Dell Studio 17 or HP DV5/DDV7

Poncherello

Done a little research on here and went to PC World yesterday to look at a few models.
First off, I ham looking for a general purpose home laptop, but will travel with it from time to time(holidays) so some of the 17" models are a little heavy looking. Main uses will be :

word processing/excel.Pwpt
Downloading music and movies
Storing and copying photos & home movies to disc
Watching photo slideshows on TV
Watching downloaded movies on TV(need HDMI slot)
Video calls, Skype etc
Would like to keep the budget below/around 1000euro.
Would like to buy from somewhere where I can be assured of decent support

Some people on here have recently been highlighting the deals you can get on the Dell 1545 but from my info(PC World guy) this machine does not fulfill my needs(i.e no webcam/HDMI)

So I was looking at ;

HP DV5-1110EM 744 eur
Dell Studio 17 744 eur
HP DV7-1103EA 844 eur

and

SONY VGN-CS11ZR 1294 eur
SONY VGN-CS11S/Q 1194 eur

Its clear that the Sonys charge a premium for the brand. But there seems to be a discrepancy between model numbers on the www.sony.ie website and PC World. I am wondering if perhaps PCWorld is trying to sell older models. I could be wrong my head started spinning when trying to compare all the CS11s and VGNs !
But if this was the case I am wondering would it be worth going online/upnorth if I could get one of these Sonys for same price as HP or Dell above. Mind you if theyare exactly the same machine for my purposes I couldnt be bothered.

So if anyone has any experience of above machines please let me know what you think i should go for.

Muchos gracias !

Poncherello

Looking on laptopsdirect their prices seem excellent, the Sony models listed above are over 300 euro cheaper
is there a catch ?

Poncherello

So think I am gonna go for Sony CS11S/Q for 853 from www.laptopsdirect.ie
Seems to have a great spec for that price

There is a new model coming out in Febuary which seems to have a quicker processor and Blue-ray for 900 but not sure I can wait till Feb 23rd
http://www.laptopsdirect.ie/Sony_VAIO_FW31J_Laptop_VGNFW31J/version.asp


Any opinions ????

J_Dublin15

Haven't used a DV5 myself but they seem pretty good, I have the DV6799ea, which I couldn't be more happy with, the DV5 series replaced the DV6000 series.

I've used a dv7-1020ea and a Studio 1737. Not sure which one I prefer but they're both quite nice.

phill106

J_Dublin15 wrote: »

Haven't used a DV5 myself but they seem pretty good, I have the DV6799ea, which I couldn't be more happy with, the DV5 series replaced the DV6000 series.

can i ask how long ago did ya buy that? was looking at one today, was marked down to 699. the dv6799ea?

J_Dublin15

Got mine in July last year, it was 899 when I bought it. They replaced it with the 6899ea which is the same spec but with 3GB ram instead of 2GB (It takes up to 4GB), which in turn was replaced with the DV5 line. I thought I may upgrade the ram when I got it but haven't needed to, to date, Vista runs flawlessly, nice and speedy and it's absolutely beautiful! The laser mouse it cames with is great as well. The webcam is much better than you'd think also!

Duffman

The Dell Studio XPS 16 looks very nice too, the RGBLED screen would be far superior to that on either of their machines. Bit more expensive though.

Poncherello

Have almost decided on the Sony VGN FW21M
950 euro laptopsdirect which is cheaper than they are selling it in Newry at the moment

Fatloss08

why not get the dell xps 1330 higest spec ???

4gb ram

500 hd

T8300 speed processor

etc

its €1169 but if u have a friend who has a business then claim the vat back only around €900

its what im thinking of doing , my boss will pay for it and i pay whatever it is less vat

h8red

I will never buy a Dell again. I have a Studio 17. I had a Latitude D600 before that altho I didn't pay anything for it. I find the pointers used in Dell laptops are dire. I don't think it's just me because I work with a lot of different laptop brands. Also the Studios have some problems with the touch controls. Mine sporadically starts to repeatedly try and eject the non-existent cd in the drive. And I've heard of others having trouble with volume controls etc.

And **** Dell.

J_Dublin15

I don't think all dells are bad, but the low end ones are not great, I had an Inspiron 6400 Core 2 Duo T5850 (2.16ghz) with 1GB ram in my last job and it was not the speedtest machine by a long shot, I reinstalled XP from a retail disk from scratch in case it was the crap that came on the machine, and it was still prone to being unreliable and stopping dead at random times, may have been cooling though.

I complained to our IT manager who ordered them, who said they'd had a few people complaining with the model we had and it's sub-standard performance, in the end we gave them to the sales guys and us guys in the tech departments took the HP T5670's (1.8ghz) that were originally meant for sales, and they were faster and much more reliable. Sounds stupid I know, but true!