My dad wants to know the specs I need

bluugirl

Hey, I am getting a laptop and I found one that meets my requirements perfectly online and for a good price but my dad insists I go to pc world.(He is worried about the procedures for returning if it is faulty,how long that would take etc)I checked the pcworld website and they are far more expensive for what I am looking for.
I will need it for playing a couple of games and college.
He asked to write down the specs I will need for this and that he will check to see if there are laptops there of similar spec for a similar price.
I want something along the lines of this http://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_Aspire_5755G_1201803.html
Basically I need a list of requirements so that he can ask in store for something along those lines if that makes sense?
Thanks in advance!

Torqay

You'll have a hard time finding a Core i5 & GT 630M for 570 Euro in a Brick & Mortar store in Ireland. 750-800 Euro is more like it, your dad will have to pay a steep premium for the privilege to bring it back to a shop personally, while online dealers have a courier return service.

kirving

Your best bet is to convince him to buy online from a major retailer such as Amazon, Pixmania or Komplett, even Dell. Despite what people say about warrantys/returns/fraud/etc, I have never had a problem buying anything online, or returning the odd item.

I know I'm going to get slated by people who have had problems with one of the about sites, but I've spent thousands over the years on stuff from all of them and never been dissapointed.

bluugirl

I know I tried to explain that online is the cheapest but he won't believe me, I don't know how to persuade him!

0ph0rce0

bluugirl wrote: »

I know I tried to explain that online is the cheapest but he won't believe me, I don't know how to persuade him!

show him

bluugirl

0ph0rce0 wrote: »

show him

I did haha but he still reckons pcworld can't cost that much more and he's worried about how I will return it an online retailer

Torqay

And the way things go in retail Ireland, who knows if the store is still there next year...

xxmeabhxx

Those specs are pretty good for that price! I've never had an acer, I'm a dell person but I'm sure they're grand. If you still need a list of specs them give him something like this:

2.5GHz Inter core i5 processer
1 GB dedicated graphics card
4GB RAM
500 GB Hard drive

There the things I'd consider most important anyways when buying a laptop, hope his helps

bluugirl

Thanks guys I'll try to show him the price differences again and if not i'll show him the specs posted by xxmeabhxx

megamonsterboy

Watch out for Komplett

I purchased a Faulty QNAP NAS purchased from Komplett

It was delivered 2 weeks ago while I was on holidays, when I opened it up on Sunday night it was "DOA", I spent 2 nights trying to sort it out

Now I'm being told it's not DOA, because it was not reported within 7 days, it has "developed" a fault and will take up to 9 weeks to sort it out

This is the quote for Komplett service rep "Please note that RMAs can normally take between 2 – 3 weeks to process depending on factors such as, the nature of the fault and the age of the product. Also please be aware that repairs can take up to 6 weeks."

Jarren

bluugirl wrote: »

Hey, I am getting a laptop and I found one that meets my requirements perfectly online and for a good price but my dad insists I go to pc world.(He is worried about the procedures for returning if it is faulty,how long that would take etc)I checked the pcworld website and they are far more expensive for what I am looking for.
I will need it for playing a couple of games and college.
He asked to write down the specs I will need for this and that he will check to see if there are laptops there of similar spec for a similar price.
I want something along the lines of this http://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_Aspire_5755G_1201803.html
Basically I need a list of requirements so that he can ask in store for something along those lines if that makes sense?
Thanks in advance!

Amazon are known for suberb customer service,if something goes wrong with an item they will replace it /process refund without a hassle.
However if you pick the option of dealing with amanufacturer directly it would
a different story.

I'd pick this Acer instead

http://www.amazon.de/Acer-V3-571G-53214G50Makk-Notebook-i5-3210M-schwarz/dp/B00857W5O4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345646233&sr=8-1

Mind you, you will have to reinstall the Windows+ change keys settings on your keyboard.

bluugirl

Jarren wrote: »

Amazon are known for suberb customer service,if something goes wrong with an item they will replace it /process refund without a hassle.
However if you pick the option of dealing with amanufacturer directly it would
a different story.

