Laptop advice - small but powerful

[rich1231]

thanks everyone

how much do the M11's weigh?

That UK laptops site only has a smattering with UK keyboards though.

[Murph7355]

rich1231 said:

...
Have seen MBA's and think they look amazing but dont really want a turtlenck.. unless someone can sway me....

You need to bin your prejudices as you'll be missing out on one of the best machines on the market at the moment IMO, if you're looking for portability.

Quality build, powerful. It'll last an age and the OS is actually very, very good. They also hold their value very well (all Macs do compared to PCs) if that's important.

You might not like Jobs. You might not like the way some "fanboys" act. See beyond that though, and much of their kit justifies the hype.

I always chuckle when people spend an age avoiding buying Apple kit, even when the kit in question is extremely good - they're as bad as the fanboys. If it had any other badge on it (Dell, HP, Lenovo etc) they'd be raving about it and straight down the shops

[Gizmo!]

I've got a Dell E4310 at work. 13.3" 1366x768 screen, Core i5, really very impressed. Not sure how much they are (Google suggests ~£1200) but it's much better than I was expecting from a Dell.

No optical drive on mine, although I'm sure they're available.

[Silver993tt]

For quality and professionalism Lenova Thinkpad can't be beaten. You can custom spec them up very well. Had mine for nearly 2 years and it's fabulous. Also has a 120Gb SSD as the system disk with a standard 500Gb 7200 drive running Win 7 64-bit. It's never given me a single problem and it's used heavily every day.

[rich1231]

Thanks again everyone.

Not that the laptop will be used for gaming but a discrete video processor would be preferred to a inbuilt intel snail. The Lenovos att he size all seem to be a bit hampered by this.

[Cuchillo]

The budget of £1500 is a bit "low" for a decent 13" Laptop. If you can go higher look at the Sony Z series. Ruddy good laptops and stonkingly fast (for what I use them form).

Sony Vaio Z Series

PS: There is a "sale" on, on their website. So just might be able to get it in for £1.5.

HTH

[Thorburn]

Cuchillo said:

The budget of £1500 is a bit "low" for a decent 13" Laptop. If you can go higher look at the Sony Z series. Ruddy good laptops and stonkingly fast (for what I use them form).

Sony Vaio Z Series

PS: There is a "sale" on, on their website. So just might be able to get it in for £1.5.

HTH

Got an older Vaio Z21ZN at the moment and its a stunning machine even now. Extremely light, great battery life and a fantastic 1600x900, LED backlit screen.

Cost the original buyer £2500

[Cuchillo]

Thorburn said:

Got an older Vaio Z21ZN at the moment and its a stunning machine even now. Extremely light, great battery life and a fantastic 1600x900, LED backlit screen.

Cost the original buyer £2500

Yep, damn fine machines ... Have the Z48 ... Have just spec'ed up a new VPCZ13X5E and it came to £4,208.00 (inc. VAT)!!!

[Now, where did the wife leave her credit card? ]

[rich1231]

Those sonys are very pricey, and my experience of vaio's is that they are rammed full with bloat.

Easy to exchange ssd's on them with my own larger items?

[Thorburn]

rich1231 said:

Those sonys are very pricey, and my experience of vaio's is that they are rammed full with bloat.

Easy to exchange ssd's on them with my own larger items?

I re-formatted the one I have when I got it and put on Windows 7. Only complaint I'd have in that regard was getting the switchable graphics to work was a faff as they didn't include the necessary tools in the Windows 7 driver downloads, so you had to mix in parts from the Vista downloads.

Came with an SSD already, but I believe its a 1.8" drive and is quite hard to access.

[Clivey]

Another vote for the MacBook Pro. It's definitely light enough to be carried around and the aluminium case is hard-wearing too (it won't scratch unless you've very careless). Most laptops, even the über-expensive, look like cheap tat after the shiny finish and gloss starts to rub-off the corners of the case and all the commonly-used buttons etc. If you are travelling with it, the battery life of the new Apple laptops is a big boon and the magsafe adapter will help avoid expensive accidents (the amount of laptops I see that have landed on the floor after someone's tripped over the charging cable is beyond belief).

[Moreymach]

rich1231 said:

thanks everyone

how much do the M11's weigh?

That UK laptops site only has a smattering with UK keyboards though.

M11 is around 4 lbs.

Ref the keyboard, sorry Id forgotten that. Mine is a Swedish keyboard so pretty similar to the UK one, as is the Spanish one.

[Cuchillo]

rich1231 said:

Those sonys are very pricey, and my experience of vaio's is that they are rammed full with bloat.

Easy to exchange ssd's on them with my own larger items?

Yes, pricey ... But (I think) they are worth it.

Yes, they are full of bloat. The first thing you do is to "nuke if form orbit". The Sony Support Website usually has the individual divers so you can pick and choose what you want to get it to work without all the bloat.

Notebook Review is a good site for getting info on how to strip down the Sony and what you need to do a "clean" install on it.

Not tried to upgrade the SSD. Have not maxed out the current one yet, but getting real close. When it gets to that point I might just get a newer machine with a bigger drive as the current one will be 2 years old by then.

[rich1231]

Sony's SSD options are massively overpriced.. though the machines look nice.

Edited by rich1231 on Monday 20th December 21:14

[Clivey]

Cuchillo said:

Yes, they are full of bloat. The first thing you do is to "nuke if form orbit". The Sony Support Website usually has the individual divers so you can pick and choose what you want to get it to work without all the bloat.

Notebook Review is a good site for getting info on how to strip down the Sony and what you need to do a "clean" install on it.

Good advice, and the first thing you should do on pretty much any laptop running Windows - the bloatware often ruins the user experience of a shiny new laptop!

[GWMD]

I am currently typing this from an HP Elitebook 2540P.

Stunning machine. Seems to fit your requirements?

Core I7, 4GB DDR3, lovely keyboard, and very well built.

Usually I am big Thinkpad fan, my main/bigger laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad W500, but for the ultraportable I just prefered the HP.

Comes in at the right budget as well?

http://computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/hp-elit...

Edited by GWMD on Monday 20th December 14:30

[otolith]

Call me Mr Shallow, but that tacky AlienWare design theme they use on all their kit makes it look as if you mugged a 14 year old boy for his laptop.

[Neil H]

Another vote for the Vaio Z series, pricey but nice, powerful and portable. You can just reformat the drive to get rid of all the Sony bloatware.

[Moreymach]

otolith said:

Call me Mr Shallow, but that tacky AlienWare design theme they use on all their kit makes it look as if you mugged a 14 year old boy for his laptop.

I know, it's great isn't it

You can change the glowing keys and vents to any colour you like though or turn them off. In the flesh the design is actually quite subtle looking and much less eye catching than an MBP say or even many of the brightly coloured offerings from PC World.

[rich1231]

Moreymach said:

otolith said:

Call me Mr Shallow, but that tacky AlienWare design theme they use on all their kit makes it look as if you mugged a 14 year old boy for his laptop.

I know, it's great isn't it

You can change the glowing keys and vents to any colour you like though or turn them off. In the flesh the design is actually quite subtle looking and much less eye catching than an MBP say or even many of the brightly coloured offerings from PC World.

Isnt it a bit thick?