Laptop Choices

[Embattle]

My Uni work involes mostly Word. My priorities are battery life, portability, a decent keyboard and a decent screen that doesn't hurt my eyes.

My shortlist at the moment is the MacBook, Sony Vaio Y-series (less so following the comments), the more realistic Dell Studio 15 or Inspiron 15 (though I could be persuaded by the 17 if the price is right). I'll have a look at Lenovo too.

You kind of loose a bit on your priorities when shifting to a 17 inch in terms of portability and battery life.

 

[Will]

Good point. I may have to take a look at people's laptops and see what size of screen is acceptable to me.

 

[Ch3tan]

I have a 15.4" laptop for work, it was £500 last summer from HP. Fantastic, and have not had an issue with it. the screen size is fine to do everything on.

I've got a 12" lenovo for lounging around at home, and that is also fine.

I'd say 17" is far too big for what you need; that's a desktop replacement not a portable lappy.

 

[old.Osy]

Go with Asus, we use Dells at work, and trust me, the fail ratio is not something you want.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

My Dell's a 15.6, good size for me tbh.

 

[caLLous]

Sony have a nasty habit of doing bespoke shit to the BIOS and OS which cause all kinds of headaches if you want to upgrade.

...and inexplicably altering their custom nVidia drivers (which I have to use afaik because of the "stamina/speed" switch) to remove support for rotating the desktop on displays that can flip to portrait.

 

[TdC]

well there is that. recently I upgraded my Vaio Z21 to 64b windows 7 myself. to say it didn't go very smoothly would be like saying Gordon Brown doesn't always make a good impression.

still, I made it. regular Nvidia drivers do not work; you need Sony's home grown ones. certain gubbins in the lappy are not recognized by doze7 without their special drivers. other than that, my Z owns at just about everything

 

[Killswitch]

If it's for Uni work, but you also want to play some games and/or watch movies, you might want to check this out;

https://forums.freddyshouse.com/techie-discussion-3/225581-weeks-hot-purchases-7.html#post3638397

Fast modern CPU (Core i5) and plenty of RAM, with a decent GFX card, Blu-Ray reader and a big HDD. It's a 15.6" screen and 2.7kg, so it's just about portable, but I reckon it'll run pretty hot.

Reckon it'll play stuff like Half-Life 2, Football Manager, WoW and suchlike really well. Screen is perhaps the biggest disappointment at 1366x768 but it's still not terrible.

I've been researching a new laptop for about 6 weeks and this is the best value I've found, but I wanted one specifically with a good GFX card for games. I'd definitely have a look at the Acer range anyway...lots of good value machines in there and lots of different sizes/specs etc.

 

[Bodhi]

If it's for Uni work, but you also want to play some games and/or watch movies, you might want to check this out;

https://forums.freddyshouse.com/techie-discussion-3/225581-weeks-hot-purchases-7.html#post3638397

Fast modern CPU (Core i5) and plenty of RAM, with a decent GFX card, Blu-Ray reader and a big HDD. It's a 15.6" screen and 2.7kg, so it's just about portable, but I reckon it'll run pretty hot.

Reckon it'll play stuff like Half-Life 2, Football Manager, WoW and suchlike really well. Screen is perhaps the biggest disappointment at 1366x768 but it's still not terrible.

I've been researching a new laptop for about 6 weeks and this is the best value I've found, but I wanted one specifically with a good GFX card for games. I'd definitely have a look at the Acer range anyway...lots of good value machines in there and lots of different sizes/specs etc.

Tha main issue with that is you end up with an Acer, which is slightly above a case of the Ebola virus in my book. My sister has one, it took them 3 goes to ship her a working one. Luckily eBuyer sorted her out, but if they hadn't, she would have ended up with Acer support, which is akin to having Gordon Brown lecture you on depth perception...

That Samsung I linked to is of a similar spec, and cheaper. We sell loads of Sammy laptops at work, and the failure rates are ridiulously low.

 

[xane]

I got my step-son an Acer many years ago, he was going to use it for music recording his guitar via a MIDI, but the power transformer on the laptop picked up hum from the guitar, completely useless.

 

[Yaka]

that kinda problem is prolly not exclusive to acer prolly a vast majority of laptops would have that issue

 

[caLLous]

well there is that. recently I upgraded my Vaio Z21 to 64b windows 7 myself. to say it didn't go very smoothly would be like saying Gordon Brown doesn't always make a good impression.

still, I made it. regular Nvidia drivers do not work; you need Sony's home grown ones. certain gubbins in the lappy are not recognized by doze7 without their special drivers. other than that, my Z owns at just about everything

As an aside, have you tried your 2405FPW (if you still have it) as a secondary monitor on your Z? And if so, have you tried it in its portrait orientation?

 

[TdC]

err no, I actually haven't. I have connected it to my TV via HDMI though, but ofc that's not the same.

 

[caLLous]

Yes it's not the same at all.

I think they did it because the Intel graphics chipset didn't support rotating displays. It's still a bit crap though.

 

[Trem]

My sister

How long have you had a sister and why was I not informed of this?

I could be your god damn bro-in-law by now you sister hiding slag















(gifv pics)

 

[Killswitch]

Tha main issue with that is you end up with an Acer, which is slightly above a case of the Ebola virus in my book. My sister has one, it took them 3 goes to ship her a working one. Luckily eBuyer sorted her out, but if they hadn't, she would have ended up with Acer support, which is akin to having Gordon Brown lecture you on depth perception...

That Samsung I linked to is of a similar spec, and cheaper. We sell loads of Sammy laptops at work, and the failure rates are ridiulously low.

Well, looks like you might have been right too...got my new lappy and the left-arrow key is busted. Everything else is great, but it's pretty disappointing! Gutted!

 

[Wazzerphuk]

How long have you had a sister and why was I not informed of this?

I could be your god damn bro-in-law by now you sister hiding slag















(gifv pics)

Probably even beardier than Bods tbh.

 

[Trem]

Probably even beardier than Bods tbh.

*fap*

 

[Bodhi]

I've got 2

 

[Bahumat]

Just been helping my friend get a laptop. At the Moment you can get a nice Dell Inspiron 17 with an i5 processor for £549. You could pay a little more for a faster hard drive and a little more ram. That laptop is the Vostro 3700. They are under the Small Business section, but after phoning Dell they say you can order the Vostro if you're not a business, but you have to do it over the phone.