laptop dilemma - advice welcomed please

rach

hi all

i am in the market for a laptop - have been looking around for ages, and keep changing my mind! i've got a zippy dell desktop which i've had for 3 years and is excellent, but i'm doing some part time study and so a laptop would be really useful.

main requirements are:
1) reasonably portable, i guess ideally as light as possible, but i know this really affects budget. will be carrying to the library and also on trains every couple of weeks i reckon.

2) ideally not a celeron (boyfriend would kill me!)

3) budget of around £500. am happy to use openoffice etc (i think) and am even quite keen on using linux rather than windows.

4) it will mainly be used for writing my phd thesis, but also for powerpoints for work and hopefully surfing the web on the move. (so ideally wireless but am happy to just put a card in if i have to).

my current thoughts are these:

option a) dell inspiron 630m, 40gb hdd, 1025 RAM, pentium m 1.73 processor. seems to have gone up in price in my basket since last night, now showing at £596.62 including delivery. weight 2.5kg. includes free printer which i don;t need but could perhaps sell on?

option b) novatech nomad AMD 3000 http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/nbrange.html?NOA probably the cheapest which is £551 with no o/s.

am open to other solutions. my original thought was a mac ibook G4 which worked out about £600 with student discount.

boyf is advising against both dell and mac, but he doesn;t really know that much about laptops, has just had problems with dell support at work! he is able to set up linux and stuff for me though no probs.

any other thoughts? would like to keep it cheaper if poss and would be willing to sacrifice portability for that, particularly if it means decent components.

sorry for the long message, just wanting to make a good choice!

Rach.

GreenNotM

The macs will soon have Intel chips .... sorry no time to get a link for you ...

If you are def going for linux then you can factor out the cost of the XP and ensure this is not included in the final cost. I doubt if you can get an Mac/Ibook with out paying for OSX...

As it is a lappy for your thesis think about back up devices - plural - a USB memory key for daily changes and a DVD/CD Writer and possibly using your ISP area for storage or web-mail account.

A final though some laptops will be appearing with built in 3G cards for your mobile surfing - again no time for links

HTH

nickmack

rach wrote:

option a) dell inspiron 630m, 40gb hdd, 1025 RAM, pentium m 1.73 processor. seems to have gone up in price in my basket since last night, now showing at £596.62 including delivery. weight 2.5kg. includes free printer which i don;t need but could perhaps sell on?

In my basket it's £579, but there doesn't seem to be a free printer.

Others may have an opinion on whether it's worthwhile paying an extra £11.75 for a True Bright Panel. Also depending for which periods you intend to use the battery, might be worth getting a 9 cell providing longer battery life for an extra £11.75 at the expense of a little weight.

If you're going to install Linux, it seems a bit of a waste paying for XP with the Dell machine, even if it is an OEM version. I don't think they supply without any OS. Saying that look at my comments below re the other laptop.

option b) novatech nomad AMD 3000 http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/nbrange.html?NOA probably the cheapest which is £551 with no o/s.

This laptop has a Sempron processor, this is the AMD equivalent to the Celeron. It also has half the memory of the Dell.
The screen is smaller and the laptop lighter, if this has any bearing on your decision.

If it were my choice, I would go with the Dell over this. The Dell would be a faster and better quality machine. In my view, it's worth paying £30 odd extra for the Dell, even if you are going to wipe it and put Linux on.

pigeonpie

I've been looking for a laptop for ages too. I had a lot of problems with Dell, until I spoke to one particular woman at customer care, India who appears to be the only person at Dell who understands customer service. You will spend a long time on an 0870 no either way and unless you can't find an alternative, I wouldn't recommend them. And certainly ring them, don't place an online order & don't fall for their 3 year onsite warranty - they will try to fix your PC on the phone on your 0870 call! Their prices go down all the time with "special offers" and although I didn't keep the laptop (it wouldn't display certain webpages) I talked them down 150 pounds and got the antivirus included free, felt very chuffed and then saw the same PC for sale for 100 pounds LESS two weeks later :-S
HP must be going to bring out dual processor laptops soon as they've just done so in the US - you can customise them there now too - so that may mean that their current range get cheaper in the next few months. Depends how rushed you are,Rach. I am not tech savvy so I like HP as their customer service is good.

Dual processor laptops will hopefully mean that in the next few months solo core mid spec ones' prices will drop across the range.
I decided on advice from the World's Greatest Mac Zealot not to buy a mac as there are some website compatibility issues solved with techie downloads and Vista is going to make the world even more PC saturated.
hope you find something.

I agree a built in 3G card is better than the ones where you buy a Vodafone one.

rach

thanks all. leaning towards the dell, though still wonder whether should just go for the real cheapo dell deal (if its still around at all?). so complicated.

if anyone has any other thoughts i'd be very grateful - including options i've not thought of!

ABH_3

If you are going for a dell then you may wish to check out this forum here

Edit: I just thought, if you are only going to be using this for your thesis, then you could just buy a cheap, low spec laptop here and use it with something like knoppix from here it installs Open Office, Firefox etc as standard and will give you all the tools you require to write your thesis.

HTH

sweven

Whilst Dell are undoubtedly good systems, have a quick look at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/20/dell_sues_dell_man/
before you buy.

One of those big corporations against the little guy stories.

nickmack

sweven wrote:

Whilst Dell are undoubtedly good systems, have a quick look at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/20/dell_sues_dell_man/
before you buy.

One of those big corporations against the little guy stories.

Mental move by Dell. Not sure what they seek to achieve with this.

A publicity disaster all in the name of...err protecting their name!