Well with univirsity looming I decided to get a laptop n pass my desktop to my parents which is giving me around the 1000 pound mark to spend insane I know. Anyway any know of any good brands, I was looking at a 16inch full hd screen, good specs, bluray etc also want something with good battery life. Iv been looking at a top spec sony vaio fw which seem pretty good this is to last me 7 years so id like it to be alittle future proof. Uses will be mainly 3d modeling, watching films, occasional games, general work Thanks p.s. Is it worth attempting to build my own or are these just not cost effective???
personally i'd steer clear of the sony vaio range see if you cant pick up an ibm thinkpad t61, solid machines, really reliable, and if you can get one with a discrete graphics card then you should be good to go for your gaming/modelling also, possibly a dell? look into dells latitude/precision range, solid machines, consider buying from the dell outlet too, your much more likely to get a decent deal through the outlet, also, you can always extend the warranty as much as you want if the usual 1 year isnt enough!
er quick question 16" full HD ????? that is the most pointless thing ever. for a 16" screen you would have to sit with oyur nose on the screen to notice the HD detail. example for 32" HD TV you need to sit around 4ft or less away to notice 1080p over 720p and less than 7ft or so to notice 720p over 480p (normal DVD) ouputting to a big screen though makes a good combo for the blu-ray drive though but i wouldnt say a high res laptop screen is needed as you wont be able to benefit from it. id say u need a decent CPU (quad or high end dual) 4GB or RAM and a decent dedicated GPUm for games and modelling. try www.laptopsdirect.co.uk
If you wanted to go completely crazy you could buy an Alienware laptop. I know that you can probably get the exact same stuff that an Alienware comes with for a much cheaper price if you were to get another brand, but at least you would have very good braging rights Also there is the Acer Ferrari range , again they are very expensive, and I would say that you get what you pay for, but to be honest they too are a little expensive. Just a route you could go down though Gaz
A friend has a Dell Studio 17" and he loves it - He's not in uni, but he does mainly PC game mods/character models, so it's similar. I'm not sure of the exact spec though. Also, they're doing some deals on 'em at the moment, so you might get it dirt cheap. I'd wander away from Acers to be quite honest. We sell pretty much exclusively Acers where I work and, frankly, the build quality is shocking, and after a year of use (Worst case, one guy goes between UK/AUS/US/mainland Europe/Guernsey every year. Not tech savy, but generally takes care of his belongings) just feel like they're going to drop to bits at any moment. Admittedly my Acer experience might be due to the unusually high number of them I deal with, enhancing the negatives. From what I've seen of IBM laptops, they're hawt. Not that cheap, though. If you like Macs you can get the 13" MBP for ~772GBP on the Uni edu discount (I checked Wednesday last week. If you explain to one of the sales assistants on their 'chat now' thing they should give you a timed link for the HE online store). Depends how much arsed you are about the looks (Which are ****ing awesome, the unibodies anyway). I'm in a similar boat, although sans the 1k budget, and I've gone for a Studio 15. Current deals made it so horribly cheap I had no option to say no.
Have nothing but praise for the two(well three...) Dell laptops I've brought. Firstly XPS series machine, looks hot, performs well and has lasted pretty well so far. Also been very impressed with 2 budget vostro units. Look a bit cheap/nasty but specs wise they're pretty decent. Service is decent if you get on site support
Hi I've got the 1920x1200 display in my vostro 1510 (15.4" widescreen) and to be honest, you can actually notice the difference, although, if your playing normal dvd content and you stretch it to full screen, immediately you notice the fuzziness of the playback, but if you watching full hd content, either downloaded or through iplayer then you can really notice the difference also, if your a multitasker then the higher resolution will benefit you also, i can have my messenger window, a full screen page in firefox and a video playing in kmplayer all on one screen
how close do you sit to the screen ? like sat at a desk cause thats about 30cm between your eye and the screen, so you probly would notice difference between HD and normal
yeah, its usually at a desk or in my lap (with the 'coolslice' of course, otherwise it gets REALLY hot)
i was kinda exaggerating a bit when i said u had to put your nose to the screen but you have to be fairly close. not good for viewing when theres more than 1 of you
I would like to point out the HD screen was for detailed modeling n I dont have anything else tv or otherwise that outputs HD so I will be using it with my camera, Anyway theres some really good advice here. Iv looked at the IBM but the one thing tht puts me off is there just abit bland really and kinda reminds me of my old windows 2000 laptop. But the dells have intrigued me.
