Buying Advice Please

Zillah

I'm planning on spending about 800-900 on a laptop that I need for general day to day stuff but I'd also like semi-decent gaming if possible. I was thinking a Dell Inspiron 1521 with 2 gig of ram, but theres a lot of stuff I don't understand.

For example, where does the Ati Radeon Xpress 1270 rank? Will that run games well or is it some crappy integrated placeholder?

Is Vista worth it or should I stick with nice familiar XP?

Why is the AMD® Turion™ 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL56 over 200 euro cheaper than the TL84?

Also, it absolutely must:
- Have a TV out port.
- Work with a fancy sound system that I'm stealing from my family

Oh, and is there any way to take the printer ("free" apparently) and Microsoft Works 8 out of the package?

This is the build I'm looking at (ok so its actually about 1000e). (EDIT: Aw crap, that link doesn't work properly. Well, basically I added a gig of Ram and a wireless mouse.)

Any help would be appreciated, I'm quite lost with these weird finicky things.

Also, if anyone can reccomend a better online supplier than Dell that'd be cool.

Zillah

Or, to hell with Dell, this looks nice: http://www.laptopsdirect.ie/Fujitsu_Siemens_Amilo_Pa_Laptop_CCN:GBR-110100-001/version-1.asp

I do hate Dell so I'd rather buy elsewhere.

SpitfireIV

Zillah,

I ordered a laptop yesterday evening off www.digiuk.com, total (including shipping) came to €914. Its a HP Pavillion DV6331eu, main specs are:

- AMD dual core Turion 64 X2 mobile technology
- 160 GB hard drive
- 15.4" Brightview TFT screen
- 2048MB RAM
- DVD burner with Lightscribe technology
- Remote control
- NVIDIA GeForce Go 7200 TurboCache supporting 256MB

The Fujitsu Siemens you are looking at only has 'integrated graphics', doenst say what brand, so they might not be that good. I know the NVIDIA GeForce 7200 isnt spectacular either, but it has the 2GB's of ram to borrow from.

I dont know, just a suggestion...

Soundman

Not too sure about your spec but if you are buying from Dell then don't buy the mouse or extra RAM from them as it will be a LOT cheaper buying elsewhere. A gig of RAM from crucial.com cost me €50 including postage whereas it probably would have cost over €100 for teh same thing.

Zillah

CroppyBoy1798 wrote:

Zillah,

I ordered a laptop yesterday evening off www.digiuk.com, total (including shipping) came to €914. Its a HP Pavillion DV6331eu, main specs are

Oooh, looks fantastic!

http://www.digiuk.com/productdetail.asp?id=11211

Black Swan

You mentioned gaming on a laptop. You might want to check out the games you want to play in terms of specs on the gaming box? Some gaming specs state that laptop GPUs are not supported (but may work). There may also be some compatibility issues with XP-2 games running on Vista? I got a new laptop with Vista Ultimate and some of my former XP-2 apps are not compatible with Vista.

SpitfireIV

Zillah wrote:

Oooh, looks fantastic!

http://www.digiuk.com/productdetail.asp?id=11211

As I said Zillah, I put my order in yesterday afternoon, so I'm still waiting, I have no idea really what there service is like, so I'm living in hope. If you do order from there, on your head be it

I was going to order the same one from dabs.ie, but they had a bit of a price hike, ie:

HP from dabs = €978 (inc. shipping)
HP from Digiuk = €917 (inc. shipping)

Anyway, heres more detailed info on the DV6331EU from dabs:
http://www.dabs.ie/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4HHW

Zillah

Did you notice where it said "Digi UK deliver to the UK only"...?