Hello all, My parents were kind enough to give me £250 for my birthday back in August towards a laptop. I put off buying it because I can never make my mind up. At first I though a nice wee netbook would be good. Then I though hmm but I'd like to play games. Having recently moved out of the parents house and in with my GF, the desktop came with me. So I'm thinking a gaming laptop now. I came across this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191571 and was wonding what you guys think. It's within my budget of around £500. I would like it to play L4D, TF2, CoH, WoW, HL2. That kind of thing. The budget is low because I'm a student. Thanks in advance for the help.
well there is this http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5740G_Laptop_LX.PMF02.061/version.asp but why not upgrade the desktop? and if your desktop is good at gaming why do you need a gaming laptop? get a small one for word processing
This GPU will handle games at low/minimum settings. If I am not mistaken it's a Geforce 9300M with 512MB of memory. Have a look at the Alienware M11x. It's very small, serious GPU power with a Geforce 330M GPU. Also this system would be idea for a student as it's small and compact, to carry everyday. If you are a university student, you might also want to look for battery life. Remember, battery life time degrade really fast! their life expectancy is 1 year to a year and half, depending on usage. Example, I have a Dell Latitude E6400 equipped with a Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, Quadro NVS 160M (Geforce 9400M but with 256MB of memory, instead of shared), 4GB, 9-cell battery. My laptop provided me max 9-hours, 3-4 month or so, later: I had 7 and half hours, a year later, about 5 hours'ish, and now about a year and half 3 hours... this summer I'll have to buy a new battery. The reason why I was able to streach it for another 6months, is that my classes allowed me to have access to A/C for most classes or is 1 course of an hour and half and only course of the day. If I took the smaller battery (6-cell), then there would be no way I could use my laptop.. I would be with pen and paper if I don't have access to a plug, and that renders the laptop 95% useless, as I can't take notes on it, defeating it's purpose. That 5% is to be able to do my assignments on the go, but isn't an absolute necessity, I could use the computer labs computers, and do remote desktop to my home computer. If you wonder, my laptop can handel the games you mentioned at medium/low settings. I can go at medium settings if I overclock my GPU (my laptop handles the overclock like if it was nothing thanks to it's excellent cooling, for a laptop). Try to aim for a 9500M if you want to be comfortable for future gaming. NOTE: I don't know what is 500UK $, so sorry if my my recommendation is over your budget.
Yeah I was considering a netbook. The reason I want a gaming laptop is so I can use it at my parents house when I visit. Not just for games but movies, iplayer etc.
the alien aware is £750 so it is a quite a bit over budget but goodbytes a good way to check currencys is to type into google 'pound to dollar' and it will give you a currency calculater so you can check almost any currency in the world very useful
Have a look at Dell Studio 15. Dell has one at 499 Pounds Comes with an ATI Radeon 4570M (some benchmarks: http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.html) Basically, you lose 1GB compared to the Samsung one, for a more powerful GPU. I am sure with basic negotiation on the phone, you can get a backlit keyboard (nice to have) for free and wireless N for free as well. If you need to pay shipping, it will be provided to you for free (that one is always a given with Dell). May I ask, what program your going (or are) in, College/University? As a University student I can you the following: 1- 14inch should be your max in portability.. it will be main to carry a bigger laptop with university books. 2- Battery battery battery battery, always damn battery. Having long battery life will prevent you from bringing a power adapter and extension cord to class (like people do in my university) to be plug-in in the older University buildings or non-renovated class rooms. 3- If you have a gaming computer, then you dont' need a powerful GPU, unless you need GPU power for school specifics. For instance, if you are in engineering (other than software engineering/computer science), you will have CAD project, where you'll design 3D models of devices/machines. 4- As soon as you get a laptop, start saving for a new battery.. batteries for laptop are not cheap, even if you get genuine new battery from eBay for half the price, it's still expensive. 5- OneNote 2010 part of Office 2010 Beta, is a great note taking software, you should get it. http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/download-office-professional-plus/default.aspx 6- glossy screens waist more battery life, as it difficult to see the screen (you see yourself more), so you need to jam up the brightness more. LED backlit screens are more powerful (minimum brightness is like 50% for most laptops with CFL lamps) 7- You always need the laptop with you, having next business day onsite service is worth it, if you can afford it. It's nice to get anything that is wrong with the laptop over the usability of the system replaced. In my case, I lost a pad, Dell send me (well a technician), with a new laptop base and palm rest.. just 1 pad lost. It's great! My system looks new now. 8- If budget is small, and you can wait... WAIT until your budget increase. Summer is around the corner, get a summer job.. ANY job, even if it's McDonalds, save up, and now get yourself a real nice portable system with power, that really fits your needs. I have a friend who studies in pharmacy at university, he was looking into buying a laptop, I told him to wait and see what you will need for university, and the ended up buying a tablet PC, which was more useful for him for his Math, physics and chemistry courses. In my case (computer science), I only have 2 math courses, so a laptop was more worth it.
