The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

Molly_Mops

Hello helpful people!

I am thinking about buying an HP NX6325 from Student-laptops.co.uk for £449.00 incl VAT and delivery. However, I have no idea if this is a good buy or not - it has 512MB, DVD-RW, Wifi and Windows XP Pro, all of which I think I want but this is where my knowledge runs out. I don't need the laptop for gaming - I will mostly use it for accessing the internet and lots of office work but also possible occassional copying of CDs, music downloading, and photo printing from my mobile if I can find a way to do that.

I would be very grateful for any thoughts you have.

Molly Mops

drunknmunky

Thanks for all the advice everyone, it really is appreciated.

Just one final question, this laptop...

http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=325481&tab=specification

...has 512MB ATI1400 Mobile dynamic graphics.
How does dynamic graphics differ from dedicated? are they better?
Will they make much difference compared to 256 ATI1100 shared graphics?

I will be using it mainly for watching dvd's/tv but also a small amount of online gaming (pro evo 5)

I'm off to comet tomorrow to make my choice! so any advice is much appreciated.
Thanks

oh, and what benefit is there to having firmware installed on a laptop?

HCDayantis

To quote from here,

UMA and DVMT
On some older motherboards the video controller was integrated. Using SMBA (Shared Memory Buffer Architecture) or UMA (Unified Memory Architecture ) parts of the system RAM were allocated and used as frame buffer. But sharing the memory was very slow and the standards never became very popular.

A newer version of this is found in Intel chip set 810 and the better 815, which also integrates the graphics controller and use parts of the system RAM as frame buffer. Here the system is called Dynamic Video Memory Technology (D.V.M.T.).


It looks like dynamic is pseudo-shared to me, I'm not so sure. If I'm guessing (that'a ll it is) right, then not quite as good as dedicated. The comic 'i' tells you that dynamic means there is memory dedicated to graphics, but it can also leech off of the processor's memory for increased performance. i.e. it's not 512mb of memory dedicated to graphics - a portion (not stated) of that is made up for by taking the processor.

lesley2004

Hi

THINKING OF BUYING LAPTOP WITH THE FOLLOWING SPEC FROM DELL, WILL IT PLAY SIMS 2 AND WORLD OF WARCRAFT??

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)

Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (incl Symantec PC Restore Recovery)

15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display

512MB 533MHz Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM (1x512)

120GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive

Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW with Software

256mb radeon x1400 hypermemory graphics card

6 Cell, 56Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery

56.6k V.92 Capable Internal Modem & Adapter

Intel® Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g Mini PCI Wireless LAN Card for Core 2 Duo Processors

Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD™ Audio- Trial Version

moob_2

magicrichard - good luck with laptopsdirect - you'll need it!:rotfl:

Sky_Digiman

Dell has a new cheap NoteBook in:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_1501?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs
I think its new, please dont shout at me if its not.

HCDayantis

Yeah, Dell are looking pretty good currently! Lesley, the graphics card is the most important thing to know when looking at games like Sims 2, and to a lesser extent WoW. 256 is pretty good, so I would assume it could run such games, yes. I'm not overly knowledgeable, but I think that looks like a decent gaming package.

Pete283

lesley2004 wrote:

Hi

THINKING OF BUYING LAPTOP WITH THE FOLLOWING SPEC FROM DELL, WILL IT PLAY SIMS 2 AND WORLD OF WARCRAFT??

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)

Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (incl Symantec PC Restore Recovery)

15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display

512MB 533MHz Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM (1x512)

120GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive

Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW with Software

256mb radeon x1400 hypermemory graphics card

6 Cell, 56Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery

56.6k V.92 Capable Internal Modem & Adapter

Intel® Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g Mini PCI Wireless LAN Card for Core 2 Duo Processors

Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD™ Audio- Trial Version

It should do but if you go on play.com for example and type in the products - click on the product you want each time and check the system spec matches what you have list above or the above is better - then it will work

Sky_Digiman

Why isnt HP on the poll?

jaydizzy

*** sorry if you already know this ***

Hi all,

just to let you know that if your thinking of buying from dell as with a previous thread i read you can push them for further reductions on their deals.

I called 08709075128 ext 73569 I talked to Ramkrishna Reddy

1. Tell the person that you are thinking of buying a laptop and which one ( I said that I wanted the cheapest value one, he immediately tried to change my mind) then say that you would consider another one (the one that you really want) if they reduce the delivery price...they will go and speak to their manager and comeback

2. tell them that your still not convinced, if they can double the memory you will consider it as you have seen similar deals elsewhere, tell them that you will definitely buy the product today.. they will hopefully agree as in my case.

3. I pushed a little further and asked for a case, they agreed to give me an executive carry case worth £35

4. don't agree to any extra upgrades, only go for collect and return

Result - Dell inspiron 6400m, 1024mb ram doubled on request, free executive carry case worth £35, half price delivery £29, total £500.40 pence.

hope this helps, I really really regret not pushing for more I feel I could have got at least one extra addition, so just try your luck!

thankyou to whoever posted the thread in the first place