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Ask Slashdot: Which Laptop Should I Buy For My First Employee?
vikingpower writes: Until now, yours truly has been running a one-man freelancer show. However, since January 1st the first employee is here, and of course I'm mighty proud of a stellarly clever young person working for me. She works remotely (I'm in one European capital; she is in another) and I need to buy her a laptop. Since she's straight out of college and a non-techie, she basically only knows one OS: Windows, although she could get comfortable with macOS. However, as a long-time (server-side) programmer, I feel Apple hardware is seriously overpriced. Also, my brilliant first employee will mostly do research and hardly needs anything more than a browser, Office or Office-like software (yes, I'm looking at you, Libre Office, and I love you!), and bibliography software. Should I get her a Chromebook or a mid-level laptop running Windows? Any thoughts?
Tell her your budget and requirements (e.g. "Windows") and let her go buy what she likes.
I would automatically say Microsoft Surface, with pen + dock + monitor + keyboard + mouse, but empower her.
Since she's straight out of college and a non-techie...
For a safer environment, I'd give her something with Linux on it. It's not totally immune, but one hell of a lot more so than Windows and OSX, with the plus side of not reporting back home everything she does (Win10, not OSX as far as I know). If all she needs is email, web access and office (you've already said LibereOffice will suffice), she should have no problems with it, and can open just about any email without infecting the thing.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
For the last few years, I've been buying refurbished Thinkpads for most of my friends and family. There are refurbishers (even on ebay) that will give you Thinkpad that was £2k - £3k say 3 years ago (top of the line then, with i7, SSD etc) for 1/5th - 1/10th that original price, even at like-new condition. They are the most solidly built laptops (the X220 I have for outdoor telescope usage is fine in frost, under rain etc) and their only disadvantage is the lack for discreet graphic cards, so I recommend them for everyone but gamers.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Of course it is Raspberry Pi with Slackware. This encourages and tests your employee's problem solving skill!
As someone who runs a business, I've always hated it when employers skimped on employee equipment costs. The cost of a business laptop isn't just the purchase price. It's the purchase price + training costs + software cost (which you're trying to make zero) + setup costs + maintenance costs ( - sale price if you manage to sell it at the end). In most cases, these other costs far exceed the purchase price.
On top of that, the cost isn't really a one-time expense. It's the cost divided by the number of months you'll use the equipment. So even a $2000 laptop with $3000 in other costs used for 3 years ends up costing your business just $139/mo. If you're paying your employee $3000/mo, this is a mere 4.6% increase. Less if you manage to sell the laptop at the end. You're already paying your employee a (relatively) huge amount of money. It's counterproductive to skimp on weak equipment which lowers their productivity. Unless the Chromebook will do everything and anything your employee needs, don't skimp. Spend a little more to get a nice system that will maximize her productivity. (And no I'm not trying to justify the cost of the Macs, which I think are overpriced unless you're in an art/photo/video/music/print business. There's a reason the just-as-expensive Thinkpads are so popular among businesses. Two-day turnaround for warranty repairs via overnight delivery is a huge plus if you're trying to minimize downtime.)
Don't forget to budget for a file sync and backup system. If you don't have one yet, you'll need some sort of file server at your end, which her laptop connects to daily via a VPN to backup her work to your server. And that file server will need a backup system (preferably at least 2).
Also, technically this should be a company laptop, not the employee's laptop. Unless you plan to make it a gift or part of her compensation package, it should stay with the company after she moves on or moves up. Avoids the awkward situation where the employee quits after 3 months and takes the laptop with them.
That's not really a computer. There's a very limited amount of things you can do with it. It's pretty much a big smartphone that doesn't make phone calls.
I don't respond to AC's.
She has no idea how to buy technology and will inevitably waste the money.
Buy a laptop that can be serviced remotely. A decent lenovo T series or Dell is a reasonable machine. She will be thrilled that she is receiving a new machine and won't be subject to decision fatigue from shopping for technology. Your time is a one time investment in setting up your infrastructure so your second employee will be practically zero setup time and they won't be wasting your time and money shopping for a different laptop.
Take control of your infrastructure to save resources for business activities.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Holy Christ man! If you are going to be stymied over a decision as minor as this, you are going to have trouble being a successful entrepreneur. What is the difference in cost between the options you're weighing? A couple of hundred dollars? Make a decision and move on.
If you're going to cut costs, do so wisely. Get the employee something that won't break when she looks at it wrong, which will be performant enough to not get in her way, and which can be repaired quickly and easily. Any of the major business-notebook brands will offer that, but I tend to like buying from Dell's outlet. You can get good-as-new machines at Chromebook prices with - and this makes all the difference - same-as-new warranties with next-day on-site service. Get a decent Latitude with a 1080p display, recent-gen i5, 8gb of RAM, a 1-3 year next-day service contract, pop an SSD in it and you're out the door for under $800 for something that will last years.