I'd pick this Acer instead

http://www.amazon.de/Acer-V3-571G-53214G50Makk-Notebook-i5-3210M-schwarz/dp/B00857W5O4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345646233&sr=8-1

Mind you, you will have to reinstall the Windows+ change keys settings on your keyboard.

Yeah that looks like a better deal but would that be difficult to do would I have to buy anything extra?

Marcin_diy

megamonsterboy wrote: »

Watch out for Komplett

I purchased a Faulty QNAP NAS purchased from Komplett

It was delivered 2 weeks ago while I was on holidays, when I opened it up on Sunday night it was "DOA", I spent 2 nights trying to sort it out

Now I'm being told it's not DOA, because it was not reported within 7 days, it has "developed" a fault and will take up to 9 weeks to sort it out

This is the quote for Komplett service rep "Please note that RMAs can normally take between 2 – 3 weeks to process depending on factors such as, the nature of the fault and the age of the product. Also please be aware that repairs can take up to 6 weeks."

watch out when you orderstuff and when you go for your holidays maybe?
I'm almost sure you didn't read t&c before order, so don't understand you. It is known for all I thought to open delivery in a front of courier and have a quick check...

Op you can order stuff from komplett and select collection. Then go with your dad to D15 collection point to show him the place:-) Ithink, but I'm not sure that they have also a pc there where you can make an order..

Jarren

bluugirl wrote: »

[/B]

Yeah that looks like a better deal but would that be difficult to do would I have to buy anything extra?

Well it comes with German Windows so that is why I suggested reinstalling.
German keyboard layout looks like this



The settings can be applied in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258824
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/86239-keyboard-layout-change.html
or
Some people prefer this method http://www.4keyboard.com/language-stickers-english-uk-c-82_40.html
or
they just swap keyboard keys physically.:D

bluugirl

Jarren wrote: »

Well it comes with German Windows so that is why I suggested reinstalling.
German keyboard layout looks like this



The settings can be applied in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258824
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/86239-keyboard-layout-change.html
or
Some people prefer this method http://www.4keyboard.com/language-stickers-english-uk-c-82_40.html
or
they just swap keyboard keys physically.:D

Could I just change the language to english? is there a way to have the keyboard in the qwerty layout though?

bluugirl

Due to money now being needed for something else I now have to go for a laptop that is 500 euro or cheaper and it has to be from pc world :rolleyes: I'm a bit confused over whether it would be better to have an i3 with only 1.4ghz or celeron b820 with 3.3ghz etc.So if someone could tell me the best one from the website for 500 or less that would be great.Then this thread can be finished with

Torqay

15.6" HP with a 2 gen. Core i5 & 6 GB RAM for 515 Euro at Argos, no dedicated graphics, so no gaming for you.

PC World have nothing that gets even close, pure rip-off shop.

jimmycrackcorm

Op, you should also remind your dad that pc world will not be any different in dealing with any issues. They cannot fix stuffing store so you would simply end up doing the same as with an online retailer.

I've had tow laptops with problems bought from online sources. In both cases they were picked up by courier free of charge which is better than having to drive to a retailer.

Overheal

Torqay wrote: »

You'll have a hard time finding a Core i5 & GT 630M for 570 Euro in a Brick & Mortar store in Ireland. 750-800 Euro is more like it, your dad will have to pay a steep premium for the privilege to bring it back to a shop personally, while online dealers have a courier return service.

Jesus your market is different.

In saying that though our business model works by selling the hardware on paper thin margins and offering services and other attachments like accessories to a sale. (Not "I'm stealing your money!" service, but I mean, we make profit on it, which incentives us to make sure, you know, those services don't suck, so people do unimaginable things like buy them. /rant at society)

I cant even grasp how such a concept works for B&M over there. Ignorance maybe? Are they including services or software in that price??

PseudoFamous

^ The main reason uncompetitive shops continue to exist is ignorance, really. People are still happy to buy from them without research, so they still make money. And your point about accessories? Yeah, they push them too. Again, due to lack of real competition and public ignorance. Buying a PS3 in Gamestop a few months back resulted in them trying to push a metrelength HDMI cable onto me, for the "low price of €25". And I can see a lot of people thinking that's a deal, especially if they see the same and higher prices in other physical shops.

