Advice on buying a laptop (UK)

Jam Warrior

Not sure if this should be in H/A or not but figured it'd get more UK readers here, please move if required.

I'm after buying a new laptop but am on the lower end of the technical spec savvy scale so am coming to you for advice. The main purpose I'm after is something that will play WoW and play it to a decent standard. Lacking much knowledge on the subject I've gone straight to the big name websites and reckon that the £599 Dell InspironTM 6400 from here could my boy as it seems relatively beefy for memory and graphics and is at the price point I was after.

I guess what I'm after from you is:

(A) Is this a good place to buy from/model for my needs?

and

(B) If not where/what would you suggest?

Thanks for any help.

LewieP

I have heard nothing but woe about the ATI MobilityTM Radeon® X1300, a friend of mine just bought this which for an extra £100 has twice the ram, 40gig aditional HD space, 2ghz Core2duo instead of 1.6, and a 256MB GF7600 video card.

If you have the extra hundred quid, to me that would seem worth it.

Rook

Replacing X300, X1300 is at the low-end of ATI's new X1x00 line of video cards. Roughly speaking, it has about double the performance of Intel's extreme(ly bad) integrated video, and half the performance of X1400. What is puzzling is that on ATI's site, X1300 and X1400 have mostly the same specs except for a minor difference in clock speeds. However, from 3dmark05 tests, X1400 scores 1600-2100, while X1300 scores 900-1200.

New to the X1x00 line of cards is AVIVO (advanced imaging and video, contrived name?). The biggest advantage is accelerated MPEG4/H.264 playback and encoding (http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/avivo_1.html).

Another feature of X1300 is Hypermemory. The X1300 has 64MB of onboard memory, but when needed, it will use your RAM to achieve a total of 256MB of memory. In some respects, Hypermemory behaves similar to integrated graphics. So Hypermemory for graphics really means Hypomemory for your system...another reason to add more RAM.

As for deciding between X1300 and X1400, I would say go with X1400 if you play an averagely-unhealthy amount of games. But the X1300 definitely holds its own if you are a light gamer. I tried several contemporary' games such as Doom 3, Quake 4, and Need for Speed Most Wanted. With X1300, all of the games had smooth frame rates when played at 800x600 with low to medium details.

I also tried some older games such as Quake 3 and NFS Porsche Unleashed. These games had graphic details maxed out at 1400x1050 and still had smooth frame rates. Therefore, I would say that the X1300 is comparable to a top-of-the-line video card from three years ago.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3002

Hope that helps a bit, if you say decently, looks like an X1400 is probably the thing to aim for.

edit: Or the above laptop, 2gig of ram looks nice

Fallingman

I too am looking for a Laptop for around £600.
I was looking at the Dell 6400 also.

This isnt for me. Its for my Grandfather.
Needless to say, he wont be gaming, however I'm looking for as good a deal as I can get, with a fairly reputable company so that should he have any hardware issues, there will be minimum hassles.

Also, I see that they only ship Vista these days... I assume 1gig RAM, and a graphics card will handle it fine for general non-game useage?

Anyone been through this recently?

japan

I'm going to buy a laptop when my next pay comes through in a couple of days. Personally, I'm going with a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T41 from sterlingxs.co.uk.

The specs are pretty decent for £400:

Intel Pentium M Centrino 1.6Ghz processor
1024MB RAM
40GB hard drive
14.1'' TFT screen (1024x768)
Integral DVD drive
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics - AGPx4 32MB DDR SDRAM
Refurbished, with 90 days RTB warranty/Balance of IBM warranty - until approx June 07
Dimensions: (cm) W:31, D:25.4, H: 3.1. Weight - Approx 2kg
Windows XP pro pre-installed with COA & restore DVD

I'm not sure how good the mobility Radeon 7500 is for gaming, but that's not what I'm buying it for. I'm mostly getting it because it's smaller, lighter and more durable than anything I could get new for a similar price (and I really hate widescreens on laptops, which seems to ba all you can get these days). Plus, you can get a Thinkpad repaired at virtually any decent computer shop.

I'd be happy to let people know how it works out.

