Decent portable laptop (not netbook)

stephen_mch · 16-04-2010 12:00AM #1

As the title suggests i'm looking for a decent portable laptop. The standand laptops are a bit too bulky for me and i've found my netbook a bit short on power at times. So basically i want something in between. I've got a budget of around €500 so obviously not looking for anything too special, just a bit of a step up from the netbook i have.

DemoniK · 16-04-2010 10:48AM

I had same issue

If you search a bit you'll find some options.
I went with a CULV (Intel's SU4100 Dual Core Pentium (is actually Core 2 Duo with less cache)) chip in an 11" laptop. Elara doing it (Acer 1810tz) for about €560.

But look around - Dell doing 1, as are HP, Toshiba and Samsung based on same chip.

I find it pretty good. enough grunt to watch movies, do the odd photo editing, and play games (not the latest, but quite a few from 2007 or earlier are playable). 8hrs battery life can't be laughed at either

TBH though, If I was looking now I would hold out for another month or so. Acer about to launch the 1830T which is based on the i5-520UM which has an operating speed of 1GHz, but bumps that up to 1.8 with Turbo... Also it's hyperthreaded so 2 cores, 3 threads while the SU4100 is 1.3GHz and dual core only.

Voodu Child · 16-04-2010 01:42PM

Acer Aspire 1810TZ £440

HP DM3 £379

Acer 3935 £450 (massive savings but its an old model with Vista)

Toshiba Satellite T130 £380

(those are all UK prices, Amazon adjust for Irish vat. Some include free shipping, some dont. Just a rough illustration of the kind of machines out there)

Ideally you'd want a dual core, but that said, even the single-core Celerons and Core2Solos are significantly more powerful than an Atom. The HP uses an AMD processor, so I don't really know where it fits in. They are usually pretty weak.

Decent portable laptop (not netbook)

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