Torqay

Overheal wrote: »

Are they including services or software in that price??

No, but council rates and insurances.

Overheal

PseudoFamous wrote: »

^ The main reason uncompetitive shops continue to exist is ignorance, really. People are still happy to buy from them without research, so they still make money. And your point about accessories? Yeah, they push them too. Again, due to lack of real competition and public ignorance. Buying a PS3 in Gamestop a few months back resulted in them trying to push a metrelength HDMI cable onto me, for the "low price of €25". And I can see a lot of people thinking that's a deal, especially if they see the same and higher prices in other physical shops.

our HDMI is still expensive compared to online as our most of our cables. Those we make profit on. Then again though, as I said to a customer last week who was pissing and moaning at me that we were selling a SATA II cable for $15 or $25 (which, I cant recall) and its online elsewhere for $2, I told him up front if you can stand to wait for it, buy it online, otherwise, buy ours. And I just walked away. At least for those type of purchases I can understand that a lot of it is opportunity cost, especially on components people don't have the patience to wait for. I'm tired of being whinged to: the people who are read up enough to know better, I know they are in there because they need to be there, because they need that ****ing thing today or it's the end of their little narcissistic world. They either are too far up their own asses to realize it and leave to try and find it cheaper at radioshack (not always likely) or they hang their head low and buy it, which usually gives me morbid satisfaction if they were just a c*nt to me about the prices I don't set.

bluugirl

In the end I managed to convince him to let me buy one off ebay after he saw how much cheaper it is to buy online! A new acer quad core with dedicated graphics and blu ray for 490!

Torqay

bluugirl wrote: »

In the end I managed to convince him to let me buy one off ebay after he saw how much cheaper it is to buy online! A new acer quad core with dedicated graphics and blu ray for 490!

Care to share this great offer?

bluugirl

Yep! well with postage its a little more but still a good deal! http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Acer-Aspire-5560G-63424G50Mnkk-AMD-A6-3420M-Quad-Core-Processor-Laptop-/140815735643?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item20c9459b5b

Overheal

no bluray there. no sir.

not a fan of acer, nor ebay, but fits well within the budget and performance wise is right around where you need to be but I'd look for a step up for a college machine: the A8 instead of the A6 and 6GB of RAM compared to 4.

Torqay

Overheal wrote: »

fits well within the budget and performance wise is right around where you need to be

Performance wise?

Let's see...

AMD A6-3420M

on average a Penryn based Pentium T4500 should be comparable.

FYI, even the B820, a Sandy Bridge mobile Celeron (a swearword in your department, no?), is faster than a T4500.

AMD Radeon HD 6520G

The performance of the Radeon 6520G should be in the entry level class of dedicated graphics cards.

Even Nvidia's worst, the GT 610M is faster.

Edit: just spotted the dedicated HD 7670M which is OK for a little gaming and justifies the price, but the "Incredible Processing Power" still makes me chuckle.

Overheal

You can't look at the APU the same way you can look at a CPU and a GPU. Both the CPU and the GPU do load-sharing.

The reviewer is baffling: The A6-3420M has a 32nm lithography with a 1000 million transistor count. The T4500 is 410 million transistors on 45nm lithography. In short: the A6 is doing twice as much in a single clock than a T4500 is. In a Turboboost condition that the reviewer is talking about, the A6 then offers more than 2x the performance of a T4500. And again, a lot of things that Fusion APUs do, they don't even have benchmarks for yet. This has been pointed out on more than a couple reviews.

Torqay

Overheal wrote: »

a lot of things that Fusion APUs do, they don't even have benchmarks for yet.

Fusion APUs do a lot of things we didn't even know they exist??? Now fancy that for future proof.

