Of all the laptops in the market, what should you buy for your work-from-home job? Business-like high powered laptops or heavy duty gaming laptops, or also the Macbooks available in the market? What should you choose? That’s what we’re going to discuss today – Laptop Specs for Work-at-home. Part 1 is about Specs, and Part 2 next week will be the other factors to consider in buying a laptop.
About specs, we’ll discuss 4 things. First is processors. Second is the RAM that your laptop should have. Third is your laptop’s storage, whether you should choose HDD or SDD. Fourth is the dedicated videocard Does your job require a dedicated video card or not – that’s what we’ll discuss today.
Before we even start, what job are eyeing on getting or what’s your current job you need laptop for? So that I’ll have an idea and if I have time, I’ll answer your questions.
Let’s make the terms we’ll use non-techy so beginners will understand. Let’s start with the most important part of a computer and what we consider first – processor. Some examples are i3, i5, and Ryzen3 This processor is just a small part inside the laptop.
That processor is the one that runs the laptop and the softwares that come in it. Like Google Chrome and Adobe Premier Pro. We have two main brands – Intel and AMD. Our Asus Vivobook has Ryzen 7 and our gaming laptop here has i7. Both Intel and AMD has many kinds of processor under it.
But we’ll discuss what we can find most in the market. These are also what are recommended for online jobs. In Intel, we have i3, i5, and i7.
This one is i7. In AMD, we have Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, and Ryzen 7.
Every job requires different processor. It’s different for a video editor, and different for a general virtual assistant. Let’s now discuss the diferences from i3 to i7. Let’s start with i3 and Ryzen 3. i3 is suitable only for basic tasks.
Basic browsing through Google Chrome. When it comes to online job, it’s more on browsing Google. You’ll pull up your client’s database, Skype, Slack, and other project management software. It’s more on Google Chrome use. i3 and Ryzen 3 is suitable for that.
For general virtual assistant. For ESL tutoring jobs, i3 is enough too. Also for appointment setter and accountants, i3 is already good for you. I also know some that uses Adobe Photoshop on i3. But that’s just light photoshop.
Next is Intel Core i5 and Ryzen 5. i5 can process extra special softwares that consumes much processor.
Adobe Premier Pro, Sony Vegas Pro, Adobe AfterEffects, AutoCAD — you can use i5 for these For Adobe softwares and for 3D modeling, i5 is what you need. But if you get i5, that’s just enough for light video editing, wherein you’ll just cut, add texts, intro and music. That’s just enough for basic editing.
Also if you just have i5, it’s mainly for single software use only. If you’re using Adobe Premier Pro, you can’t run other sofware. If you used AfterEffects at the same time with it, the processor may have lag time. Who can use i5? This is for light video editors, and also for graphic designers.
For ESL tutor, you can also use i5 to have some room, because some ESL Tutoring has special software requirement that’s why you might need a higher processor so I suggest to get i5 for ESL tutors Homemates, next we go to Ryzen 7 and i7. Ryzen 7 is more of software use and can support multitasking. You can use Premier Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and After Effects altogether. Ryzen 7 and i7 can support all that. In i7 too, you can do heavy video editing with many effects, also heavy-duty After Effects, like 3D modeling, Ryzen 7 can support that.
So who should use Ryzen 7 and i7? All that I meantioned earlier, general VA, ESL tutor, all of them can use i7, it’s better for you to get i7 or Ryzen 7. You can choose this if you know, even before you look for work, that you’ll do heavy video editing. Those who are doing 3D animations and other After Effects tasks. By the way, if you also play games, i3 and i5 can support low settings only.
When I tried the Ryzen 7 for gaming, although this is a business and not a gaming laptop, Overwatch, League of Legends, it can support both with medium settings. Let me also add about Processor Generation, it’s also important. So what’s Generation? Our new Asus laptop has a Ryzen 7 4700U processor. The number 4 at the start is the Generation number of Ryzen, 4th generation.
Then our gaming laptop is i7 6700H.
So its Generation is the numer 6 at the start, 6th generation. Intel and AMD both create new processor every year. The latest is 4000 series, 4th Gen Ryzen. 4th Generation was made this year 2020.
3rd Generation was made 2019, and 2nd Generation – 2018. For Intel, it’s easier to know, 6th Generation was produced 2016. 7th Generation was 2017, and the latest, 10th Generation this 2020. What are the differences between Generations? So it will be easier for you to understand, the latest version, it’s better that its former generation.
Ryzen 4th Generation is better than 3rd and 2nd Generation Ryzen. That’s in terms of performance, battery life, and many more. Another thing that is important is the letter at the end of the processor. This is Ryzen 7 4700U and this is i7 6700H. U and H.
