New laptop buying advice please

oldagetraveller

chippy2u wrote: »

I hope the Samsung RV520 is a good laptop as I have just ordered one from Amazon for £319.99! Can't say what it's like as I only ordered it yesterday. I only hope that I am as impressed with the laptop as I am with it's specs.

Would you post a link to that? The cheapest I could find at Amazon, for that model, is £359!

lee7421

Yeah I fancy the samsung seems good for the price and looks good as well.

lee7421

Cheapest I can find it is £350 can you put the link up please? Thanks

NiftyDigits

Returned Acer Aspire 5749 2354G50Mnkk £249.99

Specs

They just sold a load of these. I bought one and it was as new. Just one here. If not in perfect condition, you can reject it and get a full refund.

ukflippy

There's no massive difference between sandy and ivy bridge. Intel run what's called a 'tick tock' upgrade path, whereby 'ticks' are major changes, and 'tocks' are minor updates. Moving from Sandy to Ivy bridge is a 'tock'. It gets you about 10% performance increase, in real terms.

You can tell the difference as the model number for Sandy bridge starts with a 2, and the Ivy Bridge is a 3.

For £450, I'd recommend a Dell Inspiron 15. You can find it for £499 on the Dell site, but via quidco, you can find a 10% discount on purchases over £495. This should meet most people's needs unless you're into modern games, at which point £450 isn't realistic to spend on a laptop.

NiftyDigits

ukflippy wrote: »

There's no massive difference between sandy and ivy bridge. Intel run what's called a 'tick tock' upgrade path, whereby 'ticks' are major changes, and 'tocks' are minor updates. Moving from Sandy to Ivy bridge is a 'tock'. It gets you about 10% performance increase, in real terms.

You can tell the difference as the model number for Sandy bridge starts with a 2, and the Ivy Bridge is a 3.

For £450, I'd recommend a Dell Inspiron 15. You can find it for £499 on the Dell site, but via quidco, you can find a 10% discount on purchases over £495. This should meet most people's needs unless you're into modern games, at which point £450 isn't realistic to spend on a laptop.

Fail to see how that represents good value at £450.

This Medion AKOYA® E7219 offers more for the money.

Totally pointless spending that much on a laptop in order to get more processing power, unless you are going to take advantage of the processing power.

I'm current using a three year old dual core Celeron, for which I paid £240.
There seems to be a kind of obsession to get the fastest processor, but it's rarely necessary for the average user.
It's not as if the laptop is going to last forever and that laptop will be more future-proofed than a cheaper model.
Because it will possibly fall apart at much the same time.

ukflippy

The Medion seems to offer less for the money, unless the larger screen is important to you.

Dell has the same processor, 500Gb more hard drive space, and 2Gb more memory, and importantly for a laptop, is 1.2kg lighter.

Not sure I'd recommend a 17" laptop - at that size, they're no longer realistically portable.

I've been bitten badly by cheap laptops before - the batteries lose capacity and the air vents all clog up, so they start overheating, reducing reliability.

I'm currently running a core i7 laptop that I bought for about £750 18 months ago, after giving up on a £350 one I bought 2 years earlier. As long as this one lasts 5 years, I've had my money's worth - we'll see!!

roddydogs

Dont touch Medion ..if out of Gtee (even by 1 day) they want £100 just to send it back to Germany.

prowla

At that price range I would generally be looking at Toshiba, Samsung, and Dell.

You can generally touch a machine and see if it feels quality or not.

NiftyDigits

ukflippy wrote: »

The Medion seems to offer less for the money, unless the larger screen is important to you.

Dell has the same processor, 500Gb more hard drive space, and 2Gb more memory, and importantly for a laptop, is 1.2kg lighter.

Not sure I'd recommend a 17" laptop - at that size, they're no longer realistically portable.

I've been bitten badly by cheap laptops before - the batteries lose capacity and the air vents all clog up, so they start overheating, reducing reliability.

I'm currently running a core i7 laptop that I bought for about £750 18 months ago, after giving up on a £350 one I bought 2 years earlier. As long as this one lasts 5 years, I've had my money's worth - we'll see!!

I'm not especially recommending the Medion either. I only posted it to illustrate that you can get more for your money.
No one asked about portability. For many they are desktop replacements. Do you take your i7 outside much? The fact is that the extra screen size constitutes more for your money.
You and I know that RAM costs next to nothing, so if you use that as your criteria, you are being ridiculous. Also HDD capacity...you neglect to mention that the Medion has an extra HDD slot, if more space was needed.
But what else has the DELL to offer? What about the sound system, dedicated sensor Media keys and the larger screen space? Does it have a non-glare screen?

Note that I simply don't recommend spending £450 on a laptop unless you are going to make use of it.