Help me choose a laptop..

jack of all

Hi, my wife needs a laptop for her college work; this will be used by us at home mostly, with a wireless broadband connection. I use a PC at work but I don't know enough about laptops to make an informed choice.

This much I know:

Willing to spend a reasonable amount of money (€800- 1000) for a machine that will give good performance. I'm told to look at getting at least 60 G hard drive with 3 G RAM, a dedicated graphics card, twin or quad core processor (whatever this means!) and avoid Windows Vista like the plague!

In terms of requirements, software- mostly Word, Excell, Powerpoint etc and perhaps occasional use by me for CAD drafting (Autocad/ Microstation Powerdraft). There are some other special educational programs my wife uses but these are not heavy on resources.

Please give me your advice and tell me what I should be looking for, down to drives, ports etc. I'm a greenhorn when it comes to laptops and I want to get herself a machine that'll make her life a bit easier!

Thanks for reading.

Jack of All

Alanstrainor

jack of all wrote: »

I'm told to look at getting at least 60 G hard drive with 3 G RAM, a dedicated graphics card, twin or quad core processor (whatever this means!) and avoid Windows Vista like the plague!

Any laptop these days will have at least an 80gb drive. And 3Gb of RAM is pretty standard, but dont be put off by a machine with 2Gb of RAM, because seeing the intended usage, you would be fine with 2. Laptops generally only come with dual cores these days, although very high spec laptops are starting to filter through with quads.
As for dedicated graphics, perhaps that would be a requirement for CAD, but if you're buying wth your wifes usage in mind, it's not necessary.
And as for who ever told you to avoid vista like the plague, they're living about 2 years in the past. Vista is a great OS, it had issues on it's release, that have since been sorted. And complaints initially were due to how resource intensive it was on older machines. Any dual core will handle it fine these days.
Give us a ball park figure to work with, as me and you may have different ideas of what reasonable is!

jack of all

Thanks Alanstrainor, some helpful info there. Budget-wise I had €800 in mind, might possibly stretch to €1000 if I thought I could "future proof" the machine; i.e. I want to get 4-5 years out of the machine (is this realistic?).

jack of all

What do you think of my budget? Will this get me something good?

Blazer

Around €800-€1000 would get you a fine laptop.
Should get about 3-4 years out of it anyway as Windows 7 (Microsoft's next OS) has the same hardware requirements as for Vista.
For instance the Dell Studio 17 laptop below are a very good spec.
Normally I wouldn't advise getting the 3 year warranty but since MS's new OS is out next Jan or so and existing hardware works perfectly on it I'd advise getting the 3 year warranty. Would come to around €998 for the laptop + 3 years repair + replacement.

Components
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 3 MB L2 cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 - English
Microsoft® Works 9.0 / English - (Does not include Microsoft® Word)
1 Year Limited Warranty - Collect & Return
2.0 Mega pixel Integrated Web Camera - CCFL
Jet Black Colour with Matte Finish
17.0" Widescreen WXGA+ CCFL (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
4096MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x2048]
320GB (5.400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
256MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3650
Fixed Internal DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive including Software
Primary 6-cell 56 WHr Lithium Ion battery
Internal UK English Qwerty Keyboard
No security option selected
Accessories
No Carrying Case
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
Intel WiFi Link 5100 (802.11 a/b/g/n 1X2) 1/2 MiniCard
Services & Software
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English
No Accidental Damage Support
DataSafe Online Backup 2GB
Also Includes
1 Meter Power Cord (3 Wire) - UK
English - Documentation Studio 1737
N0173504
1Yr Limited Warranty - Collect & Return
90W AC Adaptor
Studio 1737 Order - Ireland
Studio 1737 Resource DVD (Diagnostic & Drivers)
Wireless Label (Intel Wireless Cards)- Core 2 Duo

jack of all

Folks,
Only getting around to seriously looking at a machine now, so far I've got this quote, what do you think?


Windows XP Pro

Pentium Dual Core processor.

2GB of Dual Channel Ram

160Gb SATA Hi Speed Hard Disk.

MS Office Teacher Student 2007 – Outlook, Word, Excel & Powerpoint.





Vostro 1510 : Intel Core 2 Duo T5870 (2.0GHz,800Mhz,2MB)

Display : 15.4" Widescreen WXGA

LCD Back Cover : Black with no Camera

Resource DVD : Vostro 1510 Diagnostics & Drivers

Memory : 2048MB (2x1024) 667MHz DDR2 Dual Channel

Hard Drive : 160GB Serial ATA (5400RPM) Single Hard Drive

Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software

Power DVD 8.1 - Vista & XP

Power Supply : Worldwide 65W AC Adapter (3 wire)

Power Cord : UK 1 meter (3 wire)

Battery : Primary 6-cell 56W/HR LI-ION

Graphics : Intel Integrated GMA X3100

Wireless : EMEA Dell Wireless 1395 (802.11 b/g) MiniCard

Keyboard : Internal English Qwerty Keyboard

Operating System : English Windows Vista Business SP1 (32Bit) to XP

Pro with Vista & XP Media

Software : English Microsoft Office 2007 Home + Student with Recovery

AntiVirus : English Norton Internet Security 2009 (30 Day Trial) Software no Recovery

1Yr Basic Warranty - Next Business Day



Total price, incl. VAT is €850

How does this look, is it value for money. All comments appreciated.

jack of all

Any thoughts on the spec posted above, please??

sanj2408

Looks ok for what you want. When you are buying though, go into the shops and look around. I saved €60 on my laptop by going to the shop next door!
I wouldn't be afraid of Vista, it takes a little bit of getting used to but its a really good system.

Dartz

Wow....

That's 850 Euro? Don't buy it. It's out of date. Wireless card doesnt have draft-n. It's based on the older Santa Rosa platform. It has a basic processor. It has the minimal RAM to run Vista well. It has no other odd's and sods. It's a money-pit

Go with a Studio 15, or 17. Seriously. You can get 'em with an discreet ATi GPU, and some nice accessories, and it'll still work out cheaper than that Jallopy. It'll go better, and look better. I mean seriously, have a look at this

Nearly 18 months old, but still a better spec than that Vostro, for the same price. Better processor, more RAM. It's pretty much the same as what I'm posting from now. My laptop, which i bought in May... has a slightly better processor thin this mind, and a draft-N wireless card. And the GPU will do well with Autocad. Even so, the platform it's built on is about a year and a bit old at this stage.

Or This Which is even better again, for not much cash more.

See.... that Vostro would be a waste of money.

yop

That price does seem very high for sure ya. 850 should get you a high spec laptop.

Standard Vista will only use 3GB of RAM from what I understand anyway so dont get too hung up on that.
Realistically how much CAD work would you do on it?

jack of all

Thanks for all replies, probably not going to be doing a lot of CAD work on this laptop, so I'm going to consider the information above and hopefully make a decision over the weekend. Thanks all.