Please Advise! Laptop Needed

googlewhack

Hi everyone,

I would appreciate your help in picking a laptop:

Requirements: Needs to be light, thin, have long battery life, pref. windows 7, have USB ports and DVDRW or similar, max 15.6" screen

Use: Word Processing, Powerpoints, Internet etc I won't be playing high-tech games but I would like it to run quickly

Budget: Up to £500

I found: Acer Aspire Timeline 5810T for £349.99 @ play.com (sorry, new poster so i can't link)

To be honest, I know there will be knowledgeable ones among you who will point out the faults in my choice... (better that i know now!)

I know you all like a challenge...! :T

Lil306

For the budget you'd have I'd also suggest looking at sites like Novatech and eBuyer. That PC has a good specification but there's 2 things which stood out to me one being the processor and other being graphics

The processor is one of the newer mobile based ones which is most likely based around the Atom CPUs... These are great for battery life but imo absolutely crap for multitasking. I've found them extremely slow and underpowered. Graphics, not the best it would do but you can get better and more dedicated as opposed to shared graphics

For your budget I'd look for something like the following.....

4GB RAM
250+ SATA HDD
DUAL CORE CPU / Core 2 Duo (not celeron and around 2.2GHZ)
258MB or Higher graphics (I prefer Nvidia, but ATI is good too)

This will give excellent overall capability for presentations, games, etc and you can still have great battery life with power management or running on power supplies.

Novatech has one for ~£469 which is good in spec, however it lacks Wireless N. So if things like Wireless N and Webcams are your needs have a hunt around too...

googlewhack

Thanks, I had a look on Novatech - it seemed great but then I had to add on £££ to get an operating system, a DVDRW drive etc... I will need wireless connection - sorry, should have included that it my spec.

Yeah I noticed about the processor and graphics, I just figured that all these 'smaller' laptops/notebooks seem to have them. Guess its tough to find a good comprimise....

aj2703

laptops direct isn't a bad site

Lil306

googlewhack wrote: »

Thanks, I had a look on Novatech - it seemed great but then I had to add on £££ to get an operating system, a DVDRW drive etc... I will need wireless connection - sorry, should have included that it my spec.

Yeah I noticed about the processor and graphics, I just figured that all these 'smaller' laptops/notebooks seem to have them. Guess its tough to find a good comprimise....

My apologies I didn't notice that when I first looked. You should be able to get something for that price (I know Argos etc sell around £400) in the UK.

I'd look at getting Wireless N, 10/100/1000 LAN, and above specs as a bare minimum.....

As for the "smaller" laptops, they're netbooks and absolutely rubbish. The screens are tiny and they're far too underpowered to run multiple apps or presentations. The only good one supposedly is the 10" screen versions...