whats minimum laptop specs for scanning photos and minimum cost

[car10002]

hi everyone

next year am looking to get a whole new laptop as the current ones too old for anything more than looking on internet.

what would be your minimum laptop memory and hdd sugestion and what type of processor fron intel would yous sugest to be fast enough to scan photos.

seeing alot of 500g hdd and 4gig memory for good prices and wondered wether theyre fast enough or would you be better with one with 8 gig memory.

plan to also do video too at times, and also thinking if money allows to get one for normal use and another one for videos.

would yous be thrifty and keep using your laptop until it completely dies even if its telling you to replace it or update every 2-3 years and keep using the best one for videos and the other one for everyday and rotate them around.

[roKWiz]

I use an ASUS eeeBook which would easily be 2 years old now.

Me personally, I always look for one with expandable memory, like a SD card slot, all of my files are on a SD card of 128Gb currently which I can take over to the next laptop I buy with expandable memory.
My programs are still on the computers C drive. Nothing else is.

The current SD is more that enough to deal with my scanned pics, work related docs, quotes, invoicing etc, off line website I maintain and massive collection of vintage truck manuals I sell.

I guess if your into online streaming, gaming etc you'll will need more capacity which other here will know more about.

[minheim]

If you are hoping to keep it for a few years and are not rough on your gear then I would look at getting an 8th gen i5 processor and 8 gb of ram. That will give you something that is relatively future proof and also with enough grunt to do some higher processing tasks and also will get you good built in video processing unit. In terms of hard drive you could get a 1 terrabyte mechanical drive or look at an SSD (minimum of 256gb). I picked up an acer laptop as above with an ssd recently for $940. Of course you could look at a slower processor but I personally would not get anything less than an i3.

[car10002]

Should you use computer till it dies or do what offices do and plan to update every 3 years at most

[minheim]

I keep my laptop until it dies or can't do what I want or as quickly as I would like. With a desktop you can sometimes extend their life as it is easier to upgrade to prolong or repair them.

[MITCHAY]

Most computers will do it easily but 8gb RAM is the minimum these days IMO for overall performance.

My laptop is a Dell XPS 17 and while not as sharp, still does the job even being 7 years old.

I'm only going to replace it after Win7 extended support runs out in a year or so. I will take the 2x 750gb HDD out and the RAM then toss the rest.

[car10002]

Hi

Since the laptops used everyday for transferring files from one thing to another and watching videos and stuff would you suggest using a laptop till it dies or is completely run down and is costing you a lot of downtime or start planning to do what most schools do and upgrade the main one every 3 years at latest so you always got upto date technology that’s not costing downtime that you can’t afford.

One example is trying to fix another laptop for someone and trying to download programs and stuff on the main laptop so you can transfer onto another device but main ones taking forever and is costing a lot of downtime that can’t be afforded

[sgt_doofey]

Laptops have absolutely nothing to do with scanning apart from receiving the scanned file from the scanner/printer. There are no minimum specs required for that as all the work is done by the scanner.

[car10002]

Would you keep using laptop till it dies or is completely worn out or try to update every 2-3 years to keep upto date

[EgoFG]

IMHO
Look at what is the top of the market for a form factor (Use preferred screen size and whether or not touchscreen is required), then look at the cheapest. Then start shopping in the top20-30% - should give you a good life and not cost a bomb.
Of course if scanning and internet is all you use, you could go a lot further down in cost.


per above post 8gb Ram - I would also consider a SSD rather than a typical Hard Drive (Less power, better response time). If you are storing on USB then make sure you have USB3 or USB TypeC, if you have wired internet, a Gigabit internet port is good, if you plan on using Wifi something with Dual band would be fairly future proof. If you plan on using the Laptop to display the scans - then HDMI (or display port) would be the go, so that you can look on your bigscreen.


I wont charge for the 4 minutes consulting time :-P

[sgt_doofey]

I'm a computer programmer by trade. The last two laptops prior to the one I have now have been used until they died. Both were basically top of the line ones based on what I do.
When the last one died, I reassessed what I actually use the computer for and I don't do a lot of programming at home. It turned out I had a top of the line laptop for browsing the internet and reading emails. So when my old one had to be replaced, I ended up buying a $400 Toshiba laptop to replace my $2.5k Dell.
It's a little on the slow side now as it's a few years old. I've upgraded the ram from 2GB that came with it to 8GB. The next upgrade to it will be a new SSD hard drive to help speed it up when I can be bothered.
Apart from that, it does all we need it for, including scanning of photos and documents.

So, I guess my advice to you is to assess what you need your laptop for (i.e. what functions are you going to do on it) and look for one that is going to meet your needs.
If you're going to do gaming, video editing or other CPU intensive operations, then look at the upper end of the scale. If you're just going to do simple things like web browsing, email, documents and spreadsheets, then you can look towards the lower end of the scale. Of course, the more money you spend on a laptop now should mean that it's specs would remain more relevant longer than a cheaper one, so spending a bit of extra coin now may mean that you won't feel compelled to upgrade sooner rather than later.