Buying a new windows laptop, I need your help and ideas.

[Captain Zero]

Looking for recommendations & thoughts about my expectations:

Anything under $1500 is in my range, but you could convince me to stretch a little more.

Should I stay with Win 10 or bump to 11?
I want 8-16 ssd ram and 1tb ssd hard drive, is there any reason to stay with ddr hard drive?

Is there a reason I should stay with 500G hard drive? I can't go lower than that.
if both ram and hard drive are ssd, is there a preferable combo?

I can live without a cd drive by keeping old laptop around for copies I need to make for my car with cd drive.

I like Lenovo. Before I retired my last laptop that my employer had for me was a Lenovo.
Do I need to change my mind on that? Is anything else good/better?

I bought this HP in 2014 so I'm getting antsy for a new one...

Will look forward to all replies and your thoughts.

[Earth-shine]

1. I bought one of these recently. I have no regrets.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09HV9PKJG/ref=dp_cr_wdg_tit_nw_mr

If you get one with Win 10, you can upgrade for free to Win 11.

> I want 8-16 ssd ram and 1tb ssd hard drive, is there any reason to stay with ddr hard drive?

There are semantic errors in this question.

DDR is your RAM. SSD is a type of hard drive. A new laptop will probably have an NVMe SSD hard drive.

[dixiechiken1]

2. Ooooohhh, I like that...

I've been thinking about getting a new laptop as well. The numeric keyboard is a must, (I use Excel a lot), and I see this has that. Good price, too. How's the speed?

[Earth-shine]

3. It's an I-5 with an internal PCIe drive. I find it to be quite snappy.

It came with Win 10. I upgraded to Win 11 via clean install, which eliminated the bloatware like Norton.

To make it faster, I turned off all of the Windows animation effects. Settings > Accessibility > Visual effects.

I've been turning off these useless resource-intensive affectations since Windows XP.

I turn them off primarily because I find them distracting. It also makes things a bit faster.

[dixiechiken1]

4. Alrighty then...

I think that's my new laptop. THANK YOU!

[AZSkiffyGeek]

5. Make sure that the new PC is upgradeable to Win 11 at least

My wife and I bought new computers earlier this year, and there were some great deals to be had w/ lots of ram and hard drive space - until I looked closer and saw that they were older Win 10 models that weren't compatible with Win 11. I wouldn't worry too much about getting a Win 11 machine right now, but definitely get one that will support it going forward, otherwise you'll just be getting a new machine in a couple more years.

[Best_man23]

6. My thoughts

I would go with Windows 10 Pro vice the home version. The Professional version has more underlying protection than the home versions of Windows. Would not cost that much to pay for the upgrade. Definitely get a laptop that can be upgraded to Windows 11. I usually wait for a year after a new OS is released before upgrading.

I would try to find a laptop with at least 16 GB RAM, my experience has been Windows and associated apps perform better if the system has at least 16 GB. For the hard drive, definitely go with an NVME drive. As much memory as you can afford.

Buy a portable USB DVD-RW when you can afford, since most new laptops do not come with built-in drives.

[hunter]

7. I haven't had any trouble with external USB cd/dvd drives.

My current "desktop" machine is a small box about the size of a trade paperback with an external CD/DVD drive beside it.