Be Excellent To Each Other

Hi

My ladies' laptop has died a death and seeing as its a couple years old and not that awesome anyway, she has decided to buy a new one.
Neither of us keep up to date on technology really, but seeing as she worked for intel this last year, she is wanted one of the i3 or better processors.
Simple question is, whats a good solid manufacturer, and next, what is a good model for sub£500, preferably with the following:

- fast processor
- proper GFX card (mainly so it can run 7)
- at least 2GB ram
- Windows 7 preferred, but can upgrade.
- ability to add on an SSD drive.
- proper laptop size so min 14'' screen.

Other stuff that would be nice
- card reader
- bluray drive
- webcam

If anyone has done the market research themselves recently and can recommend we'd be most obliged.

Cheers

Dell, probably. Even if you can edge the price down a bit by buying from someone else, you're generally either compromising on build quality (e.g Acer) or making such a thin saving it doesn't justify the time spent pissing about.

Oh, and BluRay will be a tall order under 500 quid, and SSDs are just hard drives.

In before Alien ware..

Seriously, look on Dell or HP etc... then do a price chsck with Tesco

Having clicked around myself, I can't see anything for less than 500 quid that isn't remarkably shit in at least two of your "fast" required categories. Compromise or raise your budget I think.

I'm probably going to get either a £398 HP or £469 Toshiba from Tesco, essentially the same i3-based machine but the Tosh is slightly lighter, slightly faster CPU, slightly longer quoted battery life and has a bigger HDD. I'm only doing that because I have £200 of clubcard vouchers turning up Any Day Now though.

Neither of them have proper graphics though, just the Intel HD Bobbins. But I don't care about that*. The only way you'll get half-decent graphics out of a cheap laptop is to go with an AMD-based one I reckon. A BDROM is probably Right Out, too.

* Especially as it was the Nvidia graphics that went pop in my Lenovo, which is why I need a new one.

Can't go wrong with a Tosh IME.

Standard has-to-be-asked question - is she sure she wants a laptop? If it never moves from the room she uses it in, then she doesn't.
You can get a lot more desktop for your ££.

Woman quite like netbooks if this forum is to be believed. They are also cheap so you need to ask yourself, do you really need superfast GPU given these new NVIDIA integrated chips are quite fast (if you don't believe me go and look on Youtube at the people running 3D games on the Acer Revo which is effectively a desktop netbook).

You don't need a fancy Dan graphics card to run 7 either. I have full Aero running on my Revo and it only has the NVIDIA ION chipset. Only thing that causes issues is the C64 emulator and I think that's a incompatibility that forces Windows out of Aero.

No blu ray, it's running Vista (but 7 will run fine on it), and a slightly older (but still pretty fast) processor, 4gb of ram and a proper graphics card. £474 delivered from Argos via eBay.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ACER-ASPIRE-7735G ... 185wt_1137
Not read any reviews like, but it's within budget

Hi.
Yeah definitely a laptop, it will be used on the move.

OK scratch the Blu Ray and youll remember ive got an X25v knocking around hence the SSD space requirement.

Cheers Lewie, that was my first port of call.
Any other opinions on this as an option.


im going to peruse Tesco now based on the recommendation above.

Do you mean "replace HDD with SSD" or "fit SSD as secondary internal drive"?

OK so if it doesnt need a dedicated GPU to run 7, whats an acceptable specification.

The machine will be used for Business type applications (office, powerpoint etc) and internet primarily.

The latter, if possible.

Boot drive, and then the HDD as storage. Can you do this on a laptop?

Not often. I just did with my Macbook but I had to remove the optical drive and buy a special bracket.

Cool will look at Dell. Thanks for the advice on the other brands.

Dang. OK.

The Intel chipset gubbins will be fine for that, which is why I'm not bothered about it.

'Course the other option is http://www.hotukdeals.com/search?action ... rds=laptop

I dunno if the NVIDIA ION chipset has made its way into laptops yet, but from what I've seen it seems impressive. Far better than standard integrated graphics and doesn't require much power. But it might be NVIDIA don't want to damage their GPU sales so are keeping it away from laptops.

[edit] Ah, the Ion has to use the Intel Atom processor which means it will be netbook only. Shame.

Ok well looks like the Tosh here:

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.209-8968.aspx

Or I guess one of these Dells is quite nice:

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.209-1791.aspx

Speaking of Dells, for the same money I found this:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/dell-insp ... xtor=AL-50

Im assuming that is better than the tesco one?

If you're considering Dell (I don't think I saw anyone mention this) you should check out the Dell Outlet
http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/dfo/df. ... d=df&s=dfo

This seems a decent deal:
http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/Seco ... l=en&s=dfh
£569.05 delivered
Studio 1558
N-Series Intel i5-520M(2.4GHz)
1 GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
500GB Serial ATA (5400RPM)
4096MB (2x2048) 1333MHz DDR3
Drive Blu-Ray Disc (DVD+/-RW + BD-ROM) Drive
15.6in (1366X768) WLED

Just asked her, she wont have a refurb, the wierdo

would she know?

Refurbs are better than off-the-shelf. They go through more stringent quality checks.

it is not an iphone4 it will work out of the box...


sorry..

going for this one

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/dell-insp ... 4-pdt.html

core i3
500gb
4gb ram
win7

£550

unlikely but its her money

sigh, yeah

women huh

Yeah, I've heard nothing but good things about dell outlet.

They sell some stuff as "certified refurbished" which means it'll be good as new, and some stuff as "Scratch/dent" which are apparently only ever incredibly minor superficial damage.

There's also a million in one chance you'll get one with naked pictures of the previous owner.

if i ever want a laptop ill likely do that

Lewie, seems someone has bought that Studio in the time since posting, cant find it now.
good buy, id have had that.

she wouldnt notice the difference tbh

My refurb Macbook was an excellent purchase and has had no problems at all.

It depends on the company though. Refurb can mean 6 month old kit that has to be resold because its not faulty but it looks used. Unlike Apple who send kit out as good as new.

Whilst we are on the subject of laptops, MrsA's has been running really slowly, so on Sunday, I used Startup inspector, and got rid of a bunch of stuff on bootup. The I used Add/remove programs to remove some more. I ran ccleaner to clean out other things (3,ooo meg) and the registry.

is there anything else I should do?

Rebuild it?

Get a job.

Eh?

The pressure is off a little, as I've been informed that the children won't ever, ever, ever be sent to a private school. So I can now downsize my ambitions.

Buy a Mac.

it isn't raining.

Depends how old it is, but a rebild can get rid of a lot of crap that has built up..

How does I do rebuild?

Apart from the Blu-ray drive, that is as near as makes no difference the Dell laptop I bought around 2-3 months ago for around 650. I am really really pleased with it, and felt that the price was fair (but not a bargain). It's the only reasonably powerful computer we have with us at the moment, so we're using it for everything that we used to do on the desktop (internet browsing, office, photos, media playback, some light games like Tales of monkey Island) but is OK to use on a lap or coffee table.

It's gonna feel quite heavy if you are planning on lugging it about a bit, though. Battery life is not brilliant either but that's not too important to me at the moment. I'd certainly recommend it.

Post it to:

Coffey Computer Repair
287 LED Street
Hull

Flash the BIOS

anyone got a key for office 2007 spare or know where to legally acquire one ? thanks

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/231421

OR

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186602

Is it possible to get Office bundled for about £300?