Hate to admit...Im buying my 1st laptop

[cashcatz]

you don't get free tech support with that. I guess you might could add a tech support warranty on it.

Do you ever use tech support? Installing adblockers and a good antivirus package will get you a long way. And the AI chat tools like GPT and Perplexity can walk you through most tech issues these days.

- https://www.appraisalinbox.com/blog/antivirus-software-for-real-estate-appraisers
- https://www.appraisalinbox.com/blog/ad-blockers-for-real-estate-appraisers

 

[Zoe]

Do you ever use tech support? Installing adblockers and a good antivirus package will get you a long way. And the AI chat tools like GPT and Perplexity can walk you through most tech issues these days.

- https://www.appraisalinbox.com/blog/antivirus-software-for-real-estate-appraisers
- https://www.appraisalinbox.com/blog/ad-blockers-for-real-estate-appraisers

Yes, but it is not just tech support that matters on buying used vs new. The manufacture offers things on new that after market won't offer.

Don't patronize me boy.

 

[Zoe]

Just for you:

 

[cashcatz]

Yes, but it is not just tech support that matters on buying used vs new. The manufacture offers things on new that after market won't offer.

Don't patronize me boy.

I'm not patronizing, I was just trying to understand what your concerns were. Anyways, after clarifying, it sounds like you're worried about hardware warrantee vs software issues? If that's the case I'd prob. go new with a name brand.

 

[Zoe]

I'm not patronizing, I was just trying to understand what your concerns were. Anyways, after clarifying, it sounds like you're worried about hardware warrantee vs software issues? If that's the case I'd prob. go new with a name brand.

be safer and free support and maybe replacement and refund new vs used. I won't touch other possible hazards.

 

[RCA]

If you happen to be using Apple (and understand a lot of old top-notch PC programmers have been switching over to Apple big time since the M1 came out), the Apple Macbook Air M4 15" screen, with 512G of SSD and 24G memory has been called the 'almost perfect' and "best value" machine. $1500 through Best Buy, although today is the last day.

Pair it with a Mac Studio M2 Ultra and macOS, and you really have something. You. can put both on your local ethernet or WiFi, and configure the laptop with the same user as the desktop. then you have nearly seamless integration.

I struggled on whether to pay another 1.5-2K for the MacBook Pro, but I finally decided against it because, since I stopped doing contracting, I don't use the laptop that much. It is a secondary computer. I don't think I would have seen the difference of more cores or faster speed on the Macbook Pro, because I do the demanding work on the Mac Studio. The MacBook Air is nonetheless quite powerful and glitzy. It has a retina display. I can Velcro a 2Tb external SSD through one of the USB 4 ports. That's all the storage I need. On the laptop I will put mostly editing software, task management software, and some programming and database support for occasional offsite editing and programming:

TexStudio/Latex
Obsidian
Security
LibreOffice
MS Office
RStudio
JetBrains
Enterprise Architect
....

And now its time to throw away my 10 year old Intel Macbook Pro and hide my 2018 Microsoft Surface Book (still very good - but just no need for it).

 

[cashcatz]

If you happen to be using Apple (and understand a lot of old top-notch PC programmers have been switching over to Apple big time since the M1 came out), the Apple Macbook Air M4 15" screen, with 512G of SSD and 24G memory has been called the 'almost perfect' and "best value" machine. $1500 through Best Buy, although today is the last day.

Pair it with a Mac Studio M2 Ultra and macOS, and you really have something. You. can put both on your local ethernet or WiFi, and configure the laptop with the same user as the desktop. then you have nearly seamless integration.

I struggled on whether to pay another 1.5-2K for the MacBook Pro, but I finally decided against it because, since I stopped doing contracting, I don't use the laptop that much. It is a secondary computer. I don't think I would have seen the difference of more cores or faster speed on the Macbook Pro, because I do the demanding work on the Mac Studio. The MacBook Air is nonetheless quite powerful and glitzy. It has a retina display. I can Velcro a 2Tb external SSD through one of the USB 4 ports. That's all the storage I need. On the laptop I will put mostly editing software, task management software, and some programming and database support for occasional offsite editing and programming:

TexStudio/Latex
Obsidian
Security
LibreOffice
MS Office
RStudio
JetBrains
Enterprise Architect
....

