PC Master Race

At work we buy workstation laptops for our engineers. From Dell, the exact same laptop cost $3,200 in January, $4,400 in April, and $5,900 as of mid-May.

We're just not buying them and instead shopping different brands.

The AI bubble has absolutely fucked pricing for computers.

So, I bought something better spec than that shortly before they fucked up the ram and storage prices for about $400usd less. All told, you got a great deal, I think? It's good hardware and I think lenovo isn't putting backdoors in the hardware anymore.

Stay strong out there friends. Even in AUD, this shouldn't be so expensive, right?

We are on Lemmy.

I am obligated to not only ask that you switch to Linux (please do), but I also must suggest a distribution (Mint).

I don't make the rules.

Remember to reinstall Windows, so you get rid of some of the bloat, if you aren’t gonna install Linux on it 😎

I think you made a good choice. I recently bought a Lenovo LOQ 17IRX10 at MSRP and I'm very happy with it. Before this I used a Lenovo Legion 5 17ITH6 for four years, and I only replaced it because Windows 10 is going EOL and I didn´t want to bother with switching to Linux on a dualboot.

I booted into Windows 11 a few times to check whether everything was working well, and that really cemented my decision to just wipe the whole thing and install Linux Mint. It was slow and cumbersome and I kept getting ads from either Microsoft or some preinstalled software. Switching to Linux didn´t go as smoothly as people sometimes suggested it would (but that's probably because I wanted to create a very specific setup), but now everything works very fast and it's just really nice and quiet.

Great deal and it should last a while. Don’t listen to the people here recommending you uninstall windows, let your kid figure out what they want to do with it.

You can remove any 3rd party antivirus though, if it came installed. Defender is good enough.

if they cant/arent willing to move to linux, i recommend installing something like tiny11, a stripped-down version of windows 11, without ads, edge browser, copilot

Thanks. Yes, just at home for school work and a bit of gaming.

That is AUD

All of the comments below are relevant. Also being in Australia, school of distance is a thing. He only attends campus a few times a year for social activities and exams

~Okay so not sure why you posted this AFTER buying it and not asking before~

Because sometimes you can’t walk away saying “hold the deal for me, I need to do some research. “ These things happen in the moment and you need to make a decision on the spoy

Idk how much Australian dollars are compared to pounds, but it seems like very good specs for the price. I got a fairly similar laptop (4080 vs 5060 would be the main difference) for about £3000 last year

Oof. Glad I bought my rig off a friend and paid in drugs.

You are a good dad for getting your son something he can really use. Most people would just give their kids a tablet or cheap out and get something that just barely works. This is a good machine I would happily use myself (after putting Linux on it). A bit chunky for taking it on the road, but presumably he would just use it at home anyways.

Not sure on those specific specs but on ebay you can often comfortably find ex-corporate laptops in mint condition for just 2-300 quid. Il never buy a first hand laptop after i "discovered" this trick.

Very fucking good deal. Well done mate.

Are those prices in dollaridoos or did you already do a conversion?

That's a good deal for 1500 AUD. The Ryzen 7 250 might sound weak based on category alone ("two gens old", mid-midrange), but it's still a Zen4 Hawk Point 8C/16T little guy at 26-30W TDP, comes with a quite performant Radeon 780M (meaning you could game on it without the RTX, even!), and it easily goes toe to toe with the Apple M4 (regular base model, non-Pro/Max!).

What this means is that while the dedicated GPU is disabled, you should get pretty solid battery life - up to 5-6 hours I reckon - while also being able to game with slightly better performance than the Steam Deck, AND with the dedicated GPU - usually while connected to mains - you'll get proper performance around 90-120fps on high/est settings in most games.

Oh, and one more thing. You might've spent a bit more than you intended BUT you bought a more future-proof hardware at a steep discount (you spent 25% more than intended, the seller got 25% less than intended). That laptop will last you about as more in time as much more as you spent on it.

Genuinely curious, what do you even use a laptop for when doing maths and science? UK here and I did both at A-level which is year 12/13. I don't think we really touched a computer for it, maybe the occasional pdf of an old exam paper.

I had a laptop, but it was mostly used for running a minecraft server.