Which laptop should I choose?

googlewhack

Hi guys,

Help needed please from someone who knows more about laptops and processors etc... I need to buy a new laptop, I have decided to risk the cheap but decent spec option of Acer as I had one before and it was fine, two options i have found are:

• Acer Aspire 5732 Laptop, Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 2.1GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 15.6" WXGA, DVD±RW, Webcam,WLAN G/N Windows 7 Home Premium Preinstalled
• Acer Aspire 5536 Laptop, AMD Turion RM-74 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 15.6" WXGA, DVDRW,HDMI,Webcam Card Reader WIFI, ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics, Vista Home Premium *WINDOWS 7 UPGRADEABLE*

This being with a budget of £400, wanting a quick laptop with decent enough memory, both on Ebuyer.

Is there anything I should worry about with these computers except for the 'overheating' issue that seems common with Acer computers? Someone mentioned the cache only being 1MB but that doesnt mean much to me....

Which one should I go for?

Thanks for anyone who can help.
Mark.

macman

For £400 I would go for a Dell Inspiron, better built than Acer.

catch22

The 5536 has four USB slots, the other one, two. Do you use USB equipment?
5536 has HDMI out if you want to easily watch programmes on your TV instead of the laptop?
5536 can upgrade to 8GB RAM (that would cost extra of course)
As for the processor I'll leave that to the experts amongst us.

As always, please state what you want the laptop for, this helps people to help you.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

mikeouk

buy an inspiron 1545 off dell outlet, i just ordered one the other day for my friend, £280 delivered with 4gb ram, colored cover. Ive got the same laptop and its my 2nd dell, never had a problem with them

mikeouk

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh

googlewhack

Hey, cheers for the repsonses! Firstly, the laptop is mainly going to be used for teaching resources, office, watching films and so on... I do not need a massive widescreen or anything like that, I just want a computer that can handle running multiple programs without going at snail speed.

As for the suggestion of switching to Dell, firstly the specs dont seem anywhere near as good at the same price? and secondly I have experienced two Dells before (bought on recommendations) and they have both become slow and error prone very very quickly. Whereas the Acer seemed pretty decent and lasted years once I removed all the add-on trial rubbish that comes with it. Maybe I have just had bad luck...

Can anyone tell me the difference between processors? I realise the AMD is a cheap version, but how good is the AMD Turion RM-74 compared to Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300?

Thanks for everyones help

googlewhack

and yes, the USB ports will be handy... thanks for spotting that one, I missed it!!

barny_100

This should be useful:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Gives them a benchmark score where higher number = faster processor.

Scores are 1,091 for the AMD Turion RM-74 and 1,366 for the Intel T4300

justjohn

hp core 2 duo from dgs group 399