And now its time to throw away my 10 year old Intel Macbook Pro and hide my 2018 Microsoft Surface Book (still very good - but just no need for it).

In run an entire software company on a Macbook Air M1 (pre body redesign). I keep thinking about upgrading to an M4 but don't really run into any bottlenecks on this one. Maybe I'll wait for M5 and more AI features (built into the hardware). My Intel Macbook Pro lasted for 7 years, just incredible value when amortized.

That said, a Windows machine is going to be a better choice for appraisers. Here's two great machines:

- https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1 (this is their fancy thin one, you can go cheaper on thinkpads and be fine)
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-laptop (I'd get the intel chip as ARM might not support older software)

In my opinion, all other Windows laptops have poor build quality and terrible keyboards. Maybe there's some exceptions but I'm a bit out of date.

 

[RCA]

In run an entire software company on a Macbook Air M1 (pre body redesign). I keep thinking about upgrading to an M4 but don't really run into any bottlenecks on this one. Maybe I'll wait for M5 and more AI features (built into the hardware). My Intel Macbook Pro lasted for 7 years, just incredible value when amortized.

That said, a Windows machine is going to be a better choice for appraisers. Here's two great machines:

- https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1 (this is their fancy thin one, you can go cheaper on thinkpads and be fine)
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-laptop (I'd get the intel chip as ARM might not support older software)

In my opinion, all other Windows laptops have poor build quality and terrible keyboards. Maybe there's some exceptions but I'm a bit out of date.

Yes, Microsoft Surface has premium quality materials and excellent build consistency, as well as a simple and clean design. Lenova pretty much the same, but a bit more upgradeable.

The big difference between the two is that Lenova is corporate based (e.g. for support) and Microsoft Surface Book Pro is more consumer based.

But that Apple environment has too much pull nowadays. You can run Windows on Apple with Parallels, but while that worked just fine for Intel based Macs, with Silicon based Macs there are still some compatibility issues - such as trying to run MS SQL Server on Mac silicon based computers. Maybe that problem will go away with Tahoe. But, note in particular that Alamode requires SQL Server, and if you try to run Alamode on an Apple M1-4 computer (i.e. silicon based), it will only partially work as of this date).

For appraisers doing the residential Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac appraisals, the only appraisal software available is Windows based. Commercial software is also, for all practical purposes, Windows based, simply because Argus only runs on Windows - although as far as I know, it will run on Parallels.

As for me, I have done my last GSE appraisal back in 2022. Now, I make all of my own spreadsheets.

 

[Zoe]

Do you ever use tech support? Installing adblockers and a good antivirus package will get you a long way. And the AI chat tools like GPT and Perplexity can walk you through most tech issues these days.

- https://www.appraisalinbox.com/blog/antivirus-software-for-real-estate-appraisers
- https://www.appraisalinbox.com/blog/ad-blockers-for-real-estate-appraisers

Yeah, I still delete by browsing history pretty frequently and run superantispyware pretty frequently. I use the free version of superantispyware. I haven't run malware bytes in a while. It does good too. It's free or you can get the paid version also. I use disk cleanup kinda frequently. Windows security runs constantly and does pretty good. They say you can have too many things running at one time and they interfere one with another.

 

[cashcatz]

Yeah, I still delete by browsing history pretty frequently and run superantispyware pretty frequently. I use the free version of superantispyware. I haven't run malware bytes in a while. It does good too. It's free or you can get the paid version also. I use disk cleanup kinda frequently. Windows security runs constantly and does pretty good. They say you can have too many things running at one time and they interfere one with another.

You might also wanna check out Brave browser. It does a good job blocking ads and has it's own search engine so you don't have to send so much data off to Googe.