Capital Summertime Ball 2024

[me_54m]

I need to look for a Laptop for uni - its meant to be last years Christmas present - results.

Thinking about www.laptopsdirect.co.uk because its just a couple of minutes away so can actually go to get/if it all goes wrong :s I think the budget is £300 - £400. £500 max for any of those special 1 offs.

I think i have the basic idea, but just seeing if people who are perhaps more knowledgeable have any ideas. What should i look for?

Also is it worthwhile getting a 'security cable'?

[Sam]

I would give ebuyer a look

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Laptops

Also, just because the offices are based near you doesn't mean you can just return goods there - usually you have to get a returns note number from their call centre before you even think about sending it back.

[DarkAngelMJH]

Make sure you have at least 3 RAM otherwise it drags like hell when running multiple things at the same time.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Search/Computers/Laptops/ is also good

[E*F*4L]

minimum spec

intel core 2 duo

2gb ram

250 gb hard drive

multi format dvd driver & re-writer

http://www.staples.co.uk/web-exclusive-laptop-and-pc-deals/satellite-l300-1g8-laptop-intel-pentium-dual-core-processor-t3400-4gb-ram-160gb-hard-drive-15-4-display-vista-home-premium

the hard drive isn't that big but for storing pics & videos etc you can get a external hard drive 250gb for about £40-50

this one isn't to bad http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_L300-26P_Laptop_PSLB9E-03V003EN/version.asp but you will NEED the ram upgrade to at least 2gb

this one looks a good deal http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164845

i know money may be tight, but the more you can spend the the better, the longer it will last, if you are looking at playing games or are using video editing software for your uni course you will need to have a graphics card a Intel on-bored one won't be much good, you will need either a ATi or Nvidia one but these will cost more, quite a bit more looking at £80 more i would think.

[lareneg]

This is my area of speciality!

Before I even start, let me stress - you need to think about whether you really need a laptop. Are you going to carry it around with you? Or is it going to stay in your room the whole time? If you plan to do any serious gaming or video editing, you might want to reconsider. Laptops are badly suited to gaming, as they overheat very easily. Think about the size of a normal computer. Now think about compressing all of those components into a laptop - it's a ventilation nightmare. I personally bought a laptop 2 years ago, and found that I never took it out of the house. Firstly, I never really needed it out of the house. Secondly, it was so bloody heavy - it was a 17" beast. PCs are much cheaper than laptops.

You probably want an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor - don't go for a Pentium 4, Pentium M, Celeron etc. - they're all a pile of piss and you'll find the laptop lags and hangs alot. I'm afraid I know very little about the AMD processors (only Intel).

RAM is very important - If you're running XP or Windows 7, you will want 2GB at the very minimum. For Vista, 3GB at the very least. I would recomment getting 3-4GB RAM if you can afford it. This will future-proof your investment, and let you open more things at once.

Video card - If you plan to do any gaming more stressful than browser games, you need a video card that isn't integrated. Most laptops have integrated video cards. As I already said, if you want to do serious gaming you should really reconsider a laptop as your choice. An integrated video card won't fare too well with video editing either. Integrated video cards CAN handle playing films and videos, so don't worry about that.

Just a checklist for you to check over if you think you've found a good laptop:

1. Is the CPU an Intel Core 2 Duo (or AMD equivelent)?

2. Does it have enough RAM? (3GB+)

3. Is the screen large (or small) enough for your needs?

4. Is it going to be too heavy for you?

5. Is the battery life sufficient for your uses?

5. Are there any reviews for it on the internet? Have you tried searching the model on Google to check whether there are any common issues with the model? (e.g. overheating)

I'm not entirely sure what the security cable does. I think it just attaches the laptop to something (e.g. your tabletop) so that nobody can steal it while you're not looking. Not very useful in my eyes.

HotUKDeals is an excellent site to look at. People post hot deals on there when they see them, and visitors can vote the deal hot or cold, either increasing or reducing the temperature of the deal, much like Digg. It's always worth taking a look - http://www.hotukdeals.com/

Taking a quick look, the following two might be good for you:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164844

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164845

I would recomment the more expensive one, priced at £400. For an extra £50 you're getting an extra 2GB of RAM (2GB by itself really isn't enough to run Vista on, to be honest) and a 250GB hard drive instead of 160GB. I know you were hoping for something towards the £300 mark but to be honest, you'll be hard pressed to find a decent laptop for that price. Both the above have integrated graphics.

If you find another one that you think is good, feel free to post it here or PM me and I'll have a quick look for you.

I can vouch for Ebuyer being a great company. I have built three computers on separate occasions for various people, ordering the parts from Ebuyer every time. Fast delivery, using good couriers (UPS and DHL).

[sinister]

Get a mac, Apple do a discount for stoodents I believe.

[lareneg]

Get a mac, Apple do a discount for stoodents I believe.

