Which laptop.

[Guest tomdbomb61]

hey all

im off to uni in september and ive got aroun £1000 to spend on a nice laptop. unfortunately i havent purchased any kind of laptop before.

so im just after advice as to what to look out for, wheres the best place to buy etc etc.

thanks tom

[Guest Gorskar]

If you have any intention of playing games more complicated than solitare then check that it has a decent graphics chip. Look for a radeon 9000 or a geforce 4.

But are you certain a laptop is best? My brother was looking at laptops in the same price range untill I showed him I could build a nice desktop with xp2800, 512mb ddr, 120gb, 18.1 tft, radeon9600 pro, dvd-rom/cdrw, 5.1 sound, wireless mouse and keyboard, tv tuner, etc

for the same money.

Also a whole less likely to get stolen!

Posted from my SmartPhone!

[Guest mcwarre]

I agree with the Gorskar. Also means that you can upgrade it if you want.

[Guest tomdbomb61]

thanks for the advice ill look at gettin a desktop pc then insted.

you say get one made? hows best to go about that , bearing in mind i know very little about building my own pc.

what kinda specs would i be looking at for around a £1000???

thanks tom

[Guest moomoomoo]

good ones, £1000 quid could make a nice machine with a good TFT to match. This:

OS: Windows Domain Controller 2003 Enterprise 5.2 (Build #3790) CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (T-Bred) , 2.13 GHz Video: Default on nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 (1600x1200x32bpp 75Hz) Sound: NVIDIA® nForce Audio Memory: Used: 205/256MB Uptime: 7m 19s 87ms HD: Free: [C:] 48.43/64.77 GB [D:] 2.64/4.01 GB [H:] 8.14/15.23 MB Connection: 1-v21 via Lucent Win Modem @ 34600 bps (Rec: 0.30MB Sent: 0.08MB)

Cost about £600 without a monitor...

[Guest Brody]

I'm sure there are a lot of people on this forum who could build you one (including myself!) Maybe you should ask for someone local! :)

[Guest amo]

Leicester isnt THAT far from mansfield (Just outside of nottingham). ive built hundreds over the years and would be able to build you a top of the range system for the £1000. PM me if your interested. Including DVD and CD writer, TFT screen, Surround sound etc...all the gubbins

[Guest Gorskar]

The best bit about building your own computer (it's not that hard really - its fairly obvious where most things go, and the motherboard manual will make it fairly plain) is you can choose EXACTLY what components go into it, so you know no corners are cut unless you want them to be.

(Of course if you're not confident to do that yourself then get someone else to help you - Amo's help for a few beers or whatever might be worthwhile! )

eg - this lil puppy was my latest purchase :) - You could build a decent computer including that for £1000 ... but try looking for a shop computer with a 19" TFT for £1000 - fat chance!!!!!!!

You can get all the components from places like ebuyer.com or dabs.com if you want!

[Guest tomdbomb61]

yeh im in the process of negotiating with mr amo!

[Guest Brody]

I use www.dabs.com and www.scan.co.uk mostly :)

[Guest nobznss]

Don't let these guys talk you out of a laptop!! They're just jealous cause they don't have one. :wink: Just kidding. Seriously though, I went from a desktop to a laptop and I won't go back. FAR less bulky to lug around. 8) They are a bit slower but you can get some pretty nice stuff in them. Mine has a AMD Mobile processor and it runs rings around the intel dektop processors (in laptops). It's also got a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 video card and it is a bunch better than my desktop video card was. I only paid around 900 pounds ($1,200) for my laptop and I love it. I had a local company build it for me and it runs great! Plus I can be anywhere in my house (with my wireless network) and be on the internet or playing some network game. Not very easy to do that with a desktop. You do pay a little extra money for the convenience, but in my book it's worth it.

[Guest amo]

I have a laptop too - just bought one in fact and if it werent for the fact that it was such a bargain, id regret getting it. Ive spoken to tomdbomb61 a fair bit now and he wants a rig for gaming, dvd playback and a nice big screen. A laptop can do only the dvd playback, why buy a laptop for a grand when u can spend the same ammount on so much more! i know id prefer a ATI Radeon 9800 than a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 :)

[Guest Brody]

amo: too right! :) I love mobility and convenience of laptop but desktop value and performance rules! :o

[Guest nobznss]

True that you guys. I agree desktops are much faster and much cheaper, and you can sure get better stuff for the buck, but I take my computer EVERYWHERE with me. I'm working on a Computer Science degree and I take it to school everyday. I guess it's all different for everyone. If you don't do much of that, then it makes no sense of having one huh.

