The girlfriend wants a laptop. I'm looking at this one for her as its the size she wants, fast cpu. I'm not too sure of the GPU though. Anyone know if the 5730 is decent or not? wasn't able to find any reviews on it. She also likes the appearance of this laptop so if you know of any other asus ones that look like this but have better specs please let me know about it! Thanks for any input! http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX30380(ME).aspx
Looks good though, correct me if I'm wrong, the battery capacity seems a tad small for a relatively high-powered laptop? Otherwise it looks really good, I'd consider it if I was buying, definitely.
yeah the battery is kind of small. Thats the problem. every laptop that she likes the appearance of, there is a flaw that makes it a bit of a deal breaker...
How often will she be using it off the mains? If she is anything like my girlfriend then it won't be going far and so won't require a decent battery.
The N-series has some decent speakers and good build quality, and the mobile HD 5730 is not bad: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5730.23825.0.html 400 shaders @ 650MHz make it HD 5570 performance in the real world. Do you need a quad core? And remember it maybe 16" but still has 13x7 resolution (but then, so does every bloody laptop these days..) but at least it's an LED display.
Not sure how often it will be unplugged but battery life is something that she always comments on so I guess it should have a decent battery. She also isn't much of a gamer and after looking at the page that Bindi linked to I think this GPU it should be more than enough. She doesn't likely need an I7, a fast I5 would work as well. I would like to get one with the new cpu's that intel just came out with but haven't seen any yet.
If she isn't a gamer, drop the quad core and go for an i5 with integrated graphics! You'll save a lot of heat and battery. If she specifically likes that design, Asus do smaller ones with different configs.
hmmm, I am a little hesitant to go for something with integrated graphics. not because she needs a stand alone gpu, but because she might want one in the future. I'm also nervous about how long integrated would would last. her current laptop can barely surf the web, let along play video. It won't even run XP! And it's only a bit over 2 years old. An I7 is a quad with hyper threading correct? and the I5 is the same without the hyper threading? I think I will try and find an i5 with about the same specs as the asus I linked to. She also has her eye on the Sony Vaio notebooks. But I think that they are a little overpriced.
No, there are i7s that are dual core too! The i7's with "Q" in the name are real quad cores with 8 threads. i7 dual cores usually have more L3 cache or lower power use than the i5s. What notebook does she have that can't even run XP or play video :S:S An Atom?? Clarkdale IGPs aren't bad, Sandy Bridge (most coming out next month) are definitely better and yes, Sony are generally costly but also finely engineered (but not always in the right way).
good lord, could they make it any more confusing??? Her current laptop was built by her ex as a laptop that came running Linux. Its a custom build with a slow AMD cpu barely any ram and what could be the fastest hard drive available at the time. It's an odd machine. I keep waiting for it to die. If sandy bridge is out next month then I will just convince her to wait for that. I usually just buy what I can afford when I need something but she can wait another month...