Every laptop that’s in the market has a letter at the end. Each laptop has this, there can be U, H, K, HS, and many more. We’ll discuss the common letters. U and H. U means Ultra low power.
H means Higher performance. U is good in performance, but with lower power consumption. I tried it and it lasted 5-6 hours for normal Google Chrome jobs only like my YouTube Channel work tasks. This one is H, means Higher performance, but consumes battery more. Normally, gaming laptops end in H, they can last 2-3 hours before low battery warning.
There are other factors to consider, and we’ll explain it later.
Some might ask about these cheaper laptops, the Intel Pentium and Intel Celeron Series. I cannot recommend to use those for online jobs. Number 1 factor that clients abroad ask is our computer’s specs. Their minimum requirement, mostly, is i3 or i5.
Once they knew that you’re using Intel Celeron or Intel Pentium, they would just skip o reject your application. Next, if you’re using Celeron or Pentium, or lower-end AMD, your actual work will be slow. That’s what the client doesn’t want. That’s the reason why clients require i3 or i5 for processors. Celeron and Pentium is only recommended for students, for Microsoft Office and one Google Chrome tab for school purposes only, that’s where I can recommend those.
Next important spec, RAM or memory. It’s this. RAM is for short-term storage of applications, but for you to understand it easier, let’s just say that all applications that you’ll pull up will use the RAM storage.
Each software, each program, varies when it comes to the amount of RAM it consumes. There are software that consumes large amount of RAM, examples are Adobe Premier Pro, After Effects, Google Chrome is just Internet browsing, but the more tabs you open, the larger amount of RAM it consumes.
Laptops normally have two of this. Each laptop varies too. This laptop here has removeable RAM that you can change but this Asus Vivobook is not, it only has fixed 8GB. RAMs also have different sizes, this RAM is 4GB. There are also 8GB, 16GB, 32GB single pieces of RAM.
When I bought this, it has two 4GB RAM, so it has 8GB. I removed the two 4GB and changed it to two 16GB. So now, I have 32GB RAM. When it comes to online jobs, what’s the required gig your laptop should have? Minimum requirement is 8GB of RAM.
General Virtual Assistant, Appointment Setter, ESL Tutor, even video/photo editor require minimum 8GB. I personally tried this Vivobook with 8GB of RAM for video editing, and it’s good.
If your RAM only has 4GB RAM, even if you only have 3 to 4 tabs in Chrome, then Skype, laptop can get slow. If your tasks include heavy video editing, animator, 3D modeling, and animations, I recommend you to get 16GB to 32GB RAM. Most laptops in the market only has 4GB RAM but this Vivobook we bought already has 8GB.
You might think of just buying a spare RAM through Lazada and upgrade it yourself. Don’t do that. Make sure that you’re upgradig RAM or memory through authorized service center only. If you did it yourself with your newly purchased laptop, your laptop warranty will be voided. Asus has two years warranty.
I experienced how warranty is so important.
Last 2018, I encountered a problem with my Asus laptop. I brought it to the service center and a part was changed, but I didn’t have to pay anything because of the warranty. Ask the place where you’re buying your laptop if they are authorized or if they have an authorized service center so they can replace the RAM for you. Sometimes, it’s free installation if you buy the RAM from them.
So just go to authorized service center, especially if it’s still covered within the warranty. Last things when it comes to RAM, there’s also a speed factor with RAM, it’s not just it being 4GB, there’s also speed. 4GB RAM DDR4 2400MHz 2400MHz is the speed of this RAM. There are different RAM speeds: 2400, 3666, 3000, and 3400. The higher the RAM speed, the faster it is than the lower one.
In my experience, most laptop that I used with 2400 is still performing well. But the higher is better. Number 3 important thing when it comes to laptop specs. Storage, this is what a storage looks like. It’s found inside the laptop.
Storage, something where you store data. This is where we save files, like your client’s video files or your Microsoft files. This is also where we install our software applications. They’re all kept in the storage. Now, I will show you common type of storage in laptops.
This is what we call the HDD, it’s big because it’s for computer, I don’t have the one for laptops. But the one for laptop is only like this size. It looks like this. We call this HDD or Hard Disk Drive.
Next, SSD or Solid State Drive.
This is what it looks like. This one here is called m.2 SSD Sata. They are both the same, just different form factor. The only difference is their physical size, that form factor.
When it comes to performance, they’re just the same. There’s the third type of laptop storage which our Asus Vivobook currently have. It also looks like this, but it is called m.2 NVME SSD. That’s the fastest among these three.
