Yes another request for Laptop suggestions

Amanita_2

Desperately need a new laptop. The hard drive on my old but faithful Acer is now full and then some.

I bought a new laptop ( not an Acer) in September which had extremely good reviews and it kept blue screening from day one, returned it to Amazon who replaced it, replacement is now even worse. Constant BSOD, maybe 3 or 4 times an evening.

Amazon have been brilliant, no quibble about returning my money even though I'm outside the 30 day return policy but I desperately need a reliable laptop.

I'm a fairly keen amateur photographer so main requirement is a large hard drive and ability to handle photo editing and other design software. Otherwise it is just used for the odd letter, email and blogging etc

Any suggestions please? Don't want to spend silly money but prepared to go up to the cost of a 500GB HD Sony Vaio if necessary although I'd prefer to spend less!

TakeThis

Have you considered simply replacing the HDD on your 'faithful ACER'? You can clone the current HDD on to a larger capacity drive, or you can simply pop a new hard drive into it and then reinstall the OS. You can pop the old hard drive into an external casing costing £3. Voila! Portable HDD with all of your old data.

Don't bother paying extra for a Sony.

This MSI CR640 at £345.98 is good value, but with an average resolution, glossy screen perhaps not the one for you.

Is all of your software compatible with Windows 7 64 bit?

You should put together a list of specifications important to you.

closed

or a usb hard disk and cleanup

NeverAgain_2

It's Christmas, spend some money.

Can you afford a Mac?

They work, publishers - who haven't cost cut - use them because the image processing software is so good.

The overall user experience is also superior to Windows.

Hammyman

+1 for the Mac. Nothing to do with OS X, for all I care you can put Windows on. However the build quality is probably the best you're going to get in a retail spec laptop, especially the battery longevity.

TakeThis

Hammyman wrote: »

+1 for the Mac. Nothing to do with OS X, for all I care you can put Windows on. However the build quality is probably the best you're going to get in a retail spec laptop, especially the battery longevity.

But you are paying for it....

daveys_2

I'd +1 the proposal that you get a Mac, especially if you're using it for photo or image work.

However I'd recommend a Thinkpad. I bought this one a couple of weeks ago and is a really good machine.

Purely for peace of mind I'd be tempted to have some sort of remote storage away from your laptop, even if it's a removable usb drive. Laptops are so stealable, and their very portability makes their hard discs vonurable (sp?) to from any knowcks or bangs.

Good luck and tell us what you get in the end :T

ETA I bought off Ebay, but this site has a better description and better pics

Hammyman

TakeThis wrote: »

But you are paying for it....

Don't care. It'll outlive a PC World special by a long shot. Compared to the laptops in PC World, I'll save at least £150 over the life of the laptop just in batteries. And it'll have a higher resale value as well. The prices of Core 2 Duo laptops have tanked this month. The prices of the Core 2 Duo Macbook Pros hasn't changed.

carlpayne

Why you want to replace the laptop? You can just go for external HDD.

But still if you want to get the latest laptop, you can go for Acer Aspire 5749

Amanita_2

Thanks for all the suggestions - is it worth spending the money on a 8 year old lap top to replace the HDD? I've gone down that route with old desk tops before and somehow you always seem to need to replace more and more components!

It's also running XP so I guess that needs an upgrade too. I'm already holding many of the data files on an external hard drive but it is slow and clunky even after a thorough clean up and reinstall.

I'll have another look at the Macs - just s bit nervous of the learning curve. I've never used one.

closed

post a hijackthis log, commit charge, and physical ram total from task manager, and follow the speedup sticky, data doesn't cause slowness.

use windirstat to see where the space is going

external hard disks fail too, if that it your only copy of data