Jam Warrior

LewieP wrote: »

I have heard nothing but woe about the ATI MobilityTM Radeon® X1300, a friend of mine just bought this which for an extra £100 has twice the ram, 40gig aditional HD space, 2ghz Core2duo instead of 1.6, and a 256MB GF7600 video card.

If you have the extra hundred quid, to me that would seem worth it.

Highly tempting... Just got to try and justify the outlay and I might jump for that.

Parkingtigers

Fallingman wrote: »

I too am looking for a Laptop for around £600.
I was looking at the Dell 6400 also.

This isnt for me. Its for my Grandfather.
Needless to say, he wont be gaming, however I'm looking for as good a deal as I can get, with a fairly reputable company so that should he have any hardware issues, there will be minimum hassles.

If he won't be gaming, then the best laptop for him would be a MacBook. Extra £150, but you won't have to worry about viruses and other crap getting him into trouble. The iLife package comes pre-loaded, and frankly I doubt he would ever need any other software. You'll save (him) money in the long term.

Lewisham

Macbook seconded, even if you are going to bastardise it and just run Windows on it.

Otherwise, Lenovo Thinkpad. They're built like tanks.

Fallingman

I am actually a full Mac convert.

I have a MBP and just got my missus a MB.
I normally wouldn't hesitate to reccomend them, however, there are 2 reasons I decided to go with a PC.

1) Learning a new OS. He's done pretty well, he is very technical and taught himself how to use a PC at the age of 85. He started off emailing, and now is wanting a wireless rig so that he can surf in his comfy chair ;-) Learning OSX, for him will be a long process and I live in a different city - making support more difficult.

2) Support. While he prefers to come to me, when I'm not in town, he has a few people around to help him out. They are all PC users and would probably be intimidated to get involved with a mac as they've never used them.

But thanks for the suggestions.

Parkingtigers

Hi Fallingman.

Of course, your granddad would actually have less problems in the first place with a Mac, so less need for support. If you had him all trained on XP, then any new computer coming pre-loaded with Vista is going to give him a whole bunch of new stuff to learn anyway. I'd suggest using that as a reason to switch him over now, rather than spend the same amount of time learning Vista (which lets face it is going to have all sorts of compatibility problems for a few months yet). Could always load him up XP onto it as "training wheels" until he feels comfortable. Leopard is rumoured to be just a month or two away, things like the remote desktop sharing would be perfect for you to show him around his computer from another city when you go on your trips.

Either way, great to hear the old fella isn't scared to grapple with technology at his age though. Hope I'm still as openminded to new stuff at his age.

xta

i'm running on a lenovo t60 with c2d and a x1400, i still wouldn't say it's a good gaming laptop. the macbookpro with the x1600 would do so much better.

i'm happy with mine, and i got it during the nov/dec06 xmas season sale.. but i don't think my laptop is that affordable (especially compared to dells). it's pretty solid and the lenovo/ibm technologies that it comes with are pretty good

i'd recommend here if you have any specific questions http://forum.thinkpads.com/

Resident0

Yes, here's a tip:

DON'T BUY AN ACER LAPTOP, THEY SUCK BALLS!

Seriously I bought an ACER from PC World a long time ago, the screen stopped working on it, so i sent it in for repair, then the keyboard failed to respond so i had to send it back again for another repair, then about a month later the PSU molex stopped working completely and PC World won't change it because they want me to 'Turn the laptop on before they can send me a replacement PSU, as it might not be that!'...

I mean, if i cannot turn the thing on, and the PSU power LED does not come up, then it is not going to be a problem with the laptop is it?

Jam Warrior

Just so you know Lewie, you have once again directed my purchasing pound and I picked up my shiny new laptop from Comet last night.

Things continuing at this rate I'll be contacting you to pick me a mortgage provider in short order.

Cheers.

LewieP

haha, glad to know I could be of some help.

Good luck with the laptop!

Lewisham

Acer have been uniformly terrible in my experience. Best example: during the summer, my housemate's would overheat and crash unless a desk fan was run next to it.

Good luck

japan

For what it's worth, I got my Thinkpad (T41, refurb) today, and so far I like it a lot.

Metal case, normal (4:3) screen, trackpoint with three buttons and a full size keyboard with a really nice feel. This thing feels so solid compared to the Dell Latitude I use at work. all in all, not bad for £365.