Laptop comparison

Mdawg

Hi im in process of buying a laptop for someone who has just started college.
they will need it for basic college work, so the like of ms office and and such. also be using it for internet, streaming tv feeds, and social networking. he wants a laptop that will be useful for sometime to come and not end up being obsolete in a years time.

i have been to one place and they gave me their options of:
1) HP 620 Notebook PC with intel pentium T4500 2.3Ghz, 4GB ram, 500GB Hard Drive 15.6" screen. Price €610
or
2) Acer Aspire TimelineX with Core i3 2.13Ghz processor, 3GN ram, 250Hard drive, 14" screen. Price €650

Are these good laptops or should i be extending my search to look at other models?
is the Pentium processor any good, read somewhere that i should be looking to get an iCore processor.
Should i be looking at macbooks?

any advice would be greatly appreciated.

cherryghost

If it's only for basic things like you said, the first one is best. Decent speed, good memory and a nice large hard drive. And it's cheaper! The processor on the 2nd one is the only thing going for that 2nd laptop

Mdawg

would i be better getting a laptop with i3 processor and similar spec to the first one or would the processor in the first one be good enough?

dazzday

The form factor of the two laptops is the biggest difference here. The Timeline X 3820/4820? is nearly half the weight of the HP.

Two excellent laptops tbf. But if its just for college etc why not something like below at €400. At this price it need not be a long term investment but perfectly suiatble for college. If after those 2-3years you find you need something more powerful for gaming/video editing/multimedia etc you will have a better idea at what you need.

And the way laptop tech is going with SandyBridge CPUs, Usb 3.0 etc on the way, the vast majority of laptops will seem obselte in a years time!

TBH for your needs the ASUS UL30 deal available at carphone warehouse is hard to look past.
http://www.campus.ie/campus-store/cpw.html

Although last years spec, at €399 its a steal. Excellent build quality, a realistic 7hour battery under use, light, cool and very quiet. Also has HDMI out for multimedia needs.
TBF the cpu is more than adequete for most tasks,especially multitasking and even 1080p playback or light encoding.
+ 2year warranty

hare05

Honestly I'd say go for the Timeline. Those things have amazing battery life, the i3 is decent speed for a processor and the general overall spec is perfect for the job. Was going to pick one up myself but I wanted better graphics for games. 14" laptops are great for portability though, it's amazing the difference an inch makes when lugging it around, yet the screen still feels 'normal' sized when in use.

Also, yes, Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer will make most chip now obsolete, but I think it's better to be one step behind than 3 steps behind in the case of the T4500.

A Macbook is, in effect, the perfect college laptop. The problem is you pay through the nose for it. Maybe if it dropped under 900 you could consider it good value but fat chance of that ever happening