The art options are what first attracted me to the Studio range >.> I have to agree about the IBM, but. I think that's IBM's style - Always has been and likely always will. Kinda attractive in a way.
All I'd say about the T61, is the screen size on the widescreen version is not very good. I know they're not a new machine, but the T60 is far superior, and also has 512MB ATi graphics, and a screen resolution of 1440 x 1050. Other Lenovo models worth looking at are the SL500 and W500. W500 is about twice the price, but looks a very good laptop. In regard to Dell laptops, the Dell Studio XPS 16" is worth a look as well.
The Lenovo T60 15" is superior, 1600x1200 IPS. The 14" T60 never came with IPS panels. They haven't made T60's in many years, and the fastest they came in was 2.33ghz Merom (T7600). They NEVER came with 512mb ATi video cards (the fastest was a 128mb Radeon X1400) The T60P only came with an ATi V5250 256mb as max, and that's not a gaming card. The T60 is obsolete. If you can even find one, they're way overpriced for what you get. The new T400 isn't bad at all; 1440x900, light weight, and 45nm processor (P series and T 9 series) and available discrete graphics.
I don't know why my T60 has 512MB ATi then? May have to look into that.... Don't really rate the T400, again, screen size isn't great. T500 is better I have been told.
It's 256mb discrete, and 256mb shared (according to the spec of the T60 2623) I personally prefer 14" laptops, but the T500 15" is also good; comes in 1680x1050 (WSXGA+) I kinda wish the T500 came with the WUXGA screen option
hang on are you mad? sony vaio best damn make on the market i have had one for ten years still going strong and it looks new the build quailty of the sony vaio's are also amazing and they will last you a long time as for dell 3 of my mates bought dells all xps 1 year ago all of them have had problems use less if you want to buy a machine to last long
Hi there nope, not mad, merely expressing my opinion that I would steer clear of sony vaio's as I PERSONALLY think they are a little overpriced for what they are, although that does depend on individual taste plus theres the fact that the dell's are considerably more customisable than any vaio's that i've known of (correct me if im wrong) wuxga in 15.4" is SWWEEETTT!!!once you've tried I would be surprised if any other screen ever felt the same!
Being as clumsy as I am, I've determined several things from personal experience: Cups of coffee to destroy a laptop: Sony Vaio TZ: 1/2 (Does not work anymore) HP DV2000T: 3+ (Still works) Lenovo Thinkpad X61: 5+ (Still works) Lenovo Thinkpad X300: 14+ (Still works) Damage caused by dropping Sony Vaio TZ: -26 inches off a coffee table onto wood -2 corners cracked It still worked after HP DV2000T: -8 inches off a shelf onto tile -1 hairline crack of the screen bezel It still worked after Lenovo Thinkpad X200: -72.8 inches while inside a padded laptop bag moving at 35 miles per hour -seperation of all the fan grille plastic protection pieces -destruction of the battery locking clip -3 lid corners cracked. It still worked after Lenovo Thinkpad T61p: - 282 inch (23.5 ft) drop onto concrete -4 shattered corners (all on the bottom) -every blade of the fan being removed from the fan hub -the touchpad ceased to work -the lid hooks snapped -the battery to be ejected clear of the thinkpad (the sliding and locking mechanism completely destroyed) -the dvd-rw drive is stuck permanently in the closed position. -the vga port was dislodged from the board -the screen was intact It still worked afterwards, and was repaired by Lenovo, and works to this day
Given your going to uni, probably won't have much of an income, and this has to last quite a while. On top of that its a laptop for which repairing is not an online store away most of the time. I'd seriously consider trying to get a good 3 4 or 5 year full service warrantee out of that price as well if you really want it to last 7 years. It would absolutely suck to be left with no interwebs.
