New Laptops

Mighty_Mouse

Hi all,

I'm getting a new laptop in the €2,000 range. Any tips for best buys & models: Sony, siemans etc etc.

Or any specific places where deals can be got. Also in terms of memory, processing speed, graphics, what should I be looking for?

Rew

Mighty_Mouse wrote:

Hi all,

I'm getting a new laptop in the €2,000 range. Any tips for best buys & models: Sony, siemans etc etc.

Or any specific places where deals can be got. Also in terms of memory, processing speed, graphics, what should I be looking for?

Give us an idea of what you want it for?

There are loads of recent thread on this subject.

Sony are **** but they look good, shop around ALOT as prices vary ALOT!

IBM Thinkpad T4x are the best laptops in the world but they go up to €5000 for the top of the range. Apple PowerBokks are the 2nd best laptops in the world and OSX kicks lumps out of Windows but it may not suit everyone.
Acer are good bang for buck (I have a Acer Travelmate 800).

Centrino is worth having, the Pentium M holds its own with its Pentium 4 M brother but kicks the **** out of it when it comes to battery life. There are 2 versions of Centrino. The initial version which went up to 1.7 ghz and a newer version which go up to 2.0 Ghz and are made with a newer (better) maunfacturing proccess (i forget the code names but google will be your friend).

Get a 3 year warrenty if it isnt standard, laptops break alot easier then desktops and its harder to fix them.

Consider getting a 2nd battery if your on the road alot. 2nd power supply is great if you go between home and office alot.

Ram: no less the 512. Keep in find that most laptops have either 2 ram slots OR ram soldered to the motherboard and one ram slot. Keep these in mind for up grades. If you got for 2 x 256 ram modules in 2 slots to upgrade to 1024mb you would have to replace BOTH chips.

Harddisk depends on what you want it for. There are 3 hardisk speeds 4200 rpm, 5400rpm and 7200rpm. Faster the disk speed the better the preformance (generally) but faster disks are more expensive and consume more power.

3 main graphics ypu will probably see are:

ATI (9000, 9200, 9600, 9700)
Nvidia (Geforce Go FX 4200 and 5200)
Intel (Extream Grpahics 1 and 2)

ATI and nvidia are better for games the Intel one is good for battery life, higer the model number (and ram) the better.

Look for plenty of USB ports dont be hung up on mouse or keyboard ports you would be hard pushed to buy a non usb keyboard or mouse these days.

Look at Screen size (12", 14.1", 15" and widescreen) look at the max resolution the screen can display.

Cheak the weight, more then 3Kg its getting heavy.

Consider a DVD burner but get one thats + and -

Get a bag (they are bloody expensive) I would suggest a rucksac style bag they fit more stuff and are alot easier to carry.

Thats all I can think of for now.

.ak

I think the new sony viao's are good shiz. Really high spec machines at affordable prices imho. Their new centrino range are amazing, the M chips (1.5, 1.8) are some of the best chips on the planet. Get the right combo, and you've got a whopper of a machine in your hands straight away, no fuss, just open it up and play. Peats have a the full range of Sony Viao's, including some of their own exclusive models. Pop in there, or check the sony website.

-Adam

Champ

For work i would consider:
http://www.rockdirect.com/rockshop/shophome.php?itemprcd=T200-1.6

For something with some good muscle :
http://www.rockdirect.com/rockshop/shophome.php?itemprcd=PTI-1.8

Rew

.ak wrote:

I think the new sony viao's are good shiz. Really high spec machines at affordable prices imho. Their new centrino range are amazing, the M chips (1.5, 1.8) are some of the best chips on the planet. Get the right combo, and you've got a whopper of a machine in your hands straight away, no fuss, just open it up and play. Peats have a the full range of Sony Viao's, including some of their own exclusive models. Pop in there, or check the sony website.

Peats have the worst prices in the country generally speaking. Sony are **** because so much of their stuff is custom that its near impossible to do stuff with the hardware other then what they let you do. Reinstalling the OS from anything other then the discs that come with it can be nightmareish esp if you want to use an OS other then the orignal one. I have one of the small sub notebooks that has never worked right since an OS reinstall. They arnt known for build quaility either. But they do look good

What ever you buy try UK websites even with sterling the way it is it will be cheaper. (http://www.laptopshop.co.uk)

Rew

Champ wrote:

For work i would consider:
http://www.rockdirect.com/rockshop/shophome.php?itemprcd=T200-1.6

For something with some good muscle :
http://www.rockdirect.com/rockshop/shophome.php?itemprcd=PTI-1.8

Tablets are generally pretty ****, XP Tablet is incredably ****. Wouldn't buy one till after XP SP2 is out which ahs all the tablet upgrades. They might be worth the cash after that.

sceptre

Rew wrote:

Tablets are generally pretty ****, XP Tablet is incredably ****. Wouldn't buy one till after XP SP2 is out which ahs all the tablet upgrades. They might be worth the cash after that.

It's out

Villain

Have a IBM T40 for 2 months now, great machine wouldn't swap it for anything.

The new T42 has built in Blutooth!

Rew

sceptre wrote:

It's out

Yeah just installed it. Seems to have mbad XP a bit nippier but my RAM usage is up a good bit as well.

Guy:Incognito

Rew wrote:

Yeah just installed it. Seems to have mbad XP a bit nippier but my RAM usage is up a good bit as well.

is there any difference between that one (ms quote "for it developers and professionals installing on a network) and the one that will be released in a few days through the update site for single users?

Rew

Stekelly wrote:

is there any difference between that one (ms quote "for it developers and professionals installing on a network) and the one that will be released in a few days through the update site for single users?

(Mod might want to split this to a seperate thread)

Getting WAY OT but:

The one thats there at the min is a 233mb download and has everything bundled in to one file. You dont need all of it basiclly. The one in a few days will be the windows update style one with a small inital down load and it will get what it needs off that net then.

So far Iv noticed:

New and better WLAN card manager to replace the **** one
Firewall is turned on by default and is beefed up a bit.
XP now uses more RAM (100mb extra in my case) but it feels quicker
Autorun is turned off by default because its a security nightmare but loads of apps will try turn it back on (Eg iTunes)
Some apps dont work with SP2 (eg Nero 6) and ypu need to update
IE now has a popup blocker
It warns you before it lets you download stuff, and once downloaded it warns you agian when you try run somthing (eg the update for nero it just told you to get)
Windows Update is diferant as well
Im sure there is plenty of other stuff, I hear it ahs better bluetooth support but I use the software provided by the supplier of my BT kit anyway.