Hi all, I am purchasing a laptop for my son, requirements below: Usage: homework, media consumption (YouTube, streamed movies on LAN etc), Minecraft Budget: Less than £400 if possible Brands: Must be decent quality and robust, personal preference for Lenovo Other info: - No touch screens - he already has a tablet I have been looking at the following laptops as I think they are a good deal but would like to know if anyone knows of anything better? Lenovo Essential B5400 15.6" 4GB Core i3 Laptop Lenovo IdeaPad Z500 Asus X552CL 15.6" Core i3 1.8GHz 6GB 500GB Nvidia 710M
What's the beef with Win8? Just d/l Classic Shell for free and have it boot to desktop, with a full Win7 startmenu. Such save, much happy, wow.
It is for a 9 year old who currently uses Windows 7 on a shared desktop in the home, Windows 8 is a step too far at the moment plus I want to keep things standardised at home for now. If I do go for Windows 8, I'll do it across all PC's in the house, for now I'll stick to Windows 7.
Ignore the bit about Windows 7 only, I will just remove the hard drive that comes with any laptop and install my own SSD and Windows 7 O/S, saving the Windows 8 installation for future use. Any thoughts anyone?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-G500...ie=UTF8&qid=1395853625&sr=8-3&keywords=lenovo IPS screen so decent quality and the i3 will provide enough power for the tasks a 9 year old may throw at it...though I must ask what the tablet can't do that the laptop can for that age? You can even drop it to £307 by going to 4GB RAM rather than 6GB.
http://www.novatech.co.uk/laptop/range/novatechnspiren1578.html Great customer service from these guys and can customise each laptop to your needs. Intel I3-4000M 4GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory 500GB 2.5" Hard Drive £414.98
The only reference I can find to it coming with an IPS screen is on that Amazon page, nothing I can find anywhere else says anything other than an LCD LED screen. Whilst it is a great price, I am wondering if the newer CPU with Intel 4600 integrated graphics would be better for Minecraft. With regards to the laptop vs. the tablet, he can't do his homework in word/Excel/Powerpoint on the tablet, at least not without it being a pain in the backside - we've tried - he needs to use a mouse & keyboard. Tablets are really consumption devices, not production devices. That spec you quoted is a great one but a little over budget, the Lenovo I linked in the OP is more or less the same spec but cheaper. Cheers though.
I doubt it will have an IPS screen. The specs that mention it seem to refer to the i5 model with discrete graphics, which is a lot more expensive. That said it's probably an okay choice for the the money. Maybe the AMD based Lenovo G505s version would be better for minecraft? http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/lapto...ps/lenovo-g505s-15-6-laptop-21707558-pdt.html Albeit for a little bit more money. Not sure about mobile versions, but A series APUs generally have more capable integrated graphics (at the cost of single threaded processing performance). Edit: Or £265 for similar specs but Samsung refurb with 3 month warranty (and blue ): http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Refu..._Laptop_in_Blue_A2-NP355V5C-A0DUK/version.asp
Without wanting to start an off-topic argument, I think I'll stick to the Intel chipsets with a preference for a Haswell CPU.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=3515654#post3515654 How about that? You can drop an SSD in and still be miles under budget.
Been looking at that but the lack of warranty and the HD3000 integrated GPU are putting me off. If it was cheap enough I would buy it myself anyway, rather than for my boy! It is a great little laptop.
I've been looking at laptops recently with the thought of getting something small but relatively powerful. Here's what I found. It does come in at £700 so is admittedly quite over your budget, but I thought it was pretty neat. Gigabyte are due to release the P34G v2 14-Inch mid April which has an 860m (quite powerful) but it'll probably cost a grand.
Thanks Pete but you are right, it is an overkill and out of range I'm afraid, no matter how nice it is.
Just found an Asus X552CL at a good price, Ivy Bridge but with dedicated Nvidia GPU. Anyone have any experience of Asus laptops?
At the moment I am leaning towards this one, it is a great price for an i3 laptop with dedicated Nvidia GPU: Asus X552CL 15.6" Core i3 1.8GHz 6GB 500GB Nvidia 710M 1GB USB3 HDMI Win8 http://www.dabs.com/products/asus--...g - Laptops and Netbooks - Laptops&origin=pla Scratch that, the price has suddenly gone up to £451, must of been a pricing error
