What will 1200 euro get me

Muppet Man

Buying a laptop and have a budget of 1200 euro.

It will be used at home mostly.

Must have a Blu Ray player.
Must have HDMI out.
Must be future proofed (I dont want it to be out of date in a years time).
Must have reasonable battery life.

Unlikely to be playing heavy 3d games
Unlikely to be doing serious auto cad work...

This is way beyond my current processing needs, but as I say, it must be future proofed:

http://www.sony.ie/product/vn-f-series/vpcf11s1e-b

(Quad Core).

Anything else spring to mind?

Muppet Man.

x in the city

Muppet Man wrote: »

Buying a laptop and have a budget of 1200 euro.

It will be used at home mostly.

Must have a Blu Ray player.
Must have HDMI out.
Must be future proofed (I dont want it to be out of date in a years time).
Must have reasonable battery life.

Unlikely to be playing heavy 3d games
Unlikely to be doing serious auto cad work...

This is way beyond my current processing needs, but as I say, it must be future proofed:

http://www.sony.ie/product/vn-f-series/vpcf11s1e-b

(Quad Core).

Anything else spring to mind?

Muppet Man.

firstly, its impossible to get a futured proofed laptop, if you wait, for one you will be waiting forever..........

technology is happening all the time... esata... usb 3.0......

esata2....?!

if you want the most powerful future proofed laptop it would cost well over 2,000e.

for a grand or so you can for sure get a decent icore spec a blu ray and a 500gig hdd.

Alanstrainor

I'm running a 4 year old Dell 6400. That still does exactly what i needed it to do 4 years ago.
Just because a machine gets older doesn't mean it becomes less able to do what you want it to do. So as for future proofing i wouldn't worry too much, as anything you buy is out of date the second you get it.

Muppet Man

Thanks... 2k is definitely beyond my budget ::D Thanks to both of for the advice though!

Cheers
Muppet Man

Menengroth™

Muppet Man wrote: »

Buying a laptop and have a budget of 1200 euro.

It will be used at home mostly.

Must have a Blu Ray player.
Must have HDMI out.
Must be future proofed (I dont want it to be out of date in a years time).
Must have reasonable battery life.

Unlikely to be playing heavy 3d games
Unlikely to be doing serious auto cad work...

This is way beyond my current processing needs, but as I say, it must be future proofed:

http://www.sony.ie/product/vn-f-series/vpcf11s1e-b

(Quad Core).

Anything else spring to mind?

Muppet Man.

http://ireland.dell.com/ie/en/home/Laptops/alienware-m15x/pd.aspx?refid=alienware-m15x&s=dhs&cs=iedhs1

Must have a Blu Ray player. - Check
Must have HDMI out. - Check
Must be future proofed. - As much as is possible..
Must have reasonable battery life. - 1.5-2hours

Windows 7
Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 330M(2.13GHz,3MB cache)
512MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GT240M graphics card
2048MB 1067MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x1024]
160GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
15.6-inch Wide HD+ (1600 x 900) WLED display
Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) Slot Load Drive (An extra €99.59)

Total (inc blu-ray): €1,298.58

A whole boat load of things you can upgrade on that, that's the basic model.


I've become such an alienware fanboy...

Overheal

Rule of thumb, you can get a €1500 laptop to run decently for 3-5 years before you plan to demote it.

Mine was $1500; spent $200 on accidental repair; and another $100 on a ram upgrade. It'll last me into the 4th or 5th year before being retired as a TV set-top box.

If you had spent the same amount on a desktop, it would have performed and lasted anywhere from 5-8 years without a major upgrade.

Muppet Man

Thanks Overheal, that's pretty much what I was expecting

I think you are really limiting yourself with requirements of hdmi and blu-ray player.
If you want something future proofed and gauranteed to be working in 3/4 years time i wouldnt be looking at sony tbh. I have heard too many stories of dead motherboards, dead screens, batterys not taking charge and sony taking 6 weeks for repairs and thats if it was still in warranty!
If you want reliabilty long term consider lenovo and dell latitude although you may not get hdmi out with either.

Amalgam

Glad to see someone quoted Dell first.. Sony are nothing to write home about, nice screens, but otherwise, overpriced.

Muppet Man

Interesting, I hadnt considered Lenovo.

I've been looking at Dell, but they just dont float my boat for some reason. That said, I've been using only Dell laptops since 2000 in work and they havent failed me yet. Maybe I'm just a bit all dell-ed out.

Cheers
Muppet Man

monkeypants

I've an Alienware and it's a fantastic machine. Much better quality than you'd expect from Dell, obviously the AW influence. A friend has recently bought a Vostro 3700 and from what he's saying, maybe that AW influence is rubbing off on Dell's design and build quality.

Anyhow, don't write off an AW. If you don't need to play games, you'll save a fortune.

fifth

I bought a dell 2 years ago - for €1200.. xps m1530, maxed out, does everything I want it to do STILL...just upgraded to windows 7 and it's as fresh as ever. I'll keep it another year at least.

Have spent 200 euro on a warranty extension. so total cost €1400. I could easily get a laptop for €1200 now that I'm pretty sure would last 2-3 years from now. If not more.

pwd

funkyflea wrote: »

I bought a dell 2 years ago - for €1200.. xps m1530, maxed out, does everything I want it to do STILL...just upgraded to windows 7 and it's as fresh as ever. I'll keep it another year at least.

Have spent 200 euro on a warranty extension. so total cost €1400. I could easily get a laptop for €1200 now that I'm pretty sure would last 2-3 years from now. If not more.

The xps m1530 is atypical. You could have bought the exact same machine a year ago for *more* than you got yours for two years ago. It's very fast, but it also breaks a lot*. I think the need to make gpus that don't burn laptops out stalled speed increases for a while.

*mine: two replacement motherboards; two replacement chargers; replacement touchpad...also gives mild but constant electric shocks in some circumstances.