Not amazing. Tiny market for the laptop bits sans motherboard, so pricey. Fixed costs become really important -- inventory, interest on the loans, up-front charges for molded plastic cases (even worse for metal stuff), billing, return handling, etc. There's a hell of a difference in what you pay for keyboards if you buy in lots of 100 rather than 10,000. Hand assembly, if the market is that small, is shockingly expensive.
She is a Non-Techie. And she is in another country. That says it all.
She is a non-techie, she will not be able to choose the best laptop. And she is a non-techie, she will not be able to administer and mantain the laptop (whanna bet on the "toolbars upon toolbars in the browser" Scenario?). And she is another country, so going to you (the boss) for help with the machine is out of the question.
Buy her a nice looking laptop, good build quality, decent specs. Which supports *virtualization*.
Put on the bare metal whatever Windows or Linux you feel confortable administering and lock it down as hell. Set up remote access. Choose a VM solution with good 3D acceleration. Then set up two windows VMs.
One is her "WorkVM" with the web browser, WhatevurOffice, and any other program/app/whatevur she needs for work purposes. Lock it down as hell. Set this machine up to save all work related stuff to a folder shared with the host OS. Set up a decent backup solution for this guest.
The other VM will be her "do whatever you like with it" "personal" VM. Do not lock it down that much.
Keep two golden masters (one for each machine) if push comes to shove.
Enjoy.
Unlike dual-booting, this solution eases your administrative burden, trust me.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I have to disagree with you. The problem with your suggestion is that a used computer comes with absolutely zero support. I used to work in the construction industry, and there are fewer things more frustrating that having guys stand around because someone thought it would be a good idea to buy a "good enough" tool, and it wasn't sufficient for the job or broke sooner than it should. People are FAR more expensive than (most of) the tools. At this shop we initially ran Dell, and later switched to HP. Either of those are fine choices. The key to it was 1) buy an "office grade" laptop (If you can buy it at WalMart, it's not office grade.) and 2) buy the gold level support with the accident protection. Yes, those things will likely double or triple the cost of a used laptop, but there's something to be said about a company that will show up the next day with replacement parts if something goes wrong. You're employee is no good to you if they don't have the tools they need to do the job.
Since you will now have to provide tech support and patching to prevent attacks you are about to discover why apple's are cheaper to own than other computers in companies that lack dedictated tech support.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You haven't even gotten to the fun to bang part of his post.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The company I work for is all in on Google apps. The standard for email is GMail, we use Google Calendar, we use Google Drive to share files, we use Google apps for collaborating on spreadsheets or word processor documents, and most people use Google Slides for presenting. For remote meetings we use Google Hangouts. We also use web-based software such as Slack and an issue tracker.
Because of all this, a Chromebook is an excellent solution for many people in our company.
The best thing about a Chromebook is that it Just Works. It's locked-down nature means you really don't need to worry about malware, and it automatically downloads security updates. (Unlike Windows 10, ChromeOS never forces you to take an update while you are in the middle of a meeting or presentation.)
Also, if you are using "cloud" storage apps like the Google apps, then if anything happens to the Chromebook, the data will all be backed up. Your employee would be able to just get a new Chromebook and could get sorted out and back to work very quickly.
Because your business is too small to have a dedicated IT department, using all Google apps would have significant advantages. And those apps are IMHO about as easy to use as Microsoft apps or MacOS apps.
As a bonus, if you standardize on Google apps, then your employee has the option of installing some of the apps on her phone (maybe just GMail). I have everything installed on my phone, including Google Hangouts, and I can deal with a lot of possible emergencies with just my phone. I like that.
The one question mark I have is whether bibliography software is available for a Chromebook. A Chromebook does have Linux app support now, plus Android app support, and there are web-based bibliography systems, so... maybe?
Also, some people strongly disapprove of Google, feeling that Google track too much about what you do with their software. If you have a philosophical objection to Google you may not want a Chromebook solution.
I agree with all the people saying not to skimp but to get something nice. If you do this, I'd recommend one of Google's own branded products... the top of the line would be a Google Pixelbook which gets very favorable reviews.
P.S. I personally own a Samsung Chromebook Plus with a non-Intel CPU (a hexa-core OP1 running ARM instructions). I've been happy with it... IMHO it looks a lot like an Apple product but it has a much better keyboard. It's half the cost of a Pixelbook but not as fancy. Like the Pixelbook it's just a touch over 1 kg and has long battery life. It does come with a stylus and it has a storage silo for the stylus.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Write down a list of the outcomes you expect your employee to produce. Drawings? Photo-Editing? Spreadsheets? Documents? Database creation/management?
That tells you what they are doing for you. Then you can work out what software is required to do said tasks.
Given the software being determined, then you can look up the best spec's for the computer system they need - Processor, RAM, Drive space, GPU, Printer etc.
That tells you the type - Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever.
Then you can determine the budget, and ask them to choose.