New laptop/notebook advice!

[S2 PTH]

Hi guys,

I am possibly in the market for a new laptop & set up. Budget £6-800.

Currently I have a (soon to be) 3 year old HP Pavilion ZV6000 http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2341

There’s nothing wrong with it, and it hardly ever freezes on me or goes slow. The battery life is average (1.5hrs when using it for videos etc) but the sound and screen quality is really good. I think it was around £600 new. BUT, my mum wants it, and therefore my parents are going to give me £600 for a new laptop for my B’day.

I will have to do a lot of programming and CAD in the last two years of my degree, but I can do most of this on the University computers. I would prefer a smaller laptop this time as mine is great for watching DVD’s and general usage, but a b**ch to take with you! I think what I have is referred to as a desktop replacement, whereas I would like a proper laptop/notebook this time around. Trouble is, I always use at least 4 USB’s at home and would be pissed off if my new tiny laptop was really un-powerful. Therefore I am thinking about getting a docking station and separate monitor and keyboard.


Requirements for laptop/notebook:
- Very good quality screen;
- Good-average speakers;
- Good sound card;
- 60GB+ HD
- 4GB+ ram
- Graphics card – not bothered, so long as it can play games up to Quake III/ Counter-strike standard and not jump during DVDs!
- Battery life – Excellent.
- DVD re-writer drive would be nice too!


So new things to buy would be:

- Notebook
- Separate 21inch widescreen monitor
- Docking station

Already have:
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- 350GB external HD
- Good sound system


I realise I am asking a lot (who doesn’t?) but I expect to pay around £500 for the notebook, £120 for the monitor and then whatever a docking station costs. I have this set-up at work but have no idea what the docking station costs! Also, ours are lenovo stations for lenovo laptops – can you get a universal one?

Lots of questions there, if you could answer any of them I’d be very appreciative!

Cheers,

Phil

 

[Mike_182]

I've got a Dell Latitude D620 up for grabs at £400:

80GB HDD
DVD-RW
2.33GHz Core2Duo
2GB RAM (You can upgrade this for £70 - still less than your £500 budget)
Battery life is good on it - can also provide the D-Bay battery if needs be.
Sound/speakers are good for a laptop - they're not fancy items but I've not heard any complaints of them for watching the odd film and general working.
Graphics is 945GM - very capable in light 3D work without sponging power like Quadros can.

Also, the biggest plus is that is can have possibly the best selection of docking stations available. It goes from 'port replicators' to a full on dock, which gives room for a PCI card...

Let me know if you're interested...

 

[S2 PTH]

3 questions:

1. Why are you selling?
2. How old is it?
3. Is it still under any warranty?

To me, second hand electronics are worthless, but I will check out that laptop and let you know if I'm interested!

The main reason I'm hesitating is because at work I have just got rid of my D800 and have also used a D600 (or 610?) which weren't particularily special!

 

[Mike_182]

1 - Because I don't need it
2 - Just over a year old - purchase date 21/07/2007
3 - Warranty until that date 2010

http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2006/05/18/Dell-Latitude-D620/p1

Rated exceptionally well.

 

[S2 PTH]

Wow it was expensive when new!

The guy who sits two desks down from me uses that very same laptop (with the battery hanging out of the front). He said its better than all of the D800s we had, but he would still like a replacement IBM.

Not sure I'd want a second hand laptop tbh - I could probably get the same spec as that for less money from acer or somebody?

I hate buying new computers or computer stuff!!! Whatever you buy, you can garuantee it will be superseeded the minute you pay for it!

 

[Mike_182]

I could probably get the same spec as that for less money from acer or somebody?

Not a cat's chance in hell I'm afraid -if you can find me a 2.33Ghz Core2Duo for even close to that money then you can have it for £200.

http://www.dabs.com/ProductList.asp...411440000&CategorySelectedId=11105&PageMode=1

Bearing in mind that's marginally slower than the processor in this D620... This particular D620 when bought was £1700 due to the (at the time) £250 processor upgrade.

 

[Mike_182]

And just to illustrate my point, here's the processor that's in it. Anybody for a free laptop?!

http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=15337&source=froogle

 

[Daz]

I've got a Dell Latitude D620 up for grabs at £400:

Really?!
You've not mentioned it before?

 

[Mike_182]

I've got a Dell Latitude D620 up for grabs at £400:

Really?!
You've not mentioned it before?

Haven't I? Maybe I ought to.

You'd have figured at that spec somebody would snap my arm off!

 

[Mike_182]

TBH if this thing doesn't sell this week then I'm gonna get myself a HTPC case and Mobile socket mobo, cos it's an astonishingly quick laptop.

 

[S2 PTH]

Oh the peer pressure!

I'm sure it is fast, and if I had that I would be happy... but sorry, I just can't buy a year-old laptop! Good luck with sale though...

CAN ANYONE ELSE RECOMMEND ME A GOOD LAPTOP?

 

[LegoHead]

My new work laptop is a dell latitude D830 with the 2.5GHz core 2 duo with 6MB cache. This thing is very quick. Battery life is around 3-4 hours too.

I can run solidworks on this no problem. It used to take around a minute to load it, now it takes next to no time.

