Advice Samsung Laptops

[Aoami]

So im in the market for a new laptop, and i have about 700 notes to spend. Their is a nice looking sammy laptop around that mark and i was just wondering if anyone had any experience and could reccommend them? Failing that, what is the best make to go for atm?

Im not looking for a gaming machine, but something to do a bit of light graphic design on and the usual stuff people do on a laptop.
Thanks.

 

[Helme]

My ex had a Samsung netbook that's still holding out after almost six years of being carried around every single day in a bag not designed for laptops. It also survived cats knocking glasses of water into it.

But I consider it a freak of nature... so I don't know if you can hope for the same?

As for other brands, I got an HP laptop from school back in 03' and my sister still uses it daily. Had to replace the backlight as that blew out last year but apart from that it's fine. I got myself an Asus 1215b at the start of the year and so far I'm happy with everything apart from the keyboard which is a bit flimsy.

 

[Aoami]

I've pretty much sworn to never buy HP again after my last HP laptop was an absolute piece of shit, which overheated every 5 minutes and switched itself of. 'Working as intended' they told me. There are lots of tempting ones in my price range though

 

[Dudley52]

Asus and Toshiba laptops are rated the highest in reliability.

 

[soze]

Lenovo are ugly and expensive but they are bullet proof. We have switched over almost 100% now in work. We still sell around 5000 HP Laptops in a year and we have had to DOA 15 of them last year. They tend to be very reliable machines. Acer are a joke and tend to time bomb after the 12 month warranty ends. We do not sell a lot of Toshiba now as the Warranty situation has become a pain in the arse. All in all for most of our customers we go HP as they look shiny and the Warranty (30 day doa, up to 3 year ON SITE) makes a lot of sense. Sending your laptop away for a week to get it fixed is not a great option.

I own a personal Samsung and the only problem I have is that the DVD drive died twice in the first year. Both times I sent it away for 11 days each time and they replaced it but the drive is broken again now which is disappointing as its now out of warranty and I will have to pay to replace it myself.

 

[Ch3tan]

Another vote for Lenovo. They are rock solid and well specced.

 

[Zenith.UK]

Acer are a joke and tend to time bomb after the 12 month warranty ends.

I've not found that to be the case.
This laptop (5920G) is coming up on 5 years old and still in daily use, playing games and generally doing what it should do. The only thing I've had to do was replace the graphic card a couple of years ago.
My wife's 7110 lasted almost 4 years of being toted around before the screen hinges broke. I just decapitated it and now use it as a file server and download mill.
A neighbour across the road has an Acer that broke. I worked out that the hard drive had died, got a replacement HDD for them, reinstalled from the recovery discs and they were back up and running in less than 2 days after it broke. I got a replacement keyboard while I was at it since they had a number of missing keys.

My point is that everyone has good and bad experiences with different manufacturers. I personally find Toshiba laptops a trial, HP are good workhorses, IBM are bulletproof (as mentioned before) and Acer are cheap and cheerful and easy to fix.

Aoami is after a laptop for light graphic design with a budget of £700 or so but didn't specify anything else like CPU, RAM or screen size.
Here's a couple of suggestions...
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Tosh...5_Blu-Ray_Laptop__PSK3XE-01C00WEN/version.asp
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer...ell_CAM_WiFi__GT540M_LX.RQ002.075/version.asp

 

[soze]

I've not found that to be the case.

It is going to come down to individual machines, but i have had 3 Acers die between 12-24 months at home. And at work we rolled out Acer Laptops to a super market chain. 500 machines overall and we have had problems with at least 50 of them. And that is not good numbers. But like i said it may just be a dodgy model.

 

[Aoami]

Aoami is after a laptop for light graphic design with a budget of £700 or so but didn't specify anything else like CPU, RAM or screen size.
Here's a couple of suggestions...
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Tosh...5_Blu-Ray_Laptop__PSK3XE-01C00WEN/version.asp
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer...ell_CAM_WiFi__GT540M_LX.RQ002.075/version.asp

Screen size in itself isn't a massive issue for me, however resolution is more important. What worries me with a lot of machines i've looked at is that the native resolution is 1366x768. Does native mean maximum or recommended? Can laptops with dedicated GFX cards be pushed to 1920x1080 or is it out of the question?

edit - what i'm looking for is a machine with dedicated graphics and an SSD (size isnt important, 128gb is fine as it wont be for gaming, just work really. Films and stuff will be streamed from my external.) The main reason for wanting the SSD is most laptops seem to come with 5,400RPM hard drives and i find my 7,200 in my desktop slow enough. There doesn't seem to be many machines with both of those things in my price range.

 

[soze]

If the laptop states 768 that's your maximum. Laptop screen sizes really are not great 1080p res under 15 inch is rare and normally expensive. I would love a 1080p 13 inch laptop, even the £1200 Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook has a 720p monitor.

SSD prices are dropping and dropping on hotukdeals maybe look for a laptop you like the GFX spec of and add the SSD after market? as an OEM option you will pay though the nose.

 

[Zenith.UK]

soze hit it. Native resolution is the rez of the screen itself. The graphic chip *can* pump out higher rez, but that would be through an external monitor. You're typically looking at 1366-768 as the upper limit of 15" screens and 1600x900 for 17".

Since you've said graphic design, I'll assume you're after a larger, higher rez screen. So try this for size...
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Tosh...ows_7_Pro_Laptop__PSK3XE-01900WEN/version.asp
A different Toshiba with 17" 1600x900 screen, dedicated graphics (nVidia 525M). £599.98 reg. price, £499.97 after trading in your old laptop.

Then get one of these...
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/54170/SanDisk-SDSSDX-120G-G25-Extreme-120GB-SATA-Int
£92.29 or about £100 with delivery.

Within your budget and ticks most of your boxes. The only thing is transferring your system from the original drive to the new drive, but if you're prepared to do it then you'll save some money.