Decisions Decisions...

fiachs

Hey,

Ok i'm trying to decide between the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1630 Base and Extended versions so a bit of help would be great

Laptop is for college, but I really want to be able to play games on it as well! (Deus Ex, Simcity 4, Half Life 2) etc. Money wise i think I'd be better off getting the Base Version but I know I'll get frustrated with the Hard Drive Space quickly enough - how easy would it be to upgrade HD Space and RAM in the future? Or should I just ignore both these laptops and head for something else (possibly in the Amilo range?) Cheers.

Alternatively the Amilo M1425 seems to be a really good price - in terms of power what's the difference between the Athlon 64 3200+ and Pentuim M 725 1.7? Would you have problems playing games at all?

J-blk

RAM and HD can be quite easy to upgrade. And with the HD, you'll need it - at least on that first lappy. 40GB is quite small by today's standards. If you don't need lots of storage on the go though, you can upgrade the space by buying an external USB 2.0 HD enclosure (around €20 I think) and popping in a 3.5" (full size, used on desktop PCs) of any size you like. Consider that these days, a 3.5" 200GB HD is under €100. However, if this is the way to go, you'll have to store data in specific ways. Running your games off the USB drive for example, would be very slow. If you end up going this way, keep the space on the internal 40GB for games and programs, while using the USB one for music/pictures/other files, etc.

RAM is very easily upgraded on most lappies - there's typically a small flap that you can open and pop in another chip. However... most lappies only have space for two memory chips (DIMMs) and in most cases, both are taken up. If you get the lappie with the 512MB, check if is 1x512MB or 2x256MB. If it is the latter, it means that you have to sell both DIMMS off and buy two 512MBs. If it only has one 512MB, you simply buy another one and insert it - no probs. You'll end up needing 1GB for high end games but 512MB will do for now.

As for the CPUs, the Athlon should give better performance in games, but the Pentium M is an impressive chip too - you get much more battery life out of the Pentium M too.

Tony H

i have a fujitsu siemens amilo k , 14 months old and id stick well clear of them if mine is anything to go on , had a problem with the screen just before the warrenty was up , sent it off for repair and the muppets told me they could not find any thing wrong with it (problem is the screen is flickering now and then and sometimes goes completely black )
i still have the same problem and now its out of warrenty , plus my battery is totalled .

Shanery

Can anyone else throw in some feedback on these Amilo's, they seem to good to be true, nice specs and nice price. Anyone else have one?

WillieDH

i use one, make sure you buy it in ireland or the warranty can be tricky

Shanery

You have any trouble with yours willie? this one seems sweet, not an Amilo but its in the same Fujitsu family. Thinking of ordering something like this next week.

fiachs

well I think after all that I'm gonna get the HP Pavilion zv6067 from Jes. Seems really good and at a great price yeah? I'm a touch typist so not really worried about the keyboard...