 

[MDT48]

A bit of a trikcy one this...

First up - Mike 182 is right, the Dell D620 did rate very highly, but it's worth remembering that I wrote that review over two years ago. Things have moved on a lot since then, and the D620 itself was replaced by the D630 over a year ago.

That said, if you're looking to pay only £500, you're never going to get anything that's built as well as the D620 if you're buying new.

Now let's look at your requirements. I'll start with the memory - you're saying that you want 4GB+ of RAM, so I assume you'll be wanting to load a 64-bit OS on the machine. That's going to narrow things down even further, since very few budget notebooks will come with 64-bit Vista, and finding any notebook with 64-bit XP is tough, no matter how much you're willing to pay.

In case you don't know, a 32-bit operating system can only address around 3.25GB of memory, so any RAM that you have over and above that amount is just sitting doing absolutely nothing.

Next is graphics. CS Source doesn't take masses of processing power, but it will require discrete graphics. This will make the machine more expensive than an integrated graphics solution and will also affect battery life. Basically, you're not going to find a thin and light notebook that you can play games on, at least not convincingly.

DVD playback shouldn't be a problem on any notebook these days. The Core2 chips are more than capable of DVD playback - it's only MPEG 2 decoding after all.

Sound card - pretty much every notebook ships with Realtek or SoundMax HD audio chipset these days. Of course some notebooks will ship with Dolby Home Theatre processing, but again you'll be paying extra for that. Either way, sound will be more than adequate.

Screen - you get what you pay for. Just remember that resolution is more important than physical size. There's no way you're going to get a high resolution screen at £500 though - most likely it will be 1,280 x 800.

Battery life will be dependant on the chip and energy density of the battery. If you go for something with an ultra-low voltage chip, like a Sony TZ, you'll get fantastic battery life. However, you can't afford one of those and it won't be able to play games of any type. A Low Voltage chip, like the one in the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 I'm using right now will give you decent battery life and better performance, but again it's unlikely that this type of machine will fit in your budget.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2008/08/01/Samsung-Q210-12-1in-Centrino-2-Notebook/p1

The Samsung above is a little over your budget, but it is based on Intel's brand new Montevina or Centrino 2 platform. It's a decent little machine and will be light enough to carry around with you all day. It also has an HDMI output, so you can pump video out to a high def TV if you want.

There will be a lot of new notebooks hitting the streets in the comming weeks though, as all the manufacturers roll out their Centrino 2 machines, so it might be worth waiting a while.

As for the monitor, you're not going to find anything great for £120. Even for £150 odd you're looking at something pretty average like the Hanspree below. It's not bad for the money, but paying anything less than that will get you something pretty dismal.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/displays/review/2008/08/16/HANNspree-Xm-S-Verona-W22-monitor/p1

Hope that's helpful.

 

[Mike_182]

First up - Mike 182 is right, the Dell D620 did rate very highly, but it's worth remembering that I wrote that review over two years ago. Things have moved on a lot since then, and the D620 itself was replaced by the D630 over a year ago.

However I believe it's worth noting, the D630 itself doesn't bench any better than the D620 chip-for-chip - the only changes are the move to the i965 chipset and a different processor socket. IMHO the D630 shouldn't exist - from the consumer point of view it's a shafting as the two things the D630 should have had is eSATA and Expresscard. Both of which readily available AND SUPPORTED on the i965 chipset, but not included on the D630.

Why, Dell, why?

 

[Mike_182]

However, as has been said if you don't mind a 1-year warranty, and plastic build quality then there are 'comparable' notebooks, however none will have the build quality and support of the Dell D-series - which it has to be said despite starting on an 'OK' footing with the D600, by the D630 they were easily the most desirable of the 'realistic' corporate laptops...

 

[S2 PTH]

Cheers Riyad (I presume that is your name?). I have also been told that 32-bit OS's can't take any more than 3GB, so yeah, 3GB is max I guess.

The more I look around, the more your's is becoming more of an option Mike.

I really hate looking around for computers, coz everyone says completely different things! Obviously, everyone would agree that the latest £4000 laptop from Dell would be amazing, but around the £5-600 mark, its very difficult to distinguish laptops appart.

I have found an interesting site selling laptops like yours Mike:

http://www.ndc.co.uk/Dell_Latitude_D620_Laptop_Intel-1688.html

I quite like the sound of:

D620-1688 base laptop with the upgrades:
3GB Ram
N-rated wireless
Bluetooth
9 cell battery
Vista home OS
Docking station

= £569....

Then that leaves me £200-odd to play with for a monitor and £30 for a new keyboard and mouse!


Does that sound half-decent?
I know I'm going down the route of re-furbs, but apparently these are "litterally un-used" laptops.

 

[Mike_182]

Shite screen resolution on the one they're advertising - the one I've got has the upgraded 1440x900 screen as tested by our friend at TR. I've also got the docking station (just arrived today!) if you're interested in any of it. And if you really do want a new keyboard and mouse, they're yours. Lol. I've got 600 of the b*****d things. Also worth establishing if it's 4965 Intel or the Dell wireless modules, as the Dell wireless software is hugely irritating.