Laptops

[holylandsniper]

Probal this has been discussed before, on previous board.
Where is best place to get a decent but reasonable price(pref not over £500) laptop, with good RAM and DVD player

[sureyouwill]

Dell

[holylandsniper]

Currys 1 seems better, RAM is anyway, you think MAC?

[bennydorano]

Been thinking of upgrading my old PC and getting myself a Laptop.  What should I be looking out for considering I'm as green as grass.  Want to be able to download and watch on the computer if possible, processor power?? Saw a deal in one of the nationals for a Compaq around £400 ?

[Candyman]

sureyouwill is your man 2 ask!!!
rumour has it he got gadaffi sorted with a high powered laptop so he could talk 2 his thai bride everyday using his webcam....

[lynchbhoy]

I dont know about the cheaper end of the scale
I USED to be a big Dell fan
but some of the stuff I have had purched here in work has been nothing short of terrible.

Buying lenovo/IBM laptops now.
€1200 for a fantastic business model

£500 - €750 - I am not sure what you get for that money.

Maybe the HP models , Acer might be ok ...I have no knowledge of these but heard they were decent

Just warn you off Dells. very Plastic and now gone back 10 years in terms or reliability/prone to faults....the way laptops were unreliable all those years ago

their desktops seem to be going the same way...ok right now, but not great

prob is Dell have started to use whatever components are cheapest that week. Thats why laptop/desktop models made in subsequent weeks can contain completely different components and require diff drivers. You could have huge variances in machines in the same shipment.
Potential for failures greater her, plus if folk are reliant on ghosting, this pushed up the image count by a factor of possibly 4 - for each pc/model/per week.


think there are some pc/laptop model comparisons.

I'd recommend Lenovo though. Might be too exp for ya though.

[thejuice]

I got me an IQON in Tesco for €699. 

As much as i like to buy Irish it has been a frustrating piece of hardware. Its been troublesome from the first week i got it. But i suppose thats what you get when you buy at the bottom end of the market

[bennydorano]

Doubt if I'd need a really high-spec yoke, can't see me using it for more than, downloading Music, tv shows(which I've yet 2 do anyway), bit of banking, shopping and maybe an independent film or two

[joebloggs]

stay clear of dell. I would go for fujisu or sony. fujitsu are better value for money sony are more style. Acer do have some excellent value ones but customer service does have a poor repuation. Saying that ive sold three and never had any problems. Seen an excellent one in a harvey norman leaflet 2 weeks ago. if your in the holylands go over to dunnes across the ormeau bridge and they are sellin decent ones with 1gig ram for around £400. By the way to them currys codes work for everything? woulda been handy if id known them a few months ago!

[J70]

You ask this question and you're going to get twenty different contradictory answers: "Dell's crap"/"Dell rules"/"Avoid Sony Vaio"/"HPs customer service is awful"/"Dell's is worse" and on and on! There is probably a horror story out there for every single brand!

Just make sure the specs meet your needs and get a decent warranty. Read some internet reviews of individual models, as different models in a given brand name's range can vary wildly in terms of value for money. Sites like http://www.pcworld.com/, http://www.pcmag.com/ and http://www.cnet.com/do lots of side-by-side reviews and offer plenty of advice on what the specs mean.

And for what its worth, myself and most of my family all use Dell. Outstanding!

[Driver long]

Lads, I'm in the same boat but i literally haven't got a clue!  All this numbers and letters gibberish means nothing to me.  Need one for the same requirements as bennydorano and would like to be able to keep as much info on it as possible.  Could anybody do me a list of all the shit i need on it, the minimum spec (hard drive, RAM? etc) and what price i should be looking to pay.  i haven't got a clue

[Homer]

In general

(at the very least) 512 MB+ RAM

60 GB+ Hardrive should be ok (but this all depends on how many movies and large files you want to store)

Try get an intel processor over AMD but some AMD's can be ok. Around 1.8 GHz is fine, make sure to find out if it is wireless enabled if thats what you want. I'd definitely recommend you getting wireless ability even if you have no current set-up for it. I'd recommend an intel core duo.

Dells are good and cheap but unfortunately only seem to be shipping with Windows Vista Operating System which you really want to avoid, so try get Windows XP.

I'd recommend Toshiba, IBM, Lenovo, Fujitsu and Dell's but only the latter two are probably in your price range.

Avoid those ACER and ICONs they're just not worth the hardship.

[bennydorano]

Saw this on Dell website, any good for my needs??

£459
£399
Includes VAT & Shipping




Product Tour


Product Details


Processor



Intel Core™ Dual Core Processor T2080 (1.73 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
Operating system



Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic - English
Memory



1024MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x512)
Monitor



15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display
Harddrive



60GB (5400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
Optical Drive



Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software
Graphic Card



Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Up to 256MB shared graphics memory
Modem
56.6k V.92 Capable Internal Modem & Adapter
Service



Collect & Return, 1 Year Service only

[haranguerer]

Anyone know any good deals about at the min? Need to get a laptop for general use, planning on spending up to £500.

[Archie Mitchell]

£500 is a good budget for a laptop. You'll have plenty of options from Dell, Acer, Sony, HP etc.

All depends what size of screen you want. I have a laptop with 17" screen and great for watching video's on.

If it comes with Vista, make sure you get as much RAM as possible. I only got 1GB RAM with my Dell laptop, found it quite slow running Vista, upgraded to 4GB RAM and noticed a massive improvement.