Laptop advice

eezarthegreat

Hey guys just thought i'd ask for advice....

Looking for a good powerful laptop, I do multimedia and I'm starting college again in september so i want a good powerful strong laptop that would last me the 4 years of my degree course. I'm realistic, I know if I want a good one I will have to foot the bill and fork out a bit. Does anyone know if there are certain specs that are the one's that stand out? I run Photoshop, 3ds max, Illustrator, Vegas and game a bit too so I do need something with a bit of power.

This one caught my eye....

http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270132741137&fromMakeTrack=true&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:top:ie

Any feedback would be greatly app.
Joe

Hopper111

you might like the sony laptop thats on offer for E999 in pc world at the mo,its a very powerful model and good value for that price.Its the VGN-N2IE:)

eezarthegreat

gonna check that now, thanks man :P

eezarthegreat

Hopper111 wrote:

you might like the sony laptop thats on offer for E999 in pc world at the mo,its a very powerful model and good value for that price.Its the VGN-N2IE:)

couldnt find it anywhere online???

Cunny-Funt

I'm in a similar situation. I'm either gonna be in DCU for 3 years or I'll be over in England doing interactive media.

And I'm a heavy gamer also, so it MUST have a very good card.

Normally I just build my own PC's but I don't know what the craic is with Laptops.

The only laptops I can find online that have good cards, are either the dell XPS ones or Alienware. But that means spending 2000 + But I'd rather spend closer to 1500.

Its annoying coz If I could just get the parts I wanted it would cost less, but dell and alienware force me to get things I dont need, like a massive screen and HD. Be nice if I could get one custom built or something.

eezarthegreat

Did anybody see the new dell offer in the papers?

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/notebooks_better?c=ie&cs=iebsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

the one on the right there, any opinions on that?

Cheers,
Joe

eezarthegreat

Any advise on buing from dell? I bought a pc from them but never a laptop??

Anybody have an idea when the summer sales are in?

Joe

AlmightyCushion

I bought a laptop from dell and I love the thing. Just make sure you don't upgrade anything on it as this is where dell make a killing.

eezarthegreat

is it a bad idea even to upgrade on ram and so on?

eezarthegreat

cud anybody do me a huge favour?

Could somebody list the spcs off their laptop, be it top of the range or just very fast and powerful, I would like to use that as a base to buy one

thanks guys :P

Tom Dunne

What you are looking for is at least a dual core processor, with 2 gigs of RAM and as big a hard-drive as you can afford (at least 80 gigs)

You will have to do some reading up on the graphics card, this is probably the most important aspect, given the software applications you run. I am not to well up on this aspect of laptops, but have a look at the stickies at the top of the fourm, there's plenty of comparisons there.

Post back 2 or 3 models and their specs and we will help as best we can.

eezarthegreat

tom dunne wrote:

What you are looking for is at least a dual core processor, with 2 gigs of RAM and as big a hard-drive as you can afford (at least 80 gigs)

You will have to do some reading up on the graphics card, this is probably the most important aspect, given the software applications you run. I am not to well up on this aspect of laptops, but have a look at the stickies at the top of the fourm, there's plenty of comparisons there.

Post back 2 or 3 models and their specs and we will help as best we can.

I've decided I am going to make it up on,ine with dell, that way I can customize and pick and choose, one last question....

Intel® Celeron® M Processor 520 (1.60 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)

The above description I just yanked off the dell website, my question is in the line above what does "533mhz" do, and I take it the more the better?

Thanks Joe

Cunny-Funt

Man I'll be blunt. Tell me how much money you are willing to spend, if you are serious about it lasting 4 years and wanting to game.

You will deffo need a decent enough card. How decent depends on how much of a gamer your are.

eezarthegreat

Cunny-Funt wrote:

Man I'll be blunt. Tell me how much money you are willing to spend, if you are serious about it lasting 4 years and wanting to game.

You will deffo need a decent enough card. How decent depends on how much of a gamer your are.

I'd easily spend about a thousand euro, here's one I made up on the dell website:

BASE Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T2130 (1.86GHz,533MHz,1MB L2 cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Professional - English
LCD 15.4" UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WXGA+ (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
MEMORY 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024] edit
HARD DRIVE 160GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive edit
GRAPHICS CARD Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Up to 256MB shared graphics memory edit
OPTICAL DRIVE Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including Software
PRIMARY BATTERY 9 cell Lithium-Ion Battery (85 Whr)

Any idea if that's good? I'd love to go into a shop and just buy one but as I said I've no idea really about laptops so if i headed into the shops i dont want to be conned out of cash

Joe

copacetic

eezarthegreat wrote:

I've decided I am going to make it up on,ine with dell, that way I can customize and pick and choose, one last question....

Intel® Celeron® M Processor 520 (1.60 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)

The above description I just yanked off the dell website, my question is in the line above what does "533mhz" do, and I take it the more the better?

Thanks Joe

take a look at the new dell models on their website. a celeron is not the way to go. the 533MHz is the speed at which the front side bus is clocked. basically this is the speed your processor (intel) can talk to the memory and video card. (broad strokes here people)

higher is better, in general the higher the processor speed >> the higher the FSB speed.

eg the new dell 1720 is available with
'Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7700 (2.4GHz,4MB L2 Cache,800MHz FSB)'

which is the very latest version of the centrino chipset with 800MHz FSB the 'santa rosa' chipset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino#Santa_Rosa_platform_.282007.29

if it was me, I'd either buy a laptop with this chipset or hold out for them to be a bit cheaper. Otherwise there are a lot of really good deals at the moment on current systems as all the manufacturers are launching new santa rosa based laptops with LED backlighting etc etc