New laptop recommendations

[rory182]

My laptop has packed up after 6 years use, it was a P4 3ghz with 512Mb of RAM I believe.

I use it for tinternet, a bit of photoshop, a bit of CAD now and again, watching pirate movies , bit of word processing.

Would like bluetooth built in, battery life of a couple of hours is fine, prob 15" or 17".

Any recommendations around £300-£350?

Cheers

 

[calum001]

i just got a dell studio with a decent setup for about £600 but if you have a look at the inspiron range as they were doing then with a dual core processor and 4gb or ram a few weeks ago

i'm running CAD '04 on mine the now but i need to get hold of a copy of '08, that aswell as office lol, microsoft works is cack !

 

[rory182]

Cheers, I have run cad no problem on my old pentium 4 laptop with 512Mb of RAM so anything modern with decent graphics capabilities should handle it fine.

 

[rory182]

http://www.cdiscount.co.uk/Computing/laptops/samsunglaptops/f/1522/186018.html

this is quite appealing, not sure about the processor but has separate graphics which has to help eh?!

 

[rory182]

Any advice?

Do I need a dedicated graphics card if I'm not going to be playing games? Will films, photoshop, rendered cad images etc be reasonable enough with shared graphics?

 

[calum001]

i would say theres better laptops out there for the price tbh (not a great deal better but a bit), if i were you i would look for 3gb RAM+ as that will help with running bigger programmes such as CAD, photoshop, games etc.....

as far as i know its always going to be better with a dedicated graphics card but by the looks of it that has a shared memory card (even though it states 128mb, might be 128mb dedicated and the rest it uses up your comps RAM) ?

as you said though if your not going to be running games then its not really a neccesity, would be ok without if your not too bothered about it

what version of CAD you running mate ?

 

[rory182]

Cheers. I run Autodesk Inventor on my laptop at the mo and Photoshop 7 not the latest versions but perfectly adequate for when I use them.

Yeah it is a shared graphics processor with some dedicated memory as you say I googled the graphics processor model the other day.

 

[rory182]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173882 this is full of win, no HDMI socket though or dedicated graphics.

No operating system but that doesn't cost much

 

[calum001]

if your going to buy a laptop without a OS then you might as well add that onto your budget if your prepared to pay that, so £350 for that one in the link and then say £90 for an OS, £440 total

theres another couple that i spotted when i was looking for one a months ago and i'll post up the links if i get a chance to find them again

theres a few decent deals from dell in the links below (was better a month ago though)

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/hom...d=laptop-inspiron-1545&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&~ck=mn

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/hom...fid=laptop-studio-1555&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&~ck=mn

 

[rory182]

cheers, yeah had the same thought. found a nice acer for £420 with dedicated graphics card:

https://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_Aspire_6930G_449059.html

Core 2 duo too, could be a winner!

 

[calum001]

seems like a decent laptop for the money like, acer def make some good spec laptops for the price, never had one but heard their decent

core 2 duo is always a bonus for that price, currys or comet were actually doing a few good deals not 2 long ago aswell

 

[rory182]

I have taken the plunge, ordered an Acer with AMD Turion Dual Core 2GHz processor with ATI Radeon graphics on board with a 256MB dedicated memory for Graphics.

Its got 4GB RAM and a 250GB SATA HD.

Bought from Argos Clearance on ebay as a 'refurb' A1 condition 12 months warranty - £295 + £9.95 postage

Absolute fecking bargain, only downside is it has Vista basic so won't qualify for a free Windows 7 upgrade. But I can live with that. The spec seems better than anything upto £500 or so I've seen elsewhere.

 

[calum001]

seems like a good buy mate, for that price you cant really complain for that spec !

 

[rory182]

Yeah, it seemed too good to be true but I called them to confirm some details and they said oh sorry it has 4GB RAM, not 3GB lol

Cheers for your advice, nobody else bothered lol

 

[Mot!]

I'd have gone for an intel CPU mate but you did well for the price

 

[calum001]

haha no probs bud, i dont know huge amounts about laptops but i was looking for one myself a few weeks ago so it would be rude not to lol

 

[rory182]

I'd have gone for an intel CPU mate but you did well for the price

Only intel ones which tempted me were core 2 duos tbh and they're all quite expensive

 

[rory182]

received it today, it's 5536 not a 5535 so has a faster processor and windows vista premium, full of win for £305 it's immaculate and really well built.