After many years of faithful service and baking my genitals, my old Sony Vaio is on its way out. So I'm in the situation where I need to buy a new laptop despite still technically having a functional one. My budget is in the range of £450 - £550 but if anyone can point out something thats worth spending an extra £50 or so on then the budget can stretch. My use out of it will be mainly processor heavy stuff. Word processing, photoshop, processor heavy but graphically minimal games, web surfing and media viewing. I will probably end up loading Steam onto it for Source and I'll be buying Diablo 3. Other than that I have a 360 and an old but still working gaming rig for any seriously graphics intensive stuff I want to run. I've been shopping around for a while and here are a few that I am thinking of. I think I prefer the idea of the T6600 above any of the smaller processors and I'm going for 15" display - upgrading from my 14" VAIO. I'm really not sure about graphics adaptors though. Does the GMA 4500 perform significantly worse than the G102M? Also I think I would like a HDMI output - just to make the occasional movie watch on my TV easier. Here are a few of my candidates - suggestions please? ASUS K50 - £550 Sony VAIO VGN-NW26M - £500 Packard Bell EasyNote TJ65-DT-041 - £550 Packard Bell TJ68-AU-031 - £450
i hate all you're options. Personally i would go dell, keep the memory option as cheap as possible and upgrade it for cheaper yourself. customise one here http://configure.euro.dell.com/dell...=N4XE5501&l=en&oc=L1155001&rbc=L1155001&s=bsd
ROFL! I recently won a Dell CULV laptop. It's not that fast, but it's very light and works fast enough. They can be had for ~450. I can't say I'd really ever go for a 15" laptop personally, I'm a 13" or below man for mobility. Sorry I can't be more help on your choices but I'd likely go Sony. Just be aware they don't include an SD slot, only MemoryStick If you want HDMI get one Nvidia/ATI powered graphics. Also, be aware that new mobile chips are out in literally days and will feature switchable graphics.
I've tried to steer away from Dells since my family have had a few and not had much success with lifetime and then their warranty system.
don't get the domestic options, get the small buisness options you can purchase them just as easily and there warranty and build quality is better
I'm not one to normally vote for style over substance but that Dell Latitude looks like it could make small children cry Can you elaborate on what is wrong with my initial choices?
Have found an Acer for very cheap - similar to the £550 Packard Bell I was looking at with a slightly faster graphics card and DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2 - all other specs are the same and its only £510: Acer 5738G
I realise now that I shouldn't have created my own thread as I was asking the exact same thing. I too have seen the Acer 5738G and I think it's the best option for me. I am now just wondering when these new chips are coming out and whether is it worth waiting for them? Thanks.
After more searching I found this: Acer 5739G. It is basically the same as the 5738 but it has a bigger hard drive and a faster graphics card. The trade-off is that it has Vista instead of Windows 7. But if you order it before the 31st of January you can get a 'free' copy of Windows 7 mailed to you by Acer - for £12.78 shipping and handling. I bought it last week and it came on Wednesday. Very happy with it. Very nippy laptop and my only criticism is the touchpad is very different to what I'm used to and takes a bit of wearing in. Also, Acer take two weeks to ship the Windows 7 copy so at the moment I'm suffering at the hands of Vista.
