Seen this suggested in the comments on another post, seems the best deal I've found at around the £500
15.6 Inch Screen Intel Core i7 7500U Processor 8 GB RAM 1TB Hard Drive Windows 10 Operating System 1 year warranty
All comments (29)
rawwry11
2 Oct 17#1
i7 for around 500 serious heat
Agharta to rawwry11
3 Oct 17#11
Heat for the marketing department more than anything. i7 is just a term like GTi and without looking at the actual specifications it means very little.
plewis00 to Agharta
3 Oct 17#13
This.
The sad fact is it has confused the vast majority of the public and people may choose machines with unbalanced specs like this one over machines with a perfectly quick and usable i3/5 (with the same silicon as the i7) paired with a good SSD and display.
Agharta to plewis00
4 Oct 17#19
It's not Intel's fault though as i7 just means the best range in a particular class of CPU which is why the GTi comparison works. You wouldn't expect a GTi mini car to be a match for GTi Family car. It's basic marketing and anyone who doesn't grasp that is ignorant.
plewis00 to Agharta
4 Oct 17#21
It kind of is, there are some i7 mobile CPUs that are quad cores and some dual (the ULV series and a handful of other normal voltage ones) - as I’m sure you know. I think they should keep the i7 for the best in a segment with quad coreotherwise all that the i7 has over the i5 is a little more turbo and base clock.
To be honest, most of us may understand it but it’s comments from some people here about ‘great value i7’ or ‘ugh, only i3 at £500’ (when that i3 might have a 256GB SSD and 1080p IPS panel) when that tells a fraction of the story.
Agharta to plewis00
4 Oct 17#22
People that don't understand the complexities of car sizes, weights, engines, BHP, torque etc should seek advice when buying a sporty car and not just buy something with a GTi badge.
ULV is a different class than 35/45W+ CPUs and anyone who doesn't realise that should seek advice before purchasing. But many people seemingly lack common sense and just buy based on their own in this case erroneous assumptions. People can educate themselves quite quickly by asking on here for example. I don't see a problem with the i7 badge or the GTi badge. It's quite simple really.
plewis00 to Agharta
4 Oct 17#24
The car analogy works somewhat but the difference with cars and CPUs is that if you buy a 'GTi trim' car you can expect other half-decent components to go with it, e.g. uprated brakes, engine, seats, good ICE for example but with CPUs, companies like HP have this annoying habit of fitting a 'high-end' CPU along with weak other components or cutting corners elsewhere as you can see with the slow mechanical hard disk in this case.
Agharta to plewis00
4 Oct 17#25
Expectations and assumptions are the real problem here but I know what you mean. Buyer beware should always be the motto and the main thing to beware of is one's own ignorance as in the case here. But blaming others is part of the culture and it's so much easier to be lazy and not do your homework and then blame others when you make a poor choice.
hanpan999
2 Oct 17#2
Save £100 and get this. Only difference is that this is an i5 7200u, not an i7 7500u, but considering that both CPUs are 2 cores 4 threads, the performance difference will be very minimal.
Thanks OP. On the lookout for a laptop at the moment. Anyone know if a ssd can be added to this laptop? If so, could it go in addition to the current HDD or would it have to replace it?
plewis00
3 Oct 17#7
i7 in name only - waste of money for a ULV processor. As someone else said, get the i5 which has the same core configuration and spend the saving on an SSD if you want real performance. HP selling this with a slow 1TB mechanical drive at this price is a bit insulting really
Shard
3 Oct 17#8
I was looking at a laptop at the weekend for a friend, the mechanical hard drive was a real bottleneck, windows update + malwarebytes was bringing the disk activity to 100% for the first 5 minutes. I only really use SSDs these days, is this normal for a HDD?
plewis00 to Shard
3 Oct 17#9
That’s pretty normal. And you probably noticed it more as you’ve experienced an SSD. Malwarebytes scanning will be hitting the disk quite hard anyway and then a Windows Update on top, well, that doesn’t sound like fun. I usually install a small SSD and use external hard disks now for moving stuff.
TBH, an SSD will fix up most laptops that have hard disks and are built in the last 7 years, CPUs haven’t really got that much faster - 10% here and there, whereas an SSD is orders of magnitude quicker.
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Opening post
15.6 Inch Screen
Intel Core i7 7500U Processor
8 GB RAM
1TB Hard Drive
Windows 10 Operating System
1 year warranty
All comments (29)
i7 is just a term like GTi and without looking at the actual specifications it means very little.
The sad fact is it has confused the vast majority of the public and people may choose machines with unbalanced specs like this one over machines with a perfectly quick and usable i3/5 (with the same silicon as the i7) paired with a good SSD and display.
You wouldn't expect a GTi mini car to be a match for GTi Family car.
It's basic marketing and anyone who doesn't grasp that is ignorant.
To be honest, most of us may understand it but it’s comments from some people here about ‘great value i7’ or ‘ugh, only i3 at £500’ (when that i3 might have a 256GB SSD and 1080p IPS panel) when that tells a fraction of the story.
ULV is a different class than 35/45W+ CPUs and anyone who doesn't realise that should seek advice before purchasing.
But many people seemingly lack common sense and just buy based on their own in this case erroneous assumptions.
People can educate themselves quite quickly by asking on here for example.
I don't see a problem with the i7 badge or the GTi badge.
It's quite simple really.
Buyer beware should always be the motto and the main thing to beware of is one's own ignorance as in the case here.
But blaming others is part of the culture and it's so much easier to be lazy and not do your homework and then blame others when you make a poor choice.
Only difference is that this is an i5 7200u, not an i7 7500u, but considering that both CPUs are 2 cores 4 threads, the performance difference will be very minimal.
cpubenchmark.net/cpu…GHz - 4687
So the i7 is about 11% better than the i5, for around 22% more expense.
TBH, an SSD will fix up most laptops that have hard disks and are built in the last 7 years, CPUs haven’t really got that much faster - 10% here and there, whereas an SSD is orders of magnitude quicker.