to me:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/dell-inspiron-15-3511-15.6-laptop-intel-core-i5-256-gb-ssd-silver-10230558.html

CPU: Core-i5-1035G1 Processor - Quad-core - 3.6 GHz - 6 MB cache
RAM: 8GB
HDD: 256GB SSD
Screen: Full HD
Windows 11

Price: as of 30 Apr: £449

Also, Acers equivalent as you like Acer:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/acer-aspire-3-15.6-laptop-intel-core-i5-256-gb-ssd-black-10224403.html

CPU: Core-i5-1035G1 Processor - Quad-core - 3.6 GHz - 6 MB cache
RAM: 8GB
HDD: 256GB SSD
Screen: Full HD
Windows 11

Price: as of 30 Apr: £429

Only real difference seems to be the Dell has a micro-sd card slot which is nice if you want to transfer pictures from a camera etc, and the Dell has bluetooth 5.0 & 2x USB 3.2 sockets. The Acer is bluetooth 4.2 and the USB is USB 3.1 x 1 - USB 2.0 x 2. They both get over 4.5 stars with over 100 reviews each, so they both look like well received machines.

Don't forget modern laptops don't have cd-rom drives anymore, but you can easily get yourself an external USB cd-rom drive if you need for your old program installations: https://www.currys.co.uk/products/sandstrom-ultra-slim-sedvdbk22-external-cddvd-writer-black-10227258.html or - https://www.currys.co.uk/products/dynamode-insixt-external-slimline-usb-cd-drive-black-04877726.html

If you decide to buy one just get it online, I used to work in currys and I do not recommend you expose yourself to their cruddy service. They'll also try to sell you a bunch of stuff you don't need and put you under pressure for no good reason.

[rosijayne]

Thanks so much for all advice received so far.
Still weighing up my options based on everybody's help.
Thanks all
Gilly