Rummy Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 Those who remember, my old laptop buggered up, I planned on replacing the broken CD drive after my exams so I could restore windows to fix the problem that had occured. My exams finished yesterday, to my horror when checking the laptop(cos my brother broke the heatsink away from the CPU when fiddling about) it seems some idiot didn't heed his warnings of being careful where he left it(though he left it somewhere stupid) and now the fucking screen is cracked too. So, my dad has offered and been offering for a while to buy a new one, though I said I didn't want to if I could fix this. However, with all these issues, I'm thinking I can't be arsed with sorting it all out, so I am looking to buy a new laptop now. Can anyone give me a good recommendation of places to buy new laptops for a decent price, and what's the best kinds of processors to go for(or ones to avoid). I dunno if that matters much, though I remember a number of people telling me to avoid celeron stuff a while back. My laptop isn't going to need to be too fancy, just something a bit average in the current market that'll last and not encounter any problems or struggles for a good few years.
Guest Jordan Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 I actually bought mine from PC World *gasp* but i wanted it there and then. As long as you buy something decent, not over priced and willing to deal with the uinstall of a mountain of shitty software you get with it, you can store buy them. Otherwise, Ebuyer, Dabs that kinda thing.
Guest Jordan Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 The new MacBook, from £699. :D :D Fair suggestion. No Mac/PC flaming in this thread, thank you! *cough* Mac's suck *cough*
Rummy Posted May 18, 2007 Author Posted May 18, 2007 lol, I considered a macbook, but no. So, there aren't any processors I should avoid, or maybe even ones I should favour? Also, should I get a laptop with vista or not? I kind of want to, but don't want to, is it buggy or anything? Much different to XP?
Slaggis Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 already recommended this place to someone on here and they bought from them, http://www.pcoption.co.uk amazing price amazing service
Guest Jordan Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 lol, I considered a macbook, but no. So, there aren't any processors I should avoid, or maybe even ones I should favour? Also, should I get a laptop with vista or not? I kind of want to, but don't want to, is it buggy or anything? Much different to XP? You probably wouldn't get a laptop with XP anymore, make sure its Vista capable atleast. It'll have a little sticker. My advice: get something with a decent graphics chip. IE: Anything ATi Radeon Mobility or nVidia GeForce Go! series. Core 2 Duo is a great CPU to choose too and lastly get atleast a gig of ram on the thing.
Rummy Posted May 18, 2007 Author Posted May 18, 2007 Ok thanks, now I have some things to look for! I dunno alot about the differences between stuff anymore, so a bit clueless and worried about buying something that'll start breaking and crashing after a year or so. I reckon I'll check out some high street stores tomorrow. Thanks guys!
McPhee Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 Laptopsdirect.co.uk thats where i got mine, good selection. Avoid Acer though, not sure if they fixed it but there is a design flaw in the Travelmate casing that results on in breaking every 6 months or so (im on my 3rd case and £100 poorer for the privilege) At least there's still somebody that isn't affraid to drop the mac-bomb anymore. Apparantly, being killed by Windows-fans isn't a thread anymore. Anyway, I would really take one of these simply because Windows can be ran on it anyway, meaning you've got a combination of a great OS with the patch-a-watch OS we all know as 'Microsoft Windows'. Just fun. Does it ever occur to you that by getting more people to "Go Mac" you are increasing the number of users and therefore the number of viruses and hacks that will be written/found for macs? How very selfless of you...
Guest Stefkov Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 Morgan Computers, not sure where they deliver to, if they deliver everywhere, but there was one in Manchester I could go to. GOt my laptop there. They were like the only ones I could find who had this laptop left.
Charlie Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 My brother got a really good one from PC World at a decent price. I would consider having a look in there, especially as you get it there and then, as Jordan said.
That Guy Posted May 19, 2007 Posted May 19, 2007 Laptopsdirect.co.uk thats where i got mine, good selection. Avoid Acer though, not sure if they fixed it but there is a design flaw in the Travelmate casing that results on in breaking every 6 months or so (im on my 3rd case and £100 poorer for the privilege) Does it ever occur to you that by getting more people to "Go Mac" you are increasing the number of users and therefore the number of viruses and hacks that will be written/found for macs? How very selfless of you... My argument when people say the reason Macs don't have many virus's, is that with so many pretentious Mac owners, I'm more than certain there would be a ton of people making virus's just to piss off Mac users. For the record I'm a Mac owner. As for the whole Vista or XP decision, I would go for Vista, even though I've never used it, they would have gone backwards with an OS would they? Plus it looks nice and not like it's been designed by a 5 year old. It also finally has a calendar!
Ashley Posted May 19, 2007 Posted May 19, 2007 All the Mac vx Windows talk (save ^ that post as it was mixed with a 'real' response and thats too much faff) has been moved to another thread. Now everyone try and help poor ol' Rummy.
Jon Posted May 20, 2007 Posted May 20, 2007 Core duo is the best cpu around at the moment, but turion x2's are not bad at at all. Depending on what your budget it is, you could either go for dedicated graphics module or integrated. ATi has some decent integerated solution's kicking around at the moment, a lot better than Nvidia had. If you're going for something dedicated, I'd head for Nvidia. Dabs, Ebuyer, Komplett, blah blah.
