Decided to buy wife new laptop, which one for £400/500?

[chris watton]

OK, The laptop we were given isn't worth resurrecting, at all! So, I have decided to buy a new one, but which? I have no idea about laptops/notebooks, but I also don't want to pay over the odds for a poor spec, last decade's chip technology. I would also like it to be OKish for playing non demanding PC games, and graphics work (occasionally)
Am I asking too much from ne of these for the price bracket I have imposed? (A refurbed one would do also!)
Any advice welcome

Cheers

Chris

[maddog-uk]

Well dell are offering this puppy http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productde

for £549 with 1gb free and delivery. It has wireless and its a an ok chip for word processing etc

[chris watton]

Thanks for the link , However, my Mrs had a very bad experience with Dell, and flatly refuses to use them again! (does look good though!)
How about this one;
www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=102111
On the face of it, it seems pretty good, and installing extra memory isn't a prob, and a LOT cheaper to upgrade yourself, rather than the price-hikes on the Dell's customisation screen.

[maddog-uk]

I would steer clear of that chipset if you can. A centrino is effictively a better buy, and this one looks ok, its £70 over budget, but the same speed and spec as the laptop I am writing this reply on


www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=101770

[chris watton]

Thanks for that, and the advice on the CPU, just the kind of info I needed, I may go for that one then!

[tinman0]

got a toshiba L20 from dabs last week for £480inc vat and del. it needed a bit of extra memory (512 chip from crucial £35), and job was done.

not the fastest machine but then i wont be running anything heavy anyway. it came with a nice 15" tft (1024*768) but can run external monitors up to huge sizes.

being a toshiba it has a nice quality build feel to it as well.

[chris watton]

Hi Justin . Just noticed your reply Yes, I have had a look at that one too, seems pretty reasonable, trouble is, I start to get greedy, not content with only playing games on the main PC, I am thinking, what if I want to sit down on the settee and play too? When I start thinking like that, the budget suddenly needs to be £800/1000! I need to think 'moderation'!!! Its not for me! lol

[maddog-uk]

chris watton said:

Hi Justin . Just noticed your reply Yes, I have had a look at that one too, seems pretty reasonable, trouble is, I start to get greedy, not content with only playing games on the main PC, I am thinking, what if I want to sit down on the settee and play too? When I start thinking like that, the budget suddenly needs to be £800/1000! I need to think 'moderation'!!! Its not for me! lol

Well you could offer up your own machine and go for a high games laptop! Alas they normally come with a high end price tag. The supposed creme de la creme are made by these boys www.alienware.co.uk/main.aspx

[chris watton]

maddog-uk said:

chris watton said: Hi Justin . Just noticed your reply Yes, I have had a look at that one too, seems pretty reasonable, trouble is, I start to get greedy, not content with only playing games on the main PC, I am thinking, what if I want to sit down on the settee and play too? When I start thinking like that, the budget suddenly needs to be £800/1000! I need to think 'moderation'!!! Its not for me! lol Well you could offer up your own machine and go for a high games laptop! Alas they normally come with a high end price tag. The supposed creme de la creme are made by these boys www.alienware.co.uk/main.aspx

Cool laptops on that site! I absolutly love building my own PCs, can't for a laptop though, I need restraint, as the Tam is in for its 12K big service next month, and the notebook/laptop is really only for Chan, for her Excel/database thingies, that she does, and it's me who's being 'greedy' and lazy bin wanting more than she needs.
(I'd love to build another PC with those twin SLI graphics cards though!)

[maddog-uk]

Did you see my other post on that!! Built one for my Girlfriends nephew for christmas, I can honestly say its the fastest machine (home) that I have ever seen! It was rocking along, with dual sli etc and a top mid range 4400 dual core opteron.

[chris watton]

maddog-uk said:

Did you see my other post on that!! Built one for my Girlfriends nephew for christmas, I can honestly say its the fastest machine (home) that I have ever seen! It was rocking along, with dual sli etc and a top mid range 4400 dual core opteron.

WOW! bet its great! I spent thousands on mine a couple of years agao, have an Asus P4c800 mobo, 3,2 Prescot cpu, 2 GB of Corsair ram, 2x 74gb raptors in RAID0, (and 2x120gb IDEs for storage/files etc) and an XT850 GPU, all been usurped many times over now, and made me realise that buying bleeding edge was a bit daft, still plays games OK though! I did think about changing for one of those new AMD duel core CPUs, and twin graphics cards, but couldn't justify the cost at the mo.

>> Edited by chris watton on Sunday 12th February 20:17

[maddog-uk]

yep I know the feeling, hence why I get my kicks my buiding the machines for others! I always run a performance check on it, www.passmark.com and it was very fast.

[tinman0]

maddog-uk said:

chris watton said: Hi Justin . Just noticed your reply Yes, I have had a look at that one too, seems pretty reasonable, trouble is, I start to get greedy, not content with only playing games on the main PC, I am thinking, what if I want to sit down on the settee and play too? When I start thinking like that, the budget suddenly needs to be £800/1000! I need to think 'moderation'!!! Its not for me! lol Well you could offer up your own machine and go for a high games laptop! Alas they normally come with a high end price tag. The supposed creme de la creme are made by these boys www.alienware.co.uk/main.aspx

i'll be honest here and say that i've never thought much of laptops that arent made by the big boys, eg toshiba, apple, ibm and hp. i've seen loads of top spec laptops that just seem to break down. i dont know what it is but they just seem to be ultra fragile.

[maddog-uk]

I would agree but if you are after a games machine, they are not really laptops, they are portable PC's. Alienware has an excellent reputation in the gaming market.

For corporate PC's I work for a firm that insists on buying Sony Vaio's which whilst extremely stylistic are not really up to the job for long term work, and Sony has no idea how engage with large corporates.

But the bottom line was the big brands are too heavy with there ultra leighweights being too bloated.

Personally I am huge fan of HP, but there laptops leave a lot to be desired.

[stone]

Aldi have a laptop in their special offers this week. It can be seen on the uk website

[maddog-uk]

Its a little unbranded!!!! Ironically thanks to the supermarkets I hear there will be a glut of cheap PC's coming onto the market. Perhaps Aldi are helping with the charge!

[jon h]

I like these guys: www.rockdirect.com I have had 9 machine off them recently, ranging from light weight ultra-portable to some heavy weight desktop replacements for high end design applications. They even do a dual core machine with RAID ffs!

Jon H

[chris watton]

OK, have ordered one, we're picking it up tonight
Seems to be quite reasonable for the spec;

www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_287890.html

Is that OK, do you think?