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Which laptop for professional use
Thread poster: Adele Mc Donnell
Adele Mc Donnell
Adele Mc Donnell  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 00:46
English to French
Nov 17, 2014

Hello everybody,

Could you please give me pieces of advice on what type of laptop I should purchase? I am looking for something fast and efficient for translating use only.
What laptop do you use?

Thank you,
Adèle


 
Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
Good question Nov 18, 2014

There is only one choice - Mac

Wait another 5 years for Microsoft to sort themselves out. Until then OSX is unrivalled.

Get a MBPro and you can run windows on it (if absolutely necessary) but you'll prefer running everything else in OSX.

Personally I use an iMac and wouldn't consider anything else (okay, maybe another IMac eventually or a 2nd screen).

Regards,
DJH


 
Anton Konashenok
Anton Konashenok  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 07:46
French to English
+ ...
Wrong criteria Nov 18, 2014

Translation work is not resource-intensive, so any new laptop would be fast and efficient enough. However, as a professional, you definitely want it to be very reliable, especially if you travel with it. You also need very good ergonomics because you are going to spend hours and hours in front of it, and in that aspect there is no substitute for trying it in action - just go to a store specializing in business-class laptops and have a feel. When you find what you like, you can start looki... See more
Translation work is not resource-intensive, so any new laptop would be fast and efficient enough. However, as a professional, you definitely want it to be very reliable, especially if you travel with it. You also need very good ergonomics because you are going to spend hours and hours in front of it, and in that aspect there is no substitute for trying it in action - just go to a store specializing in business-class laptops and have a feel. When you find what you like, you can start looking around for the best price. Oh yes, don't forget to pay a visit to your friendly neighborhood laptop service center and ask them what they think of the model you've chosen. A truly reliable model will hardly ever need repair, and those guys will know that. In the late 90s and early 2000s I swore by Toshibas, which were build like tanks; then, starting from the era of Satellite Pro 6000, they suddenly became much flimsier, and I switched to Thinkpads (then IBM, now Lenovo - don't confuse them with Lenovo Ideapads). Have been a happy camper ever since.Collapse


 
Phil Hand
Phil Hand  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 14:46
Chinese to English
+1 for thinkpad Nov 18, 2014

As above, your no.1 criterion is reliability, and for that nothing in my experience has measured up to my Thinkpad.

 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:46
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
Dell Precision M6800 Nov 18, 2014

Hi Adele,

This is all very subjective, but I think Macs are 1. highly overrated, and 2. have no decent business software. They might be pretty, but if there is no software, what's the point. I'd say give Apple 5 years or so to catch up and make some business software and then give them a try.

I am very happy with my Dell Precision M6800. It's huge, but the best laptop I have ever had. Do connect it to an external monitor though when using it at home as I do not recommen
... See more
Hi Adele,

This is all very subjective, but I think Macs are 1. highly overrated, and 2. have no decent business software. They might be pretty, but if there is no software, what's the point. I'd say give Apple 5 years or so to catch up and make some business software and then give them a try.

I am very happy with my Dell Precision M6800. It's huge, but the best laptop I have ever had. Do connect it to an external monitor though when using it at home as I do not recommend working on a laptop for extended periods of time. You'll end up messing up your neck.

Michael
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Preston Decker
Preston Decker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:46
Chinese to English
Buy used? Nov 18, 2014

I bought my last two laptops used for USD 200 each and have been quite happy with them. Best thing about buying used is you feel much better if something happens to the laptop. I destroyed the first in an accident that involved coffee and my general clumsiness, but didn't feel too too badly because I'd already gotten a year of use out of it for 200.

Only trick is you have to have a local computer store and an owner who you have a bit of a relationship with. I don't think I would per
... See more
I bought my last two laptops used for USD 200 each and have been quite happy with them. Best thing about buying used is you feel much better if something happens to the laptop. I destroyed the first in an accident that involved coffee and my general clumsiness, but didn't feel too too badly because I'd already gotten a year of use out of it for 200.

Only trick is you have to have a local computer store and an owner who you have a bit of a relationship with. I don't think I would personally want to buy used online, and I know the owner of the store well enough to know that he'd treat me fairly enough if the computer was to break after a month or two.

I have no idea what model of computer I bought, and don't care--I'm sure it's a bit of a mutt after the work he did on it, and I've never needed an especially powerful computer for translation. The only thing I made sure of was that it had a 15'' screen to help the eyes.
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Emin Arı
Emin Arı  Identity Verified
Türkiye
Local time: 09:46
English to Turkish
+ ...
reliability, power and capacity Nov 18, 2014

Before buying a laptop for professional use you have consider following points in order of importance:

- reliability: your laptop must be reliable in sense of hardware and software. League of reliable computers is consisted of Mac, Sony Vaio, HP and Dell. These are what I know in my experience.

