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What's wrong with this Dell Vostro laptop?

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by OntPhoto on Mon Jan 08, 2024 8:43 pm

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I haven't bougght a laptop in a long time so have lost touch. This Dell Vostro 14 laptop sells for around $1,000 CAD. That is not expensive for a laptop. I know there is only 16gb of RAM (2 X 8gb) but I can upgrade that via Amazon. The graphics card, I'm not sure about. I suspect the graphics card is the cheap component? Video Card Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics. Any opinions and sugggestions?

Dell Vostro 14 laptop for $1,000 CAD only

I rarely if ever use a laptop these days. iPhone and iPad is what I use away from home. My Dell Vostro 13 from 8+ years ago (i5) is too slow to boot up and has Win 7 on it. Not worth doing much with it. I can still do Photoshop CS6 on it but it takes forever to boot up making it a painful experience compared to my Dell XPS desktop with Win 11 and iPad. .

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by Mark L on Mon Jan 08, 2024 9:32 pm

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I believe that the Vostro you mention uses the integrated Intel graphics; it does not have an independent, dedicated graphics card. Therefore it will either be very slow at some graphics intense processing, and/or may not be able to support some software. Personally, I always used Lenovo laptops when I was in the Windows world (I now use a MacBook Pro with an Apple processor).

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by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:58 am

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The advantage of a laptop with Intel Iris, which is an older version of Intel's integrated graphics, is battery life compared to the same laptop with discrete graphics. the disadvantage is that tasks that rely on the GPU are much slower.

One thing to consider, rather than spending $1000 on an old model and then more money to upgrade it, is a laptop that uses the new Intel Core Ultra processors. They sport Intel's latest integrated graphics which are dramatically faster than Iris (the new graphics are called ARC) but with drastically better battery life than any laptop with discrete graphics and for photography tasks, very little reduction in performance. Battery life on these things are 10-12 hours!!!

Core Ultra is Intel's new competition to Apple's M processor and approximates the M2 in performance for the currently available Core Ultra 7 155 and in some tasks beats even the M3 and lags behind in others.

I am now using one of these machines, the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo, which has an amazing 16" OLED screen, is very lightweight, uses a small USB-C charger rather than a large brick, and find it great for photo tasks. I'm getting between 8 and 12 hours of battery life. Perhaps if I were an extreme gamer, a discrete GPU laptop costing way more would be better but for photo, lightweight, amazing screes, this laptop is great.

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by OntPhoto on Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:04 pm

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Mark L wrote: I believe that the Vostro you mention uses the integrated Intel graphics; it does not have an independent, dedicated graphics card. Therefore it will either be very slow at some graphics intense processing, and/or may not be able to support some software. Personally, I always used Lenovo laptops when I was in the Windows world (I now use a MacBook Pro with an Apple processor).

Thanks. I am not looking for too much in a laptop. My desktop is where I want the best or latest.

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by OntPhoto on Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:16 pm

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E.J. Peiker wrote: The advantage of a laptop with Intel Iris, which is an older version of Intel's integrated graphics, is battery life compared to the same laptop with discrete graphics. the disadvantage is that tasks that rely on the GPU are much slower.

One thing to consider, rather than spending $1000 on an old model and then more money to upgrade it, is a laptop that uses the new Intel Core Ultra processors. They sport Intel's latest integrated graphics which are dramatically faster than Iris (the new graphics are called ARC) but with drastically better battery life than any laptop with discrete graphics and for photography tasks, very little reduction in performance. Battery life on these things are 10-12 hours!!!

Core Ultra is Intel's new competition to Apple's M processor and approximates the M2 in performance for the currently available Core Ultra 7 155 and in some tasks beats even the M3 and lags behind in others.

I am now using one of these machines, the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo, which has an amazing 16" OLED screen, is very lightweight, uses a small USB-C charger rather than a large brick, and find it great for photo tasks. I'm getting between 8 and 12 hours of battery life. Perhaps if I were an extreme gamer, a discrete GPU laptop costing way more would be better but for photo, lightweight, amazing screes, this laptop is great.

Thanks EJ. Aha, so it's an older version of Intel's integrated graphics. Maybe that explains the lower price. I'm going to think about this before buying. The desktop is my workhorse and where I want the latest technology. I purchased a Dell XPS desktop (i7) a couple of years ago based on your (and others) recommendations here.

A laptop is sort of a take-along computer for use when traveling or for use off-site. I'm not a gamer (maybe because I've always had slow processors and gaming would not be fun on a slow computer....I have purchased games like Flight Simulator but never played it because the computers and LCD at the time were slow. So, the desire is there but never got into it).

Just now I'm toying with the thought of doing video editing on a laptop. I have a ton of old Hi-8, Digital-8 and Mini Dv video tapes, some going back to 1997 of family which I have yet to edit or put on a storage device. These are precious memories. I'm just hoping the tapes are still in good ccondition.

The Dell Inspiron 14 seems to be a better deal. Has the latest graphics. Only $500 more.
Dell Inspiron 14 Plus Laptop with 13th Gen Intel Processor | Dell Canada

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by E.J. Peiker on Wed Jan 10, 2024 10:15 am

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Yeah I think that is a much better machine - I'd definitely spend the additional $100 on 32GB of RAM.

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by OntPhoto on Wed Jan 10, 2024 9:56 pm

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E.J. Peiker wrote: Yeah I think that is a much better machine - I'd definitely spend the additional $100 on 32GB of RAM.

For sure I will upgrade to 32 gb or more RAM. Is this laptop good enough for video editing?

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by E.J. Peiker on Thu Jan 11, 2024 11:11 am

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OntPhoto wrote:
E.J. Peiker wrote: Yeah I think that is a much better machine - I'd definitely spend the additional $100 on 32GB of RAM.
For sure I will upgrade to 32 gb or more RAM. Is this laptop good enough for video editing?

It should be fine - certainly not high end desktop performance level but also no slouch either.

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by OntPhoto on Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:43 pm

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E.J. Peiker wrote:
OntPhoto wrote:
E.J. Peiker wrote: Yeah I think that is a much better machine - I'd definitely spend the additional $100 on 32GB of RAM.
For sure I will upgrade to 32 gb or more RAM. Is this laptop good enough for video editing?
It should be fine - certainly not high end desktop performance level but also no slouch either.

Thanks EJ. That is a great price for a laptop to do video editing. I’ll run Photoshop CS6 on it too.

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by E.J. Peiker on Fri Jan 12, 2024 6:53 pm

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Since CS6 does not autoscale the fonts, you may have to make a registry edit in order to get the menu fonts big enough. here's how:
https://danantonielli.com/adobe-app-sca ... plays-fix/

I use this to run CS6 on a 4K screen to be able to read and navigate the menus. Sometimes, after major Windows updates, you need to redo this.

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by OntPhoto on Sat Jan 13, 2024 8:58 am

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E.J. Peiker wrote: Since CS6 does not autoscale the fonts, you may have to make a registry edit in order to get the menu fonts big enough. here's how:
https://danantonielli.com/adobe-app-sca ... plays-fix/

I use this to run CS6 on a 4K screen to be able to read and navigate the menus. Sometimes, after major Windows updates, you need to redo this.

Thanks EJ. I will lok into that.

Thank goodness for CS6. Best purchase ever.

I regret not buying the last version of Lightroom perpetual before they discontinued perpetual licensing. I have the version before the last version.