choice of laptops which one to buy?

pieceoffluff

Hey guys

only bought one pc before so a bit of a novice

would appreciate comments of the below choice or whether anyone knows of anything cheaper/better for my needs?

my main preference is that the laptop is light/has long battery life as i'm out on the road alot. I would mainly use it for internet/office use but it would be a bonus if it could play downloaded HD content looking to the future?

budget upto £700

The above is all bearing in mind that my current desktop has
2.4 ghz intel celeron processor
radeon 9200
512mb
or more briefly a real piece of junk but seems to suit my needs at home quite well

this is the favourite mainly becuse of 5hour battery/1.5kg weight
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1963429910.1190597105@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccgfaddmdfmmfejcflgceggdhhmdgmj.0&page=Product&sku=204217&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null

i've also considered the £699 model here. Is it worth the 4 week wait/extra money over the phillips above?
http://www.wizmarkcomputers.co.uk/hotdealsinspironxpsm1330.htm

or possibly
the £699 apple mac 7hour battery/bit heavier but looks pretty sexy (i understand you can run windows office applications on it?)
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore?family=MacBook&cid=OAS-EMEA-KWG-UK_Laptop-UK&aosid=p202&esvt=GOUKB100818291&esvadt=999999-0-1013992-1&esvid=100616



cheers danielle

albertross_2

I wouldn't rely on the quoted battery times, they never last as long as the manufacturers suggest. 2-3 hours usually, and less as time goes on.

tomsolomon

If your going to be doing video streaming HD stylee then...
None of the above. You realy wanna be looking at something with a rather more substatial graphics adapter. Try and steer clear of intel integrated graphics if you can, they are completely pants, and look for something with ATI or Nvidia xpress. PC world can be very obstreperous when it comes to repairs aswell, so I would go to a reputable dealer with good aftermarket support.

pieceoffluff

tomsolomon wrote: »

If your going to be doing video streaming HD stylee then...
None of the above. You realy wanna be looking at something with a rather more substatial graphics adapter. Try and steer clear of intel integrated graphics if you can, they are completely pants, and look for something with ATI or Nvidia xpress. PC world can be very obstreperous when it comes to repairs aswell, so I would go to a reputable dealer with good aftermarket support.

kind of thought it might be the case on my budget

guess it will be purely the best lightest laptop i can find

bainy

Heres a laptop priced at £547.47 that would do the job nicely for you, it ticks the boxes, however its just under 3kg, still light enough to travel with and its well below your budget. Purchase another 1GB stick of RAM to take it up to 2GB and your cooking with gas. This laptop has the latest Santa Rosa CPU @2Ghz it will look after your HD content, no problem with its own dedicated graphics card.: -

http://www.simplyacer.com/product/id/243176/LX.TK20X.040

Purchase a 3yr extended Acer warranty for an extra £64.99 = £612.46 well within your budget.

You can also purchase it at Misco and get Quidco cashback as well , lots of images to view here: -

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=136912&sourceid=6137

or this one from ebuyer again will do everything that you require but it has 2Gb Ram installed already and again has its own graphics card. Costs £600.71

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/126336


Something to remember is that most laptops will run only for 2/3 hours full tilt, manufacturers guidelines are usually a bit awry.

I'm_With_Stupid

Tbh, you'd need a pretty meaty laptop to be streaming HD video. Not just the graphics card, but you'll need a lot of general processing power, and your hard-drive would have to have a pretty quick transfer rate too. And your battery life won't thank you for all this, nor will your wallet, or your back when you have to cart the thing around. But more importantly, I don't see why you would want to. I assume you're planning on plugging it into a high definition television, because you certainly won't notice any difference on a 15" screen.

The recommendation I would make is to choose now whether portability and battery life or functionality is most important to you, because picking such portable machines means you have to compromise on power. Of the ones you picked out, I would choose the Dell, unless you are eligable for Apple's student discount, and then I would go with the Mac (though if you could possibly stretch to the next model up, £750 with the discount, I think it's worth the extra cash). But otherwise, there are plenty of machines that are much more powerful for the same price - you'll just have to compromise on the size a bit. But from the limited amount I know about HD streaming, you'd be struggling to find anything that does it (well) for the price. I was reading a report from June this year, where they were struggling to get a fairly decent slimline desktop computer to playback smoothly with two different graphics cards (specs similar to what you might expect from a good laptop). So personally I'd stick to portability and battery life if that's what's important to you. By the time HD content is properly mainstream, you'll probably have to buy a new computer anyway.

pieceoffluff

cheers guys got me pointed in the right direction

went to pc world today to get a feel for laptop weights and felt i could manage the lighter phillips, whereas the others would be too heavy to carry for a girl all day every day

realising that its the weight of the laptop that matters most and taking onboard that the phillips is a poor model i'm leaning towards this acer travelmate (1.6kgs) over the dell mainly due to the shorter delivery time

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=263956&CatId=2744

does it seem good value for the money/good compromise?

pieceoffluff

pieceoffluff wrote: »

i'm leaning towards this acer travelmate (1.6kgs) over the dell mainly due to the shorter delivery time

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=263956&CatId=2744

damm the external dvd drive bumps its weight upto 2kg

I'm_With_Stupid

I had a quick browse. It's quite surprising how much more you pay for a smaller laptop isn't it? Anyway, the one you picked out looks decent (where does it mention the external DVD-RW though?) but I found a couple more that might be worth a look.

The first is a Fujitsu at pretty much the same spec and price on paper at least. It's 1.7kg, so

The second is a Toshiba, which is a bit more expensive, and a bit heavier at 1.99kg, but the screen is a bit bigger. It comes with Vista Business rather than Vista Home, but that really shouldn't make any difference to the average user.

But my personal favourite is this Samsung. Again, a bit more expensive at £750, but 1.9kg, a bigger hard drive, and with a free double memory upgrade to 2GB on this website, I think it's worth the extra money. Plus it's in stock now.

So basically, if you really can't go over budget, then there really isn't anything to choose between the Acer and the Fujitsu (though I guess the Fujitsu is lighter if the DVD-RW is an additional weight on the Acer - incidentally too, any seperate USB device not powered by the mains will eat away at your battery life too). But if you can afford a bit more, I would definitely pick the Samsung.

tomsolomon

At the end of the day your only talking about 2 bags of sugar tops. You wont realy notice the difference of a few grams lol. You sure your not just buying to impress your mates....

pieceoffluff

tomsolomon wrote: »

At the end of the day your only talking about 2 bags of sugar tops. You wont realy notice the difference of a few grams lol. You sure your not just buying to impress your mates....

heh heh

hands up the apple mac made it in there because its pretty cool looking but realisitically i'm carrying a real back breaker at the moment and am about to start traveling alot more

the Fujitsu and samsung are great finds

thanks for all your help???you've just made it even harder to choose with these great options you've come up with