- power: though many says translation job does not require a powerful computer, I do not agree with them. Some CAT tools really require powerful computing capacity, like memoQ o
... See more
Before buying a laptop for professional use you have consider following points in order of importance:

- reliability: your laptop must be reliable in sense of hardware and software. League of reliable computers is consisted of Mac, Sony Vaio, HP and Dell. These are what I know in my experience.

- power: though many says translation job does not require a powerful computer, I do not agree with them. Some CAT tools really require powerful computing capacity, like memoQ or Trados. For this reason please go up moderate computing power in the market. Be generous in memory capacity with at least 16 GB. Nonetheless cost difference is not as huge as in old good days.

- Capacity: please buy a laptop with SSD hard drive. Contrary to the power requirement, you do not need much hard disc capacity more than 250 GB but it must be fast, really fast.

Time is Money!

Especially for us, translators because we sell our time. A good laptop is firm investment for your job, better the laptop lesser headache.

I use a macbook pro retina screen with a virtual machine running dammed Windows for CAT tools. It has never crushed.
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Selcuk Akyuz
Selcuk Akyuz  Identity Verified
Türkiye
Local time: 09:46
English to Turkish
+ ...
@Michael Nov 18, 2014

Michael Beijer wrote:

I am very happy with my Dell Precision M6800. It's huge, but the best laptop I have ever had. Do connect it to an external monitor though when using it at home as I do not recommend working on a laptop for extended periods of time. You'll end up messing up your neck.

Michael


Dell Precision M6800 is approx. EUR 3600 in Turkey. Buying a second-hand car makes more sense

How much did you pay for it?


 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 07:46
Spanish to English
+ ...
Never ever ever a Mac Nov 18, 2014

In Spain, most translators use PCs. I don't know if the situation has changed in recent years, but as I recall it Macs used to be more widely used by translators in France, which sometimes gave rise to compatibility issues.

A friend colleague of mine likes the Mac but her own kicked the bucket last week after a few years of pretty intensive use. As I owed her some cash anyway, I got her an HP laptop to work with instead. Windows 7 OS (not W8) and MS Office 2013. I don't have the e
... See more
In Spain, most translators use PCs. I don't know if the situation has changed in recent years, but as I recall it Macs used to be more widely used by translators in France, which sometimes gave rise to compatibility issues.

A friend colleague of mine likes the Mac but her own kicked the bucket last week after a few years of pretty intensive use. As I owed her some cash anyway, I got her an HP laptop to work with instead. Windows 7 OS (not W8) and MS Office 2013. I don't have the exact specs handy right now but it cost me 415 euros. I'll post them later if I have a minute.
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Heinrich Pesch
Heinrich Pesch  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 08:46
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
My points Nov 18, 2014

I have been looking too at laptops recently and have been thinking when to purchase my next one. Three and a half year ago I got my present laptop. A HP Probook 4720S with 17" screen. A year ago I exchanged the HD to an SSD-drive, Samsung 500 GB, which cost me 300 Euro. The same drive is on sale now for 190 Euro, at Amazon.de. I would never want to go back to HD, that's for sure.
Today I was looking at the HP ProBook 655 G1 15,6" with 128 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM, which has a very good screen r
... See more
I have been looking too at laptops recently and have been thinking when to purchase my next one. Three and a half year ago I got my present laptop. A HP Probook 4720S with 17" screen. A year ago I exchanged the HD to an SSD-drive, Samsung 500 GB, which cost me 300 Euro. The same drive is on sale now for 190 Euro, at Amazon.de. I would never want to go back to HD, that's for sure.
Today I was looking at the HP ProBook 655 G1 15,6" with 128 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM, which has a very good screen resolution and a numerical keypad, and is sold for 620 Euro. The only flaw is the small SSD, I just don't understand why factories don't equip their machines with large SSD-drives. In any case I would have to switch to a bigger drive from the start. So all this would cost me 800 Euro just now.
I'm very satisfied with Win7Pro, it is very stable, never has there been any problem. My software is SDL Studio 2014. Some translation software is also available for the Mac or for Linux, but for Studio you would need an Windows emulator. I would not spend so much money for a mac and then run it in Windows. What's the point?
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Rolf Keller
Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 07:46
English to German
"Translation" is not a clearly defined task Nov 18, 2014

Anton Konashenok wrote:

Wrong criteria. Translation work is not resource-intensive, so any new laptop would be fast and efficient enough.