Overheal

Torqay wrote: »

Fusion APUs do a lot of things we didn't even know they exist??? Now fancy that for future proof.

it was in one of the articles I gave you:

When we attended the Trinity Tech Day in Austin last month, AMD provided a different perspective, though. Naturally, the company’s message is going to be spun in such a way to make its deficiencies seem less impactful. But this author still saw sense in what the AMD’s marketing representatives were saying: benchmarks don’t tell the whole story.
Now, it’s no surprise that the company selling the processors that struggle to keep up with the competition in many of the tests we run would say this sort of thing. And I certainly don’t buy in to the suggestion that objective data comparisons aren’t important; they should always be at the heart of every good review. But I did take a few thoughts away from the presentation: first, if a feature isn’t benchmarkable in the traditional sense, it may not get much attention, no matter how impactful it might be. Second, it’s probably a good idea to consider how people spend their time on computers when we draw conclusions for a review.

...

Perhaps you’ve seen some of our recent efforts to work with AMD to explore today’s state of general-purpose compute acceleration, such as What Does DirectCompute Really Mean For Gamers? and OpenCL In Action: Post-Processing Apps, Accelerated. We have more of those stories planned. But, to be perfectly honest, I never felt very compelled by the potential of accelerated apps until I saw the stuff currently being worked-on at AMD’s Trinity briefing.
A number of applications able to run on any OpenCL-enabled product, along with some others optimized for AMD-specific features, are either already available or nearly ready.


In many cases, the improvements being folded in are qualitative, not quantitative. As a result, we can’t really benchmark them.

...

What about our pledge to more intently consider features that can’t be benchmarked? Truly, we’re impressed with AMD’s efforts to court software developers and get GPU acceleration implemented as a feature in several different relevant segments and titles—much more so than when we were having this same discussion last year. The only problem is that none of the enhanced applications are universally appealing. For example, AMD Steady Video does a great job of stabilizing shaky video streams. But what if you simply don’t have enough shaky video to pay the feature much mind? Even still, we certainly encourage AMD to continue pushing the adoption of GPU-accelerated software that appeals to broad audiences. Getting GIMP, HandBrake, vReveal, WinZip, and other titles optimized is a great way to demonstrate the benefits of compute-oriented optimizations. Two things, though: first, we’d like to see the impact of GPU acceleration more definitively outpace the performance of a competing processor lacking the requisite support, and second, don’t lock other vendors out of what is supposed to be an open ecosystem.
Finally, what of our promise to consider mainstream end-user tasks when making recommendations about mainstream hardware? Frankly, even power users spend much of their time checking email, browsing the Web, writing in Word, and of course gaming. To be honest, it’s be hard to distinguish between two blindly-configured platforms—one Intel, one AMD—in most tasks. The exception is gaming, where AMD’s Trinity design really shines.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-4600m-trinity-piledriver,3202.html

Nevertheless, what I am saying about transistors, lithography and clock speed is accurate. Otherwise, you should have been seeing a Pentium 4 Overclocked at the top of benchmarks for the last 10 years. I'll tell you like I tell any customer, Gigahertz are bull****. You need to look a little deeper than that.

Torqay

Apples and Oranges?

The A6-3420M isn't Trinity, it's the old Llano platform.

Overheal

Torqay wrote: »

Apples and Oranges?

The A6-3420M isn't Trinity, it's the old Llano platform.

True, but we're talking about things that both platforms shared like App Acceleration via OpenCL, Quickstream and DirectCompute. Triton brought to the table more raw performance gains and Eyefinity support and a few other things that get mentioned in the first few pages in that article; one of the bigger things was beefing the quad core CPUs on the die by replacing the existing setup with a 2x2 bulldozer config.

Torqay

I never said Triton is a bad platform. Yet these chips just haven't arrived here and when they do, a lot, if not all, depends on the pricing. If AMD wants to position the A-8 against the Core i5 and the A-10 against the Core i7 then good luck with that. They'll have to be cheaper than their "counterparts" (if you can call 'em that with a straight face). And I mean significantly cheaper. If someone wants to spend 700+ for a laptop, they'd be hard pressed to buy an AMD A-10 if they can get a Core i7 for, say, 50 yoyos more.

As for the processor in question, it can't hold a candle to a Core i3. Having said this, the cheapest Core i3 with a GT 630M I have found costs around 50 Euro more, so - within the OP's budget - that Acer is probably as good as it gets.