When buying laptop, this is the one you see in the specifications saying “1TB HDD or 512 SSD” HDD has the normal speed, but it’s cheaper compare to the other type. But it’s slow for me. Next, SSD, it is 5 to 6 times faster than HDD. But it’s more expensive than HDD. For example that this is an NVME SSD, it is 5 to 7 times faster than this normal SSD.
But it’s more expensive. I recommend that you use SSD to install Windows or other OS and softwares that you need. Let’s show the actual difference of HDD, SDD, and NVME when installed in the laptop. Let’s start to turn on the HDD one. It’s now turning on.
Let’s now turn on the m.2 NVME and the SSD. Both of these are on now. Right after it’s on, you can already use it. You can already open applications.
This one’s in the login screen just now. And it’s still loading after we pressed enter. It’s not just the booting factor, including the overall experience, it’s faster even in Google Chrome then going to another application. Even the software that you’ll install using SSD, it’s much faster compared to HDD. Pulling up the application and actual usage of the software is much better.
So what’s suitable for your online job? You can have just the HDD, clients are not really requiring you to have the SDD one. Any jobs online do not really require for you to have SSD.
But when we’re talking about the overall performance and speed, it’s really much better when using SSD. It’s not really required to choose an SSD one, but if I’m buying one or would buy for someone else, I always require them to buy a laptop with SSD even just for the OS.
Let’s now talk about upgrading your laptop. If you like a certain laptop but it only has HDD, let’s talk about how we can upgrade it to SSD.
Each laptop has different storage inside. For example, this S14 hasNVME 512 you can remove that NVME and then replace it with a bigger storage. You can replace it with an NVME 2TB.
But it does not have a slot for this. You cannot add this big 1TB HDD or another SDD. Because this is very thin and light. It only has one storage because of minimal space inside. Our gaming laptop right here has two storage slots.
When I bought it, it contains 2.5 inch HDD and it has a vacant slot for one m.2 SSD Sata Sometimes the slot is just vacant and sometimes, it has one inserted already. So if there’s already one inserted, you can replace it with a bigger storage. You can buy a bigger storage of m.
2 and then insert it. Or if the laptop you bought has 2.5 inch HDD, you can remove that and then replace it with a 2.5 inch SDD Sata. What you can do is, buy buy SSD worth 2,000 to 3,000 pesos with 256/512 storage That’s enough for OS softwares.
And then the video files, if you’re a video editor, you can store that in the HDD. If you want to have 512 NVME SSD for these two, you can buy laptops that has built-in SSD already.
Last that we’ll explain here is the graphics card. Especially the dedicated graphics card in laptops. There are laptops that are called integrated meaning it’s built-in with the laptop and there are other laptops with separate dedicated video card.
For example, our gaming laptop here, this is a bit old already. The dedicated video card of this is 950 GTX. The integrated one of this is Vega 8 (*Vega 7). When it comes to GPU, for dedicated GPUs, the main use of that is for gaming. When you have games configured with high settings, especially high-end games, that’s what the job of a graphics card is.
There are also certain effects to softwares like Premier Pro and After Effects. So who should buy laptops with dedicated video card? If your job is more on admin tasks, general VA tasks, ESL tutor, accounting, the integrated video card is enough to support those kinds of task. If you’re a video editor, graphic designer, heavy graphic designing, like using AutoCAD and 3D modeling, I recommend that you get a laptop with dedicated video card.
1060 Ti, 560, especially if you do heavy gaming, get one with dedicated video card.
By the way, even without a dedicated video card, you can still run Premier Pro. I was able to finish 3 projects already using this Vivobook. and the actual experience is just smooth. Last reminders Laptop’s processors are not removeable What’s built-in can’t be removed and upgraded. So I really recommend for you to think hardly you may want to apply as a VA or general VA for now, but think long-term, if you might think about being a graphic designer or video editor.
If you just bought a laptop enough for VA tasks, then you might not be able to use it in the future. Especially, you might need a special software in teh future.
If you can afford, much better to buy higher-end laptops. That way, you’re sure that it can support your tasks now and any jobs you might have in the future. The GPU is also not removeable, so it can’t be replaced.
Everything that I shared with you today are more on softwares But buying a laptop is not just about those things, we still have other factors to consider. For example, in my case, I want a business laptop that is slim and light. Is that also the kind of laptop that you want? The specs is still good and high-end. Or do you want a heavy-duty laptop, but normally, high specs gaming laptops are a bit bulky.
Next week, we’ll discuss other factors you need to consider when buying laptops. If you liked the video, make sure to click the Like button Share this to your friends who are planning to work at home and thinking of what laptop to buy. Thank you for watching.
See you next time. https://boomerangblaster.com/boomer207
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