Wrong, indeed.

On principle it depends on the software you are using. Certain software is nerve-racking slow (e. good spell/grammar checkers). Certain software (e. g. huge TMs, glossaries etc) demands much RAM, otherwise the swap file will be chirping all the time. The same is true if your documents (or reference PDFs) are large and/or include many high-resolution graphics.

I've just written a test version of a lookup software that is able to use TBX files directly, i. e. without importing or indexing. No problem at all with the Microsoft glossaries, but with the IATE glossary (huge, even if shrinked to only one language pair) the very first lookup action takes one minute on a medium-size PC (subsequent lookup actions take less than one second, though). Out of curiosity I installed it on an old PC with Windows XP and 512 kB RAM: The very first lookup action took two hours ... but nevertheless that PC is fast enough for MS Office.


 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 14:46
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
Mobility Nov 18, 2014

I find it mildly amusing that the poster did not say whether she would be using the laptop on the road, nor did anyone ask.

[Edited at 2014-11-18 11:30 GMT]


 
Kieran Sheehan
Kieran Sheehan  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 07:46
Member (2008)
German to English
Second-hand Lenovo Thinkpad - T or W series Nov 18, 2014

I don't think you can't go wrong with a second-hand Lenovo thinkpad. My T-520 has served me well and should be available online for between 400 and 500 dollars. It's a business laptop, so you can use a docking station and attach two monitors. You can also insert a second hard disk in the DVD-drive. The T-520 / T-420 are two generations old, so I would look for an i7 processor and lots of RAM (16).

 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:46
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
£1,509.98 (refurbished, with 3 year, Dell next business day warranty) Nov 18, 2014

Selcuk Akyuz wrote:

Michael Beijer wrote:

I am very happy with my Dell Precision M6800. It's huge, but the best laptop I have ever had. Do connect it to an external monitor though when using it at home as I do not recommend working on a laptop for extended periods of time. You'll end up messing up your neck.

Michael


Dell Precision M6800 is approx. EUR 3600 in Turkey. Buying a second-hand car makes more sense

How much did you pay for it?


I got a great deal on eBay. I got it factory refurbished. Meaning: I got a brand new one, with 3 year, Dell next business day warranty, for only £1509.98 (approx. €1,800). That is, it wasn't cheap, but it blows anything else I have had out of the water. It's built like a tank. A real business computer.

I took out the DVD and stuck in a second SSD. It came with an SSD and a 1TB hybrid disk, so now I have three hard drives (the benefit of a large laptop)! It came with 16GB of RAM, to which I added another 16, so now I have 32GB

It also came with a very powerful graphics card, and can switch between that and the motherboard's built in graphics capabilities depending on load. Very cool!

The keyboard is great! Beautiful 17" IPS panel. i7 Haswell, etc. etc.

I agree with what someone else said: CAT tools do need a strong computer. The moment you start using large TMs or documents, they all start slowing down. Definitely get an SSD, and at least 16Gb of RAM.

Michael

[Edited at 2014-11-18 12:40 GMT]


 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:46
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
searching IATE .tbx in CafeTran as .csv (= lightning fast) Nov 18, 2014

Rolf Keller wrote:

Anton Konashenok wrote:

Wrong criteria. Translation work is not resource-intensive, so any new laptop would be fast and efficient enough.


Wrong, indeed.

On principle it depends on the software you are using. Certain software is nerve-racking slow (e. good spell/grammar checkers). Certain software (e. g. huge TMs, glossaries etc) demands much RAM, otherwise the swap file will be chirping all the time. The same is true if your documents (or reference PDFs) are large and/or include many high-resolution graphics.

I've just written a test version of a lookup software that is able to use TBX files directly, i. e. without importing or indexing. No problem at all with the Microsoft glossaries, but with the IATE glossary (huge, even if shrinked to only one language pair) the very first lookup action takes one minute on a medium-size PC (subsequent lookup actions take less than one second, though). Out of curiosity I installed it on an old PC with Windows XP and 512 kB RAM: The very first lookup action took two hours ... but nevertheless that PC is fast enough for MS Office.


Slightly off topic maybe, but I am using the Dutch-English part of the IATE .tbx you mentioned in CafeTran (my CAT tool). I'm using the extraction made by Henk Sanderson (see: http://santrans.net/ ), in the form of a .csv file (containing all the metadata), and I can search it instantly. That is, with maybe a 1 second lag, if even that.

In any case, that tool you mentioned of yours sounds interesting. Will you be releasing it anytime soon?

Michael


 
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