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Lappy

Unless something more urgent needs some cash..im thinkin' on buyin a laptop..

Dual core, 2g ram (or more as vista seems standard) good battery..bla bla..usual things, i like the built in webcam tbh too

£400 max really. Tough call but they seem to be around..

I know a few things to look for but as 'Butler' knows..im not that hot on all the tech stuff!! Often exhibiting a glazed expression in his company as he explains somat.. lol Chipsets and speeds etc yadda yadda

HERE is one that's caught my eye, seems to have what im after...from the sites i have used before (avoiding Dabs!)

So..any opinions, suggestions...

Thanks. :)
 
that is pretty reasonable, looks worth it :) in fact you could build a budget system of around my current spec for that price, only place it falls short is processor but its definitely not bad.
 
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personally ld go with Ebuyer on this instance, lm not knocking Novatech has some real good stuff, but between the three best places l shop (Aria, Novatech, and Ebuyer) the most reasonable place of the moment is Ebuyer.. l can get allot more for my money than anywhere else l know of for the second.
 
PCWorld often has some very good web-deals too, though I'd avoid the emachine (or was it esystems?) lappys as their reputation has a few holes. The biggest thing you have to watch out for these days is bloatware. Lappy manufactures stick masses of useless background process crunching software on machines, which are all designed to "make things better" but ultimately just slow EVERYTHING down.

The first thing I do with any new laptop is wipe every single piece of third party software off it, clean the registry and then selectively stick the most updated versions of what I "need" back on. My main system pretty much only has NOD32 and the video driver stuff running in the background, all the other bits have been removed from the start-up as there was no need for them to be run every time my PC boots.

They stick all this rubbish on lappys to help keep the price down as it all equals advertising deals. So you pay less but get a lot of rubbish to clean.
 
Timeless..yeah pretty much ditto on the sites i used plus a couple others..

Of course..you can always spend a little more n get..etc etc

Lookin at THIS list.. like the 1st HP put in the extra ram..to my mind..it looks a better machine? Sure smaller HDD and no flashy cam built in ..no dedicated grafics..but its all swing n round-a-bouts to me.. From the bunch..is Vista Business the best to get?


Regarding Timeless comment on the cpu..if that then made the HP a better proposition..its the way to go?? Or the Samsung/Toshiba..bla bla

Only things never get a mention is batt life..lol


EDIT..Mark, Have a friend who had Hell 'n' all trouble with PC World when her lappy went wrong, hardware fault or somat...it was their responsibility but she got pushed pillar to post. Kinda puts ya off...same reason i'm avoiding Dabs on this occasion. It's just a minefield when you know a little..but not enough..lol
 
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The best OS would be XPPro.

Does everything you need and makes a £400 lappy perform like a £1000 one; you can even get the aeroglass theme if you like it.
 
I bought a new lappy yesterday for 600 came with Vista Premium as standard, also, every lappy I saw had Vista too except 1 which was running ubuntu, lol :D so I agree with Old Dude, the chances of gettin a XP powered lappy is very small now :(
 
I did see somewhere they said you can downgrade to XP but if you look at prices of buying the OS it is dearer to buy XP than Vista as I recently bought vista for my daughters PC build and it was £30 less than XP.
While on the subject it is worth checking out the extended warrenties as I did when I bought my daughters laptop for going to uni. Recently I dropped it off at Comet to see if they can repair it on warrenty. They have contacted me and said thye can't repai it so replacing it with a new laptop more ram and larger HDD. The old laptop was working just had cracks at the hinges and USB port stopped working.
 
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They are about, but your either going to have to buy secondhand or refurbished, or its quite high priced compared to what spec it is.

If I was getting a new laptop for myself (I should be so lucky, just spent £260 on a phone), Id get a copy of vista from somewhere, and nlite it.

That way, I'll definatly be rid of all the crap they install, and have a much cutdown vista install.

Kits, apperently you can only downgrade vista if you have the business version.
 
ok mind seems some are finding Vista ok even some who were sceptical
 
as a recommendation ld stick with XP l despise vista, all it really is.. is a bloated version of XP with a new skin nothing more.. and l wouldnt go with a system with less than 2GB of ram if you did get vista. its one hell of a memory hog!!
 
XP Pro.. Yeah..it's around.. as said..you seem to pay extra..but I do have it 'lying around'..

I do find the 'sharing' better on Vista..it links with my PS3 effortlessly..where i cant get XP Pro to manage it at all! (Dual boot desktop). So Vista don't worry me if it means I can link in with the desktop/PS3...

Dependin on price paid..sure i'd up the ram to 4g..so it's one of the things im lookin at.

I had seen the one Old Dude mentioned... With fair aim to stay around budget (excluding 'RAM uppage :drool:) I still like the ASUS on Vista - or on XP.. the LENOVO

Does it matter to have the dedicated grafix card?..it wont be for gaming really.. though maybe hooked up to a 32' LCD tv at times..which i guess needs some grunt. Though with 250g..the Asus could be made dual-boot if needed..hmm omg what a choice!! :crap: :laugh:

Thanks for the inputs tho..I like it lively :)
 
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Graphics dont matter much at all if your not planning to do anything hefty with it. However, one thing to watch out for is dedicated graphics that will use up some memory.
 
indeed most laptop gfx cards share internal memory..
 
Laptops Direct are good and reliable suppliers in my experience.

Bought an Acer Extensa for a serf recently. Comes with XP Pro and is quite a dainty piece of kit.

Bought myself a Toshiba Tecra with Vista but it needed 3GB of RAM before it would go properly.

There will be some good student deals soon.

Dabs (owned by BT now) also have some cheap deals on laptops.
 
There's always eBay but you really need balls of steel shopping for lappys on an auction site, with so many things to watch out for that can catch you out :) .
 
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