KKOB Posted May 20, 2007 Posted May 20, 2007 Graphics cards have ALWAYS confused me, and on PC Spec listings they dont give the speed of the C2D-just some weird number!
McPhee Posted May 21, 2007 Posted May 21, 2007 They don't display the speeds of the Core2Duo because Intel used to slap really high speeds on the names of processors. Speed of processors has hardly increased over the last 5 years so slapping the speed on the front of a Core2Duo would make it look crap and overpriced to the average consumer I agree about the graphics thing, bloomin stupid the way/rate they move at. I gave up trying to follow not long after SLI came out and was the best thing ever invented by mankind surpassing the wheel, the light bulb and sliced bread
Konfucius Posted May 21, 2007 Posted May 21, 2007 I have an IBM Laptop. They can be quite expensive but they can take quite a few hits, not that I'm careless but it won't be broken if it falls down. Also although they have Core2Duo with 2 GHz and are really small, they keep cool and are very quiet. Battery is also pretty decent. However, the graphics cards are very weak. So if you consider gaming don't consider an IBM Laptop - at least not mid-range. Ah and the pre-installed IBM tools suck as well.
Nelly Posted May 22, 2007 Posted May 22, 2007 Core2Duo processers are normally only 1.86GHz per processor. It's the bridge between both processors that makes it run that tad bit faster. If you are going for vista make sure you have a decent graphics card, cos without Aero it's just a pants OS! (Scoring 3.4 on my Vista WEI Rating)
Rummy Posted May 22, 2007 Author Posted May 22, 2007 Oh man, I so totally know nothing about computers anymore I'm like one of those people...old!. My parents are being a bit rubbish in that I need my mum to drive me to the various shops, and my dad to pay for it. However, she has other ideas about who's paying for it(my dad offered a few weeks before he broke his foot, but i was gonna try and fix the other rather than take a free laptop). Anyway, again, thanks for the advice guys, it's unlikely I'll be running anything spectacular on it that'd be highly demanding, though that's due to the habit of not ever being able to play all the latest stuff. As long as it lasts a good few years, runs smooth and has a massive hard drive, I'm happy. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go to currys comet pc world etc on friday or so and have a look at the stuff on the shelves.
theguyfromspark Posted May 23, 2007 Posted May 23, 2007 I bought a £350 laptop from laptops direct the other day, and it arrived the next day even though I only paid for the cheapest delivery option. Everything seems to work fine, 1 Gig of ram and a decent enough processor, runs vista ultimate well enough, can't fault it really.
Rummy Posted May 23, 2007 Author Posted May 23, 2007 Hmm, I've had a look on PCWorld's site, and came across this which caught my eye; http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0565427918.1179941718@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccckaddkmlehhlhcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&sku=276551&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&tabIndex=4 Bit on the pricey side though, and unfortunately a web only exclusive. I haven't done alot of other looking yet though, so I'm gonna keep on. It's the issue of a bigger than 100GB hard drive which is screwing things up, anything decent I see doesn't seem to have a bigger hard drive
KKOB Posted May 24, 2007 Posted May 24, 2007 Why do you need a laptop with over 100GB?!?!? i have over 25GB of music in iTunes, and over 10 gig of movies and video, more i've burnt to DVD, games take up a bit of space these days so it all adds up soon enough. i have had my 120GB one for about 6 weeks and i have just under 40GB free.
Rummy Posted May 24, 2007 Author Posted May 24, 2007 I download alot of stuff, I plan on this laptop lasting for at least 5 years also, so 100GB isn't that much. I've found another laptop, on the cheaper side at £370, though it's reconditioned and got some rather mediocre sounding graphics. http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1090267841.1180013654@@@@&BV_EngineID=cceladdkmlehjeicflgceggdhhmdgmj.0&page=Product&sku=975234 An alternative to the PCWorld £550, which is also £550, has twice the RAM at 2gig, but shared graphics. Everything else is relatively the same I think. http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=399825&tab=specification Best find so far is probably this one at ebuyer; http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/123116 I got a question or two, I'm pretty set on that ebuyer one for £400. However, when it says that the graphics has upto XXXMB shared, shared with what? Does it mean shared out of the RAM or what? Also, does anyone know where I can get a cooling pad and a wireless keyboard/possibly mouse or wireless keyboard with a mouse built into it sort of thing? Any kind of mouse, rollerball, touchpad, anything. I have seen a £30 wireless keyboard with mousepad on ebuyer, which I'm considering, just posting this in case there's anything I should be aware of? I got another edit, the one on ebuyer has the option of buying an extra 1gig on RAM with it for only another £20, which I'm considering because I can only imagine it'd make things better, right? Worth it? Only issue is, how hard or easy will it be to fit?
Rummy Posted May 25, 2007 Author Posted May 25, 2007 __________________________________________________________ I know people are still reading this and just not answering! No matter, I have gone and bought myself a laptop, and so this thread could in effect be locked, as soon as someone can answer my questions about the RAM and 'shared' graphics. For those who care, I got the £400 laptop from ebuyer with an extra gig of RAM what I'll need to fit. For now, I refrained on the wireless keyboard and that, as it's just for the ease of my shittily laid out room.
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