Is there a brand / processor of laptop that it easier to upgrade than others?

obsessednewbie

Hi All, still looking for a laptop. know a little more now what i need just wondered before i buy if a certain brand or processor is easier / less or more expensive to upgrade than others.

Looking at getting a Intel Core 2 Duo

Many Thanks

Red_Rose_Exile

Laptops aren't very upgradeable at the best of times and CPUs are usually built in the motherboard. To be honest you are looking at the best laptop available that you won't need to do any upgrades for a while

FREEwebdesign

To be honest, the only thing you will be able to upgrade in any laptop will be the memory. They are not like PC's where cards are swappable.
:
I have recently been looking at a replacement laptop and PCPRO recommend the Dell 630:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/120434/dell-latitude-d630.html

They quote £821 all in, but if you go to their site, you can get the memory down to 1Gb (more than fine for XP) and get the hard disk down to 80Gb and with free delivery the whole lot is £610 delivered to the door. This has a 3 year onsite warranty which I have never seen on any other laptop to be honest.

Of course, it really depends on what you want (screen size, processor etc), but for this money, you will be hard pushed to find anything close that I have found.

Hope this helps.

epz_2

sager are the most forwards compatible, they make bare bones laptops for most of the high end folkes but you better be prepaird to chuck £1000's if you want upgradeable gpu's which will make the most difference for games.

upgrading the cpu is easy, the hardest bit is opening up the plastic shell, you will never be able to use a quad mobile chip in a current mobile chipset acording to what i have read so its basickly up to who will keep the current platform longest, i recon intel as the 45nm chips are drop in compatible.

obsessednewbie

FREEwebdesign wrote: »

To be honest, the only thing you will be able to upgrade in any laptop will be the memory. They are not like PC's where cards are swappable.
:
I have recently been looking at a replacement laptop and PCPRO recommend the Dell 630:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/120434/dell-latitude-d630.html

They quote £821 all in, but if you go to their site, you can get the memory down to 1Gb (more than fine for XP) and get the hard disk down to 80Gb and with free delivery the whole lot is £610 delivered to the door. This has a 3 year onsite warranty which I have never seen on any other laptop to be honest.

Of course, it really depends on what you want (screen size, processor etc), but for this money, you will be hard pushed to find anything close that I have found.

Hope this helps.

Wow, thanks all of you. This looks like a good laptop and to be honest i would prefer XP as i have Vista on desktop and i am finding it hardwork. Gonna look more into this one - 3 years?? that is unsual, will give them a call just to make sure. One that is Wifi would be useful or able to connect to existing broadband - can i do that? or will provider charge me twice? 2gb memory should last me some time me thinks if i am only downloading and watching tv/films and surfing?

Back to dell.....

Thanks again

FREEwebdesign

obsessednewbie wrote: »

One that is Wifi would be useful or able to connect to existing broadband - can i do that? or will provider charge me twice? 2gb memory should last me some time me thinks if i am only downloading and watching tv/films and surfing?

The dell 630c package does not come with a wifi card, but when you go through the 'build it' wizard they can stick one in for £15 or £25 (I can't remember which). Personally, I would stick with the standard 1gb memory if you are running XP. Don't spend the extra to get the 2gb as you won't notice the difference. You can upgrade in the future if you wish.

Visit this link and hopefully you should see 3 dell's on the page. Click the left one where it says 'buy this with XP'. Then go through the wizard and add the wireless card. They were doing free delivery on this so the whole lot is £610 inc vat including the 3 year onsite next day etc.

IF you have the wireless card you can connect to a wireless router if you have one which will then route through to the internet,

imagia

£610 is paying over the odds for that spec. With Dell's deals at the moment, and the 10% off code you can get a much better laptop for around £450. In my basket at the moment I have an Inspiron 1520 with Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2GB ram, 7200rpm hard drive, and it all comes in at £454 with that code used. Add in 5% cashback from Quidco and you'd be hard pressed to find anything better.

By the way, on top of the ram, it isn't too hard to replace/upgrade a hard drive in most laptops now.

epz_2

imagia wrote: »

£610 is paying over the odds for that spec. With Dell's deals at the moment, and the 10% off code you can get a much better laptop for around £450. In my basket at the moment I have an Inspiron 1520 with Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2GB ram, 7200rpm hard drive, and it all comes in at £454 with that code used. Add in 5% cashback from Quidco and you'd be hard pressed to find anything better.

By the way, on top of the ram, it isn't too hard to replace/upgrade a hard drive in most laptops now.

yeah i get 15% off on top of any deals with my company accont but untill they start bringing decent gpus into the mid range i aint jumping. its rediculus you cant buy a sub £2k laptop that runs todays games at native rez.