Do Curries/PCWorld have wiggle room?

Comhrá

I'm planning a new highish-end laptop very soon.

Probably going to buy from Curries or PCWorld. Do they haggle a bit at all, or is it the price on the box, end of story?

mordeith

tippman1 wrote: »

I'm planning a new highish-end laptop very soon.

Probably going to buy from Curries or PCWorld. Do they haggle a bit at all, or is it the price on the box, end of story?

I think Harvey Norman are more open to that. Ona different note I doubt you'll get a good deal on higher end laptops in those stores

Kavrocks

mordeith wrote: »

Ona different note I doubt you'll get a good deal on higher end laptops in those stores

He's encouraging them to keep jobs here though.

Comhrá

I think Harvey Norman are more open to that. On a different note I doubt you'll get a good deal on higher end laptops in those stores

Well, it's not totally high-end but this is what I've narrowed it down to:

http://www.pcworld.ie/Product/toshiba-satellite-s50b15p-156-laptop-silver/325880/396.0.0#tech

The 1920 x 1080 Trubrite display interests me and the -Intel® Core™ i7-5500U Processor
-Dual-core
-2.4 GHz / 3 GHz with Turbo Boost
-4 MB cache
Memory (RAM)
8 GB DDR3 (16 GB maximum installable RAM)
Graphics card
AMD Radeon R7 M260 (2 GB)

seems more than adequate for my needs - general laptop use plus a bit of photo editing with Photoshop Elements. €929.99

kah22

There is nothing beats a try. If you are going to haggle go at the end of the month the reasoning been that salesmen have their quotos to fill and if they have wriggle room that's when they will use it.

If your getting nowhere ask if the salesperson will speak to his supervisor and see if he'll drop a little, as you can imagine they have that little bit more room to do a deal.

But be prepared to walk away, let them see you are not bluffing. A different situation I know but last time my mobile contract was up I told them what I wanted, they said they couldn't do it we talked about what they could do and then I said, 'no, just give me my details and I'll go with whoever,' two days later 'retention' rang me back and I got all I wanted. The point been it pays to ask

Kevin

mordeith

tippman1 wrote: »

Well, it's not totally high-end but this is what I've narrowed it down to:

http://www.pcworld.ie/Product/toshiba-satellite-s50b15p-156-laptop-silver/325880/396.0.0#tech

The 1920 x 1080 Trubrite display interests me and the -Intel® Core™ i7-5500U Processor
-Dual-core
-2.4 GHz / 3 GHz with Turbo Boost
-4 MB cache
Memory (RAM)
8 GB DDR3 (16 GB maximum installable RAM)
Graphics card
AMD Radeon R7 M260 (2 GB)

seems more than adequate for my needs - general laptop use plus a bit of photo editing with Photoshop Elements. €929.99

Seems overkill if your requirements are nothing more than you mention in your post.

Comhrá

mordeith wrote: »

Seems overkill if your requirements are nothing more than you mention in your post.

It's the screen I like, I'm willing to go a bit over the top for the Toshiba screen.
From what I've seen apart Apple, the Toshiba Trubrite full HD display seems nicest of the mainstream makers.

I don''t want editing photos on 1366 x 768.

Also, a dedicated graphics card and an i7 processor is nice to have if the need arises later.

TerrorFirmer

That's a crap dedicated graphics card though, not much better than the integrated on the i7.

What about something like this?

Comhrá

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That's a crap dedicated graphics card though, not much better than the integrated on the i7.

What about something like this?

The Lenovo screen gets very poor ratings over several reviews.

Eg.

http://www.digitalversus.com/laptop/lenovo-z50-p23563/test.html

The screen was the major drawback of the Z510. We therefore had high hopes for the Z50. Much to our dismay, the manufacturer has yet again included a second-rate panel—what's more, Lenovo has actually managed to make it worse!

A semi-matte Full HD TN model (1920 x 1080 pixels), it provides a maximum brightness of 187 cd/m² for a contrast ratio of 300:1. This means that, despite its matte finish, the screen's not that easy to use in a brightly-lit environment.


Asus G751tempcou(1)
Asus G751gamma
Asus G751DeltaE(2)


The colour fidelity is pretty catastrophic. We measured the Delta E—the average difference between natural colours and those displayed on-screen—at 12.7; the best screens get below 3. The colour temperature was just as poor; we measured it at 11044 K, far from the ideal 6500 K. As shown by the gamma of 1.7, the screen deals very poorly with the grey scale, blowing out any lighter tones.

TerrorFirmer

That's fair enough, but as stated, be warned that the dedicated Radeon M260 in the Toshiba is rather disingenous, it's performance is very sub-par and might as well be integrated Intel graphics considering it's poor capabilities. It can only play new games on the lowest settings and resolution - and even then just barely above 25 frames per second. Don't buy based on the fact that it includes 'dedicated' graphics.

Comhrá

That's fair enough, but as stated, be warned that the dedicated Radeon M260 in the Toshiba is rather disingenous, it's performance is very sub-par and might as well be integrated Intel graphics considering it's poor capabilities. It can only play new games on the lowest settings and resolution - and even then just barely above 25 frames per second. Don't buy based on the fact that it includes 'dedicated' graphics.

Is this Dell Inspiron a better overall option? It has the NVIDIA® GeForce® 920 4GB DDR3 card

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-15-5558-laptop/pd?oc=cn55811&model_id=inspiron-15-5558-laptop

TerrorFirmer

Marginally better but not much. You should be aiming at GT840M or R7 270M to make seeking dedicated graphics worthwhile, otherwise you might as well seek out a better deal with stronger i5/i7 and their integrated Intel 4 or 5x series integrated graphics.

