[ Off topic ]

Couldn’t find a laptop-specific community to ask this question.

I’m thinking to buy a 2nd hand/refurbished laptop.

For study purposes, browsing the internet, tinkering with a few note-taking apps like Obsidian, Capacities, Logseq etc. I’ll persue coding in future.

Will definitely use linux. Probably Zorin OS or Fedora.

My last laptop broke back in 2023 and I’ve never touched a pc/laptop since. This is probably why, I lack the understanding of computing power of laptop grade processors in today’s standard.

I just want to know that the things I’m hoping to do with my yet-to-buy laptop within a linux environment, will a i5 chipset be enough?

Here’s what specs I’m hoping to get alongside the chipset:

16 GB of DDR4 RAM ( Non-soldered ) ( At least )512 GB SSD ( any variant will do )

I’ll eventually upgrade the RAMs and SSD in future. Maybe when I’ll start coding. But for my study purposes, 16 gigs is more than enough.

Will i7 be a perfect balance with the 512 + 16 GB combination or i5 will be efficient enough?

[ Picture is collected from another Lemmy post. Excuse the picture ]

  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    They make a new i5 every year so they’re all very different. Which is are you looking at?

  • Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk
    8·
    3 days ago

    I’m running an i5-7300hq and 16gb of ram, it’s still serviceable but it is starting struggle sometimes. If it isn’t a 10yo i5 you’ll probably be alright.

    • Mnem667@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      3 days ago

      May I ask what you are doing that counts as struggling?
      I have a Dell i5 5th gen laptop, and with PopOS it’s running fine.

      • Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk
        3·
        3 days ago

        Mostly playing Beamng.drive, but while multitasking the cpu will peg at 100% quite often and it’ll feel sluggish. But I’m not really using that laptop anymore other than for gaming so I can live with it. It is on Linux (pika os)

    • Potential Piñata@sh.itjust.worksOP
      31·
      3 days ago

      I’m opting for a Thinkpad as it comes with great hardware customization options.

      But thinkpads are hard to get as it has high demand. Even in the 2nd hand market.

      Last November, I talked with a seller, he has a T480 in his collection but it has i5.

      I’m hoping he has other models and tiers of thinkpads with higher gen of i5 or i7.

      • Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        Thinkpads are really available from recyclers on (among others) eBay. Most are around 4-5 years old, and came from large corporate environments. The 14" varieties are the most common, so T4x0/T14. The best price point right now is probably the T490 or T14 Gen 1.

        Most have some soldered RAM, but also have an extra slot. The upshot is that no one is raiding the soldered RAM for resale, but it obviously can’t be upgraded either.

      • Markus29@lemmy.today
        2·
        3 days ago

        I have a T480 with an i5, it’s more than adequate for browsing, office, I even run Qgis on it.

      • a_person@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I recently got my first thinkpad, a p15v gen 3 for 500$. It is a newer model, 2022, but has an i7-12800h. I would say just look for a good deal.

  • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Laptops are heavily throttled to start. An i5 isn’t unusable. But an i7 especially of that vintage is gonna be way more serviceable just because of hyper threading. My two Linux desktops are 6th gen i7. Still very usable today

  • dumbass@piefed.socialEnglish
    61·
    3 days ago

    You don’t have to go shopping for computer parts to want to beat the shit out of Sam Altman, just look at a picture of him, that’s enough.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleCompare.php?redirect

    Plug in your last processor and your current processor and it’ll tell you roughly how their single-thread and multi-thread (assuming all cores usefully saturated, which is uncommon) performance compares.

    In general, single-thread performance, which is most relevant for most software, hasn’t been improving all that rapidly since the early 2000s.

  • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 days ago

    I find the most reasonable deal right now is to help people around you who are hell-bent on getting Windows 11 despite their current Windows 10 machines not being compatible, gently inquire about what they’re doing with their old Windows 10 PCs, see if you can score one that’s 5ish years old, which will be totally fine for most non-AAA, cutting edge games, install Linux, and try to ride that out until the bubble bursts.

    Remember… old hardware from people who want it to “just work” is the best deal in technology.

    • Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      New hardware that isn’t W11-compatible was last released in 2017, Intel 7th Gen. You’re talking 8+ years old, probably more.

      That said, an i5 6th Gen (extremely common, since these were the last to support Win7, and can easily be found on used enterprise machines) is still plenty powerful for all sorts of tasks.