looking to buy laptop? any recommendations?

dreemgirl

Looking to spend £500-£600 on a laptop

• sony or toshiba
• at least 2GB
• card reader for sd card
• fast processor
• 17" screen

any ideas?

timbim_2

Why so set on Sony or Toshiba? Any particular reason? I've always found them a bit plasticky with what feels like quite low build quality.

[Deleted User]

Well, i spent £400 on a Dell laptop (studio 17). It's nicely built, great screen, 3gb of Ram, 160gb of hard disk, 17" screen. The processor is ok for Vista (i can run Graphic editing software.. thats as much as i need). It's also got an SD card reader.

So, for your budget i could get something with a graphics card and faster processor... looking on the dell outlet, they have this:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Studio 1737 Intel Core 2 Duo P8400
4 gb ram
320gb hard disk
256mb graphics card

And it's £460 delivered..
[/SIZE][/FONT]

macman

You don't say what you need to do on your laptop, but for £500-600 you should certainly get more than 2GB of RAM. That is the minimum you need to run Vista properly and only the very lowest spec machines at around £350 come with only 1GB now.
For your budget you should be looking to max out the RAM to 4GB.
I agree with the previous post, for rather less you could get a pretty high spec Dell Studio model.
Sony/Toshiba models are not dissimilar in terms of actual parts, as are most Asian built laptops, only the cases are different, so it's just the brand premium that you're paying for.

dreemgirl

Thanks for your advise.... I mainly need the laptop for photo work and using photoshop, thats why i need large Gb

need good definition screen to be able to use photo software

macman

For Photoshop you certainly need more than 2GB of RAM, and a separate graphics card. Plus a fast Core Duo processor.
I wouldn't have thought you wanted to do much intensive Photoshop work on a 17 in screen though? Most of it is done on larger studio monitors, 21in plus?

dreemgirl

got bigger at home, this is just a mobile way of working on photo's while im away from home. most of my main work is on home pc, but have alot of spare time at work so thought id be able to catch on my photography hobby

macman

Right, I'm with you now. But in that case, have you used a 17in laptop before as a portable, because they're a lot heavier than a 15in? You can lug them around, but you probably wouldn't want to do so on a regular basis.
The Studio 17 on the Dell site comes in around £630 with a decent processor and 4GB RAM, also you'd probably want a hard drive of min 320GB if you're storing/rendering large photo files.

dreemgirl

well mainly the photos i will be working on will be on disc or memory card, kinda not used for storage as thats all on external harddrives at home.

macman

Well most of the Studio 17's and similar seem to come with 250GB or higher anyway so you should be OK in that case.

Burny_Sweetwater_Glasgow

So, for your budget i could get something with a graphics card and faster processor... looking on the dell outlet, they have this:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Studio 1737 Intel Core 2 Duo P8400
4 gb ram
320gb hard disk
256mb graphics card

And it's £460 delivered..
[/SIZE][/FONT]
This sounds a bargin, have just checked Dells site but cannot find this at any where near this price, you got a secret source?