I need a special laptop!

BWZN93

Hello!

Ok, here's the thing. Im looking for a laptop, one that is going to be powerful enough to play the sims2 and call of duty with no problems whatsoever, and is going to be grapically good enough to do some photo editing and have enough hard drive to store my photo's/music etc. It would be nice to have windows media centre 2005 & some free antivirus/security. If I could get adobe photoshop too - now that would be fabulous.

Im not too fussy as to the weight etc as I dont really intend to take it out of the house, and im not too fussy as to the look/brand. What I do care about is that it is reliable, powerful and that it is under £800.

Any suggestions??

Jo xx

Edited: I probably didn't explain myself very well! Photoshop elements is what im after and some basic security, however, ive now got photoshop elements at the right price so getting that isnt an issue.

I dont intend the laptop to be used online all that often - and the reason I want a laptop is so that I dont have to set up another desk in the house, we already have the PC on one and I simply dont have the space. I find it quite frustrating for people to continually talk about having a desktop instead - most review threads state the obvious about this but my available space is at a premium, as is my comfort (ill be playing in bed on my v cool bed spanning table), and I will want to take the laptop to the studio approx once every two months. I dont mind having a massive laptop and I dont mind a short battery life.

The PC is the online machine currently used for call of duty and thats where it is now going to stay. The laptop will be solely for my occasional internet use, photoshop elements and Sims2.

I have revised the budget since I was having trouble finding something useable - ive now got £1300, and am looking at the dell xps m1710, on the dell website at £1199. Is this a good machine and will it cope?

rrwfotr

If you want to play games and do heavy duty graphics work, you would most probably need a dual core processor unit. With graphics type of work you'll need a high cpu unit with quite a large memory (ram). For £800 you find it hard to get a good make laptop that would cover your needs as laptops that are high spec usally cost the earth. I suggest you get a pc that would be better for your needs. Looking for a high spec laptop you'll need to spend at least £1250 -£1500 plus. A half desnt pc you set you back £500 odd.

rrwfotr

If you want to play games and do heavy duty graphics work, you would most probably need a dual core processor unit. With graphics type of work you'll need a high cpu unit with quite a large memory (ram). For £800 you find it hard to get a good make laptop that would cover your needs as laptops that are high spec usally cost the earth. I suggest you get a pc that would be better for your needs. Looking for a high spec laptop you'll need to spend at least £1250 -£1500 plus. A half good pc you set you back £500 odd.

Astaroth

Hmm... you want to spend £800 and for it to include Photoshop which costs over £500... so you want a laptop that costs less than £300 basically then?

As rrwfotr says, your expectations are too high for your budget. Even stripping out your bundled software requirements you realistically are looking at over the £1k mark - depending of cause exactly how much space you consider sufficient for your "music/ movies" etc

Browntoa

Op could overcome the hard disk storage by using an External USB Hard disk ??

I suspect they also only mean basic "red eye" etc editing of photo's in which case minimum of 768 ram would suufice (may be cheaper to but this seperately afterwards ?? )

Hillfly

I would say that most of the laptops on this page would do what you want for about your budget.
http://www.shopacer.co.uk/sess/utn;jsessionid=15448a7e121cef6/shopdata/Notebooks/Aspire/Aspire+5670/product_overview.shopscript?acer=Aspire+5670

However you don't get the software - and so you could source that elsewhere - but i wont suggest where as i'd get a 'Torrent' of abuse

Little_John

!!!!!! is it with everyone saying you need dual core processors for everything?
When you want a gaming machine you need to look at the graphics chip yeah the cpu makes things nice and quick as does alot of ram but its the graphics chip that does all the rendering to make the games look nice. Most of the budget laptops come with intel GMA900 graphics chips Which will run sims 2 as long as the system spec is high enough 1.5Ghz 256mb ram, Call of duty on the other hand say it just requires transform & lighting support on the graphics card/chip whihc is the same as sims 2 but I know it wont work on an intel 900 integrated chip. from what I remember Nvidia Gforce 2 cards were the first to have that facility and the ATI 7000 range or higher should be able to cope but as they were the really early chips then I wouldnt even consider them.

In the dream world you would want either nvidia 7950GX2 chip or the ATi x1900xt but that isnt gonna happen on your budget

So all that said
Dell offer very few laptops that dont use the integrated intel graphics chips. the cheapest I could find useing the ATi X1400 was the Inspiron 9400 they have 2 options 1 at £780 the other at £900 the £780 has intel graphics but can be upgraded for £94 but it comes with a 60GB drive compaired to the 100GB on the £900 one. both of these use a dual 1.66Ghz cpu i would proberbly spend the extra £47 and upgrade it after all laptop's tend to be replaced less often than desktop pc's. and they both have 1GB of ram.

i havnt looked at any other companies, usually dell have better prices
ok a quick kelkoo search found these, no idea f they are anygood but are in budget
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_A6JC-Q006H_A6JC-Q006H/version.asp
http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10288995&pid=45&tid=2

I did have a look at alienware but their entry level laptops are uing integrated intel chips and to get somthing without tehm you need to spend alot more.

The advice above should let you make an informed decision about your new laptop I have no experiance of the laptops I listed as options so I dont know 100% if your gaes will work on them but going off the info I found they should.

When It comes to software especially Photoshop most pc's will run it I have an old P4 2Ghz that runs it, its not super high speed but even on my 3Ghz laptop its still not a quick program to start up, photoshop has always been tthe same, ohh and it is expensive to buy. and you aint gonna get a laptop and a legal copy of photoshop for your £800 budget. It think dell charge £580 for it you could buy photoshop elements whihc is about £70 and has alot of the features for photo editing in a wizad based format.

sco0ter

You can get Microsoft Digital Image suite for around £60-£70. I have ben using this for a few years now and its great. It comes with 99% of the tools Photoshop has and can even use Photoshop Plugins

15lsp

have you thought about apple macs? more reliable than pcs. ibooks on ebay have software loaded on them, infact im selling one :-)

tr3mor

You say you want a laptop for playing games, that isn't going to be taken out of the house and has media centre installed.

So why would you want a laptop? A desktop would be much better for what you want it for, cheaper, decent graphics card, big screen, etc.

pin

Have you looked at the various forums deditcated to latpops including whatlaptop, notebookreviews and notebookforums? They are very good for the solution you are after.