There was an offer on the Dell site for a Studio 15 which had an i3 processor and a 4570 for £480, not sure if it's still there though I'm afraid, they change their offers very regularly. It's the cheapest i3 + decent dedicated graphics laptop I could find for the price because I'm looking at getting something at this price point. I'm fed up with my netbook's inability to play anything properly 3D.
Your not getting a gamer for less than £400 and even that would be the lowest of the low, I'm sure if you can extend your budget Good Bytes could find you one, he's very resourceful but even he can't do the impossible
Hey, Thanks for all the replies. I'm a student teacher. I don't really need the laptop for my studies as I just use the school computers for lesson planning etc. Plus it's only a one year course and its almost finished. This is really for work/play when I'm on the move. I don't really go for the latest games, I have a back catalogue of games I've bought and never really gotten around to playing. Therefore this budget might provide me with a laptop just powerful enough to run the games I mentioned in my OP. I'll check out the Dell and the Acer metioned earlier. Any more suggestions keep them coming Thanks for all the responses.
Well, you don't need a heavy Gaming Laptop to play fun games, just means your restricted to the low demand or oldies, for example, a Netbook will apparently happily play WoW as long as you avoid Ironforge and Dalaran
Guys do you mean this Dell? Couldn't find a direct link, is it the one in the middle? http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/hom...dhs&cid=HDLaptop&cs=ukdhs1&dgc=IR&lid=SHP_BK3
Yeah, that's the one, the £479 one, make sure to use the link from that page because that offer doesn't seem to appear anywhere else. It's pretty much the best spec to be found at that price. I would consider the Asus 1201N netbook after some of the previous replies, it's a fully fledged ION netbook ie. dual core Atom processor + GeForce 9400M and it's up to basic gaming, plus its 12" screen is much easier to use than the usual 10" of a netbook. As for gaming on a normal netbook, no damn way could you run WoW fluently. The netbook I'm currently typing on (see sig.) can run the original Unreal Tournament very well...but that's about it. It only just plays GTA Vice City. So yeah, that Dell is very good at £479 but the best netbook around at the moment is the 1201N at around £400, I saw it on LambdaTek for £390. Any takers for this netbook? I want to upgrade to the Asus now
AH YES! ION, completely forgot about it. But get the ION2 (it has a Geforce 210, which uses dedicated memory instead of shared, so more power, ideal for software that uses GPU rendering power like the using CUDA technology) ION1 desktop, I have for my mother computer. It's a great! I haven't tried gaming on it, though. You must however remember that what will limit the games, is the lack of CPU power. The desktop I have has the fastest Intel Atom, the N330 (1.6GHz (can be OC to 2.0GHz), 64-bit, dual core with HT). HD movies plays without too much trouble, Win7 64-bit runs without a sweat (system has 2GB of RAM, 7200RPM SATA HDD). However, you can only do light multi-tasking. You can't install 3 programs at the same time, or do a virus-scan while doing something else heavy like watching a HD movie. I mean you can.. but you'll feel the sluggishness of the Atom. Also, heavy Flash rendering will be choppy in your web browser. Flash 10.1 when it comes out, will be great as video playback will use the GPU rather than CPU, that will help a lot. Beta of Flash 10.1 is already out.
Very true, the Atom 330 processor can be a little underwhelming sometimes, but for basic tasks it's fine. As yet there are no ION 2 netbooks released, and the one Acer is releasing looks worryingly slow, judging by this article (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/02/22/acers-ion-2-532g-benchmarked/1) you may be better off going with the original ION. However, let's not get too hung up about ION netbooks, the performance jump between an i3 + 4570 against an Atom 330 + 9400M is pretty massive whilst the price isn't correspondingly so. It all comes down to what is wanted from the machine really.
I quite like the idea of the Ion. Having such a small portable computer that is capable of gaming on would be fantastic. Nice looking wee machine as well. Then again for the sake of about £80 I could have a not so portable computer that is more powerful. Aggrh decisions.
Read reviews of the ION and the other laptop and decide. If you with with the ION, I strongly recommend to get the most powerful Intel Atom 64-bit with at least 2 GB of RAM. especially if you want to play games, as teh Atom is really not powerful.. think of a mid range P4.. but dual core and sues the latest technology to make it WIn7 ready :/. Please note also, that not all Atom are 64-bit. Refer to this chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom#Architecture and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors Also look at the AMD Athlon Neo which competes with the ION. AGain pick the most powerful AMD Neo CPU possible. If you can wait for the ION2, it uses Nvidia Optimus technology to auto-switch without noticing from the integrated GPU to a dedicated Geforce G210M with 512MB of built-in video memory. More info: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/02/nvidia-ion-2-now-official-acer-asus-and-lenovo-at-the-ready/ http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-NextGeneration-ION-2-Preview-Optimus-Enabled/ Correction to my previous post: I said I the ION I have has an Atom N330... I meant 330. N330 doesn't exists.. it's 330.
