Narrowing down new Laptop choice

witchypoo

Thanks everyone it's making perfect sense. The Acer specs look great, shame about it's so expensive and also that it's an Acer! It might just grow on me though.

I've been sat refreshing the Dell Outlet this afternoon, there was a 17" machine with a 1Gb card but it was going to be £700 odd.

loulou123

I recently brought a new laptop - Toshiba Satellite L500-1XD which seems to have everything you are looking for (and according to system requirements website will have no troubles playing Sims 3) i got mine from pc world (not that im advising there! but at time was far cheapest place at £450.00) although looks to be around the £500.00 mark now.

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.208-9433.aspx

witchypoo

Thanks loulou that's actually one from my original list (and the L505-144) but they have integrated graphics cards too. Did you use this site:
http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/CYRI/
If so could you possibly copy and paste the part where it says the results for video card test? Including the right hand column if possible.

I really would prefer the portability (around the house) of a laptop, not that bothered about using it on the train or in caf!s. Our desktop is off away in my bedroom so not very sociable and also not wanting to replace it yet. Although it could do with a very big spring clean. I was going to upgrade the RAM as it only has 512mb and can play sims 3 on low veerry slooooowly... so slowly of course that I immediately uninstalled it. Put off upgrading in part cos my brother reckons the RAM upgrade will not speed it up as he noticed no improvement when he had a friend upgrade his RAM, but he isn't really as tech minded as me.

gonzo127

just had another look around and the Dell studio 15 might be worth considering, £550
core i3 CPU
3GB DDR3 ram
500GB HDD
ATI 5470

loulou123

CPU Minimum: (XP) 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent; (Vista/7) 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent [If built-in graphics chipsets then 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent.] You Have: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz PASS


CPU Speed Minimum: (XP) 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent; (Vista/7) 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent [If built-in graphics chipsets then 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent.] You Have: 2.13 GHz PASS


RAM Minimum: (XP) 1 GB RAM; (Vista/7) 1.5 GB RAM [If built-in graphics then add 0.5 GB additional RAM] You Have: 3.8 GB PASS


OS Minimum: Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) or Windows 7 You Have: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (build 7600), 64-bit PASS


Video Card Minimum: 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 or above / ATI Radeon 9500 or above / Intel GMA 3-series or above) You Have: Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator HD (Core i3) PASS

Features: Minimum attributes of your Video Card Required You Have
Video RAM 128 MB 1.7 GB
3D Yes Yes
Pixel Shader version 2.0 4.0


Hope this helps have just run the test and this is the results.

Congratulations, your computer passes the minimum specification required to run this product.

witchypoo

Thanks for that loulou it's going to play well on minimum at least

Gonzo I am quite happy to go with Dell so that's good to know, I'd read on reviews that the Studios are better than the Inspirons but I thought they cost more than that!
I've since been looking at notebookcheck and found this:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Packard-Bell-Easynote-TJ75-JO-070GE.27539.0.html
I almost bid on an easynote on eBay recently! It was only the poor opinion of packard bell on this site that put me off. Now it's back in the running

JasX

witchypoo wrote: »

It was only the poor opinion of packard bell on this site that put me off. Now it's back in the running

well up to you but personally I still have them firmly alongside Acer in the build quality stakes.....

witchypoo

Oops it was actually not that one I first saw... but it was one with the same graphics card as the Dell Studio 15 and they'd given it a really good review. I could not find anywhere selling the one I was looking at though.

witchypoo

gonzo127 wrote: »

just had another look around and the Dell studio 15 might be worth considering, £550
core i3 CPU
3GB DDR3 ram
500GB HDD
ATI 5470

It's available for £530 till the 26th here:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/magazines_lt?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml

witchypoo

OK i've been looking at the studios although I'm not keen on the shape, and even though I was worried I'd find 17" too large, however I've been daydreaming about a machine with the following spec ever since I saw it:


Spec
Product Description: Sony VAIO CW Series
Weight: 2.4 kg
Processor: Intel Core i3 330M / 2.13 GHz
Cache Memory: 3 MB - L2 Cache
RAM: 4 GB (installed) / 8 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM
Card Reader: Yes
Hard Drive: 500 GB
Optical Storage: DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM / Blueray
Display: 14" TFT 1366 x 768 WXGA
Graphics Controller: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Video Memory: 512 MB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition

yes it's only 14" and it has no numeric keypad but it I think I'm willing to compromise. It seems the graphics will run Sims 3 fine even on high settings.
What do you all reckon?