[Guest ashley.flynn]

I have always been a desktop man mainly for price and upgradability, but i am about to go into my 3rd year of my Comp BSC and i am gonna have to get a laptop for the various presentations of software i gotta do. (the buggers wont let me install the .net framework!). nobzss was completely right when he said it is different for everyone but unless you think youre desperately gonna need the portability save some $$ for more performance :)

[Guest Rob.P]

If you want a laptop cheap with a large majority of the latest kit then go to the manufacturer websites and type in refurbished in their serach box.

Best one I have found so far is Toshiba the uk site has refurb stock section quite cheap laptops. Just got one from there actually, P4 2GHz, 256MB, 30GB HD, ATI Radeon 3D chip with 32MB, PCI Card slots 15" TFT and DVD player/CD-R/RW combo drive, Fast Infrared and Wi-Fi all for the lovely price of £556 (ex VAT), obviously if you can't get the VAT off they will be slightly more.

HP, Samsung, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic and Acer have a sections on their site as well. Acer have a couple of re-sellers that do it for them, but you can get some right bargins.

Hope that info is useful to someone.

I love laptops for portability especially now i have Wi-Fi network, but I still have 2 desktops machines, one for running network services and one is my NLE machine. There are some functions that a laptop can't replace a desktop with unles you have at least £2000!

[Guest cpt_andy]

Have you considered a Tablet PC? They are great for uni as you can jot your notes straight into them and do such useful things as saving as handwriting and then searching through the handwritten notes. I used one at college and found it really useful. I use the TC1000 which is probably the best around, although there is a new model coming soon. Only problem is it is a little slow and only has 16Mb VRAM.

Definately worth considering. Just over £1k on dabs I think.

Cpt. Andy

[Guest moomoomoo]

In my experience laptops are nothing but trouble... My first was a Sony VAIO PCG-FX101, which was a 600mhz celeron. That was just... crap. Many hardware faults rendered it useless within the first year. I then moved on to my current VAIO PCG-FX701, which is a Athlon 1400+ XP. To date I've had two bad HD's, and a bad keyboard. Having said that, sony tech support are very good at repairing the laptops, although it is a bit of a challange getting it into their heads that the laptop DOES really need to go back ;)

My friend had a 700mhz HP laptop, that eventually just didn't boot up. When he got it back from the repair, they had flashed the bios or something, which made the laptop the wrong model! This didn't really matter, but when he tried to use his restore disk it wouldn't work because they're model specific for.. errr... piracy reasons. Also when it came back some of the panneling wasn't sticking, so...

When buying a laptop you not only have to consider what it's going to be like when it works, but what it's going to be like when it doesn't work. There's a nice laptop come into to PC world, it's a Compaq, preatty nice specs and reasonably cheap. Although it doesn't come with a floppy drive, that's another thing to think about!

In my first post in this thread I said my computer cost around 600, it actually cost around 400. I was obviously a bit tired that day :)

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

I have a FX801 for a while earlier this year and had absolutely no problems with it. Great buy imho (expensive though).

[Guest Matt Whitfield]

Sounds like you've gone off the laptop idea, but this is where I got mine - EuroPC. I got a 1GHz P4 Dell SmartPC 100N laptop with 256MB for around £700 including delivery. The offers they have change all the time so it's best to wait for something that looks really good.

They also do desktop PCs and components, etc...

[Guest rodnav]

Check these babies out. Gaming laptops

[Guest Matt Whitfield]

Oh-my-dear-god... those are HARDCORE!!!

~drools~

[Guest Zim]

I want one off them.......

sooon we will have the precious!!!!!

well as soon as i can get rid of the 2 that i have i will look into these...

"Z"

[Guest Maverick]

I bought a "Desktop replacement" Presario laptop from Compaq... A bit pricey and noisey becoz the fan runs all the time tho... But I am happy with it. Its got JBL Pro speakers, ATI Radeon 9200, All the ports u need.. LAN, USB 2.0, FireWire, Irda, S-Video out Its got P4 processor which is normally used for desktops (thats the reason for the fan running all the time).. But this means I can upgrade the processor if I need to, in the future.