Laptop Spec- Opinions please

never_red_Paul

Hi

I'm after a new laptop and have been offered on for £250 with the following spec by a friend of my other half. Could anyone tell me if this is a good buy for the price, or recommend anything better for a similar price?

IntCori5-3230MPro(3MB3.2GHz)
4GBPC3DDR3SDRAM1600MHzSODIMM
Intel HD Graphics 4000
15.6HD1366x768LEDBltaGlrMbBd
T530 CS320GB
T530 DVD recordable Windows 7
Integrated Mob Broadband-Up
No Fingerprint Reader
CentrinoAdvancedN6205(2x2AGN
No Bluetooth
No Camera
W7 HP64 Eng
ThinkPad Battery70+ (6 cell)

Many thanks, Paul

agrinnall

Is that new or second hand? I'm pretty sure you'll be able to get new and with a better spec for another £50 - £100. I'd be looking at somewhere like the Dell Outlet store to see what they have in the way of refurbished machines at your price.

never_red_Paul

Thanks for replying. Sorry, I should have said, it's new.

Where's it falling short that another £50 spent could be an improvement?

Gavin78

I don't think it's too bad for the price, it really does depend on what you want to do with it.

For gaming you wont get very far with a HD4000 I think the newish intel ones are HD4600. the CPU is not bad actually it's an i5 which you'll be lucky to get an i5 at 3.2ghz for under £400/£500

HD I should imagine is big enough and it has enough memory.

For every day tasks internet browsing, youtube, facebook games etc I would say its more than enough

never_red_Paul

Thanks very much :-)

enfield_freddy

the prosessor in that machine is pretty good http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3230M+%40+2.60GHz&id=1849 , for a laptop


however my immediate mod would be to add another 4 gig (or more memory) maybe £35 ish ?


then if you like the machine , fit a ssd drive at a later date ,


Gavin78 , the new broadwell CPU uses the intel 5000 graphics , faster , but still not the best , however on a laptop the above spec + mods would be a nice machine

Gavin78

Do you think he'll really need 8 gig of ram? maybe for gaming but for every day tasks and flash games then 4 gig is more than enough

I agree with eventually getting a SSD drive though. my wife had an old laptop a few years ago was about 4/5 years old took about 10 mins to fully boot up and it was just running crap.

Stuck a SSD drive in it and vroom!!! off it went booted up in around 10 seconds and onto the desktop everything loaded.

My laptop has the HD4600 but it's a hybrid machine having an nvidia 860m card in it.

Although noticed the company that built mine has changed the case design now comes with a 960m for around £100 more than I paid for mine

Fightsback

Gavin78 wrote: »

Do you think he'll really need 8 gig of ram? maybe for gaming but for every day tasks and flash games then 4 gig is more than enough

I agree with eventually getting a SSD drive though. my wife had an old laptop a few years ago was about 4/5 years old took about 10 mins to fully boot up and it was just running crap.

Stuck a SSD drive in it and vroom!!! off it went booted up in around 10 seconds and onto the desktop everything loaded.

My laptop has the HD4600 but it's a hybrid machine having an nvidia 860m card in it.

Although noticed the company that built mine has changed the case design now comes with a 960m for around £100 more than I paid for mine

Dual channel RAM (2x4gb) is a very good reason to add extra RAM.

http://www.itsjustwhatever.com/2012/07/17/why-you-want-dual-channel-memory-for-your-hd4000-integrated-graphics/

Cycrow

Gavin78 wrote: »

For gaming you wont get very far with a HD4000 I think the newish intel ones are HD4600. the CPU is not bad actually it's an i5 which you'll be lucky to get an i5 at 3.2ghz for under £400/£500

this one isn't 3.2ghz either, its 2.6. The 3.2 is the turbo speed when its only using 1 thread.

Its not to bad for the price, spend abit more you could get something abit newer, that one is several generations old now.

wether you need something better would depend on the usage. If its just for basic usage, then that should be perfectly fine. No need to spend extra if you dont need to

ptrichardson

I wouldn't be happy with a non 1080p screen. Things just don't look right on 768 resolution these days ime.

The CPU is 3rd Generation Intel Core. They are onto the 5th generation now.
tbh, there's not much difference in processing power. But they are a little worse on battery life and on graphics performance

Thinkpads are decent kit, so its not a low-brand'er. But £250 sounds a lot to me.