'Dedicated' graphics is one of the biggest scams going, catches so many people out thinking they're' buying superior graphics performance, when in reality they'd be as better off with the integrated graphics despite paying a premium.

GT840M or R7 270M is the milestone for it to be worthwhile seeking dedicated graphics. Anything lower is more or less a waste of time vs integrated i5/i7.

Comhrá

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

'Dedicated' graphics is one of the biggest scams going, catches so many people out thinking they're' buying superior graphics performance, when in reality they'd be as better off with the integrated graphics despite paying a premium.

GT840M or R7 270M is the milestone for it to be worthwhile seeking dedicated graphics. Anything lower is more or less a waste of time vs integrated i5/i7.

Is it possible to upgrade afterwards to a better card, or are those oem cards soldered to the motherboard?

At any rate, I'm not going to be gaming, just Photoshop Elements for a little photo editing, so maybe the original fitted basic card might do me adequately?

Tombi!

You might want to try komplett.ie they sell MSI laptops that are generally good value. I got one for 800 Euro several years ago with a 555m and 3rd gen i5. It handled mostly anything I threw at it.

Downside with dedicated graphics is battery life, though.

If you're going to be moving around a lot where you can't get access to a charger I'd rethink laptops with dedicated GPUs, unless you plan on buying a second battery.

For photo editing though, I'd do some research into things it needs. I don't think you really need a dedicated GPU. Unless you're doing HD and even then I'm not sure if it's a necessity.

How often will you be away from a socket? That would be the first consideration if I'm buying al lalptop

Comhrá

How often will you be away from a socket? That would be the first consideration if I'm buying al lalptop

Rarely, home use only, so battery life not an issue.

1080 screen is top priority (lot of time spent surfing) so I'm researching the need (if any) for a better graphics card and maybe a SSHD if I can find a laptop with the right combination of these features.
Huge capacity not too important either so a 250 gb SSHD would be adequate too. I'm still keen on the Toshiba as it seems to have the best screen of the usual bunch I've managed to check out so far.

Don't they say the chase is the most fun when researching this stuff anyway?

TerrorFirmer

Any laptop with Nvidia graphics will have Optimus anyway, which uses the Intel GPU unless the Nvidia card is required, so no need to worry about battery. Not sure if AMD have an equivalent feature.

Tombi!

Since battery isn't important, I'd advise a "gaming" based laptop. I'd strongly urge you to go with an MSI one. They're known for high quality, fairly good value and is one of the two major companies that give out gaming laptops; the other being Clevo.

Being able to spend 920 euro gives you a bit of leeway. But how high are we talking about when it comes to photo editing. Are we talking super HD resolution with professional editing that you want to turn into a career or is it a hobby or for a college course, etc?

Comhrá

Brutal Deluxe wrote: »

Since battery isn't important, I'd advise a "gaming" based laptop. I'd strongly urge you to go with an MSI one. They're known for high quality, fairly good value and is one of the two major companies that give out gaming laptops; the other being Clevo.

Being able to spend 920 euro gives you a bit of leeway. But how high are we talking about when it comes to photo editing. Are we talking super HD resolution with professional editing that you want to turn into a career or is it a hobby or for a college course, etc?

No, just home editing. Full HD is fine....I don't want to go for ultra high HD because it might render screen icons too small on screen - or so I've read. Maybe a few bigger 12x10 size jpg. files for possible printing but nothing super high or professional, hence my thoughts on sticking with the stock graphics card from Toshiba, Dell etc. It's probably adequate for me in all honesty.

Tombi!

I can't actually guarantee since I don't know too much about photo editing. But what I really would suggest is asking on any forums that are for photo editing.
In fact, do you have any idea on what software you'll use? If so you could just see if that software has a forum dedicated to it and find out that way if people have any experience using it with the specs on the laptop you'll be getting.

TerrorFirmer

Also one thing to look out for is the 'U' after the i7 or i5 prefix. U stands for Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) and these cpu's are all dual core, not quad core, and are lower clocked than normal mobile processors.

So if you compare a ULV i7 to a regular mobile i5 for example, there isn't actually really any difference other than battery life will be improved. So don't be dead set on it having to be an i7 unless it's a true mobile quad.

Another one to watch out for! Nothing is what it seems

mordeith

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Also one thing to look out for is the 'U' after the i7 or i5 prefix. U stands for Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) and these cpu's are all dual core, not quad core, and are lower clocked than normal mobile processors.

So if you compare a ULV i7 to a regular mobile i5 for example, there isn't actually really any difference other than battery life will be improved. So don't be dead set on it having to be an i7 unless it's a true mobile quad.

Another one to watch out for! Nothing is what it seems

Good tip. I was always suspicious of that U

Comhrá

Originally Posted by TerrorFirmer View Post
Also one thing to look out for is the 'U' after the i7 or i5 prefix. U stands for Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) and these cpu's are all dual core, not quad core, and are lower clocked than normal mobile processors.

So if you compare a ULV i7 to a regular mobile i5 for example, there isn't actually really any difference other than battery life will be improved. So don't be dead set on it having to be an i7 unless it's a true mobile quad.

Another one to watch out for! Nothing is what it seems

So true. Seems these specs featured on the adverts make it look like you're getting something higher-spec when you really aren't.

Also,I notice if you want a particular feature you may have to get a model with other unwanted upgrades, i.e. in order to get the screen with the Truebrite which from reviews, seems to be a noticeable improvement over the regular 1080 display,

http://www.screentekinc.com/toshiba-trubrite-lcd-screens.shtml


then you have to get the i7 -5500U Processor.

Seems when you buy from the set menu, there's a compromise whichever model you get.

Thanks to all for the sound advice and the info re. the Radeon M260 and the i7 with the 'u'.....I'd never have known about those not-so-worthwhile upgrades.