Laptop experts, what do you make of this machine...

[Guest yrreP]

I could really do with a laptop, but I don't really know a lot about computer hardware. A simple Goolge search always brings up gazillions of possible purchases, and I never know what is best.

I have however spotted this little beast - http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_s...;affixedcode=WW

Now, I thought this to be quite a good deal, especailly with free P&P.

I don't want nor need a gaming machine, this is purely for surfing the hypertron, doing bit and bobs for work, and maybe the odd session of Championship Manger!

What do you lot think? Any good? Does anyone know of any "better" deals out there?

Cheers,

Yrrep.

[Guest Monolithix (MVP)]

Looks ok, not bad for the price. Bear in mind the CPU is very dated even now though. If you up your budget to 400-450 you can probably pick up something with a Core 2 Duo for a little more futureproofing. Misco, Dabs, eBuyer all distribute cheapo laptops so take a look around there. Acer are good to look at for the cheapest (and best spec) too...

edit: something like this is going to have a lot longer useful life...

[Guest Stuart_f]

Upping the budget to £450 is a 33% increase which is a pretty hefty overrun!

I like the 1 gig of ram and the larger than you would expect HD. I wouldn't write the CPU off quite yet although I'm the first to admit it's no powerhouse. The big question you need to ask yourself is are you sure you don't want to play games?

[Guest Monolithix (MVP)]

To be honest if you're serious about playing games on a laptop you'd have to up your budget to at least £700 for something that is firstly *capable* of running modern games, and £1000+ for something capable of playing games *well*.

As far as the budget hike goes, yeah it is a bit much i admit but you get what you pay for. Vista on the initial machine would be sluggish and as soon as you start doing cpu intensive tasks it'll struggle or take ages (eg ripping a CD to WMP/itunes), and it'll only get worse. For £350 though you're not going to get much better than the Fujistu Siemens, which isnt a bad make as they go.

If you want something a little more responsive that will last longer, the Tosh (or similar) would be a sound investment of another £100 imho...

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

I recently bought the missus a new laptop, an Amilo V3135 (I think it was), which came in about 370, and i'm well pleased with it (after lumping a bit of extra RAM in it). Runs Vista including Aero fine!

Product Page: http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/home/produc...lo_li_1705.html

Full Specs PDF: http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/Resources/234/1100854147.pdf

As with the one I bought, the one linked above isn't the prettiest ever, specs aren't going to set the world on fire, but at the price... bargain! Treat yourself to a 1GB RAM chip tho ;)

P

[Guest OzzMosiz]

Personally I'd never buy a celeron machine, but if you are SURE you don't want to do any meaty tasks such as gaming, then it looks alright.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

My other half is perfectly happy with her Celeron, I wouldn't use it personally, but then i'm a power user (Visual Studio, Photoshop etc. etc.) and she just uses IE, Excel etc. most of the time.

Horses for courses as they say...

P

[Guest Christopher Woods]

Last October I bought myself a (then) new Acer Aspir 5672 WLMi (which has since been superceded) - it has a proper Radeon x1400 in with 128Mb of dedicated memory and up to 512mb of "hypermemory" (hah)... Core 2 Duo T2300 (not the fastest but not the slowest either!), TWO GIGS (!) of DDR2 RAM, 120Gb hard drive, all the other usual extras.... Lovely laptop, use it daily, plays games really well too. That was £800 back then, you can get better Acers than that now for a little less.

You'll HAVE to spend at least £700 to get something which'll last you more than 18 months, but in six months the performance of all laptops will have raised so much more than the relative increase in performance of desktop machines, you'd do well to hold back for 3/4 months and wait 'n see what comes out!

Course, if you just _can't_ wait any longer... (and I wouldn't blame you either, I can't understand how I lived without a laptop now I have one!)