Even with the student discount, I believe Apple products are still ridiculously overpriced. Plus, you can't run all the programs you might be used to. You'll find that a Windows laptop of the equivelent spec will be quite a bit cheaper than the Apple Mac.

[sinister]

But you can dual boot and have windoze on it too should you want to. Macs also hold a much better resale value than pcs too.

[lareneg]

I personally don't see the point of buying a mac and installing windows in a dual boot, but I don't want to get into an arguement now, in somebody else's thread :-p

[sinister]

I will probably need to get me sen an intel mac soon. I'll need to do the dual boot thing for using autocad. I just prefer osx because it doesn't have as many issues regarding spyware, malware and viruses. In fact people shouldn't by macs because if the platform gets too popular it would draw too much attention from the virus writers etc. ;-}

Nowt to argue about, horses for courses and all that!

[Ratscallion]

I like Linux... Just to put that out there.

With my work on this laptop, I've found that I've only had to use Windows for 2 things: iTunes and testing sites with Windows.

I've got 2GB of RAM and, to be honest, when I run 8 programs at once in Vista, it usually works fine, which include iTunes, 4 web browsers (multi tabs in each), Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc.

I do think, however, that 1.8Ghz (mine) Dual Core is probably the bare minimum.. I would have gone for a 2.0, but it was too much when it came to buying it just over 8 months ago.

Also, I think 200GB is also the minimum, that's mine too and I'm just under 3/4 full already.

I think that if you're wanting speed, but don't want to have to pay for RAM, then you can go ahead and get 2GB, possibly install Linux on it (dual boot if you must) and you can poweruse on that much more than on Windows with no speed cuts in the slightest. Sure, as said, it (and laptops in general) can't game, but, really, neither can Vista (without speed loss). You can do pretty much anything you need to do on Windows on Linux.

Oh, and just to end, there's 0 spyware/viruses at the moment out there for Linux compared to 2 for mac and thousands, possibly millions, for Windows.

[lareneg]

About the 2GB, I thought it was slightly dodgy running Vista on 2GB. I would still recommend getting more. The norm is now rising to 4GB, which means that in the next couple of years it will be expected for someone to have 4GB - I'd recommend getting the 4GB to futureproof the investment so that it will at least see you through Uni.

I used linux for a while but it ended up doing my head in, as it was a nightmare to get software installed and working... While there aren't (m)any viruses for Linux & Mac, I have been using Windows for years and haven't had any problems with viruses - as long as you don't go around being wanton about clicking on stuff which is a bit dodgy, and you keep a good bit of antivirus software up to date you'll be ok.

[me_54m]

I would give ebuyer a look

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Laptops

Also, just because the offices are based near you doesn't mean you can just return goods there - usually you have to get a returns note number from their call centre before you even think about sending it back.

They have a 'proper' shop too - My parents have a bit of a phobia of shopping on line (well my mum has) and seen as their buying it.

[lareneg]

They have a 'proper' shop too - My parents have a bit of a phobia of shopping on line (well my mum has) and seen as their buying it.

If it helps any, Ebuyer have very good customer support. My friend bought a Power Supply Unit for his PC, and it arrived dead. They were very good about it, and as soon as they receioved the dead one back (mailed at their own cost) they sent a new one out. While this is the sort of service you should expect, many companies aren't that cooperative about it.

[Ratscallion]

I used linux for a while but it ended up doing my head in, as it was a nightmare to get software installed and working... While there aren't (m)any viruses for Linux & Mac, I have been using Windows for years and haven't had any problems with viruses - as long as you don't go around being wanton about clicking on stuff which is a bit dodgy, and you keep a good bit of antivirus software up to date you'll be ok.

You don't need AntiVirus with the others, and they're based on UNIX, which has different make ups to the Kernel and core that Windows uses.

There's a completely different install now, download, put on CD (or get one delivered), put it in, click install, done.

[me_54m]

Had a look in Tesco today there was only one which seemed to be appropriate.

I cant seem to find it online but it was pretty much the same as this one http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.206-3108.aspx (Ram, screen, memory) - the only thing is the battery-life i think and maybe another GB ram?

We're going to go to comet, curries and PC world and what not tomorrow.

What's the going rate with battery life?

[lareneg]

The laptop seems ok, but it has an AMD processor. They're as good as the Intels, but I don't know anything about them, so I can't tell you whether that particular one is any good.

Battery life, you'd be aiming at somewhere around 3 hours (between 2.5 and 3.5 hours). By that, I mean that's the figure they'll state. Usually the figure they state is with the screen on a relatively low brightness, with the laptop doing not much, and with wifi off, so realistically you'll have quite a significantly lower battery life.

[me_54m]

Thanks for all this input . Quite liked this one http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_M51A-AP082C_Laptop_M51A-AP082C/version.asp at first but i thought the battery was a bit rubbish but it ties in with what you've just put.

Is there a particular brand to stay clear of? And on a semi-related note: How do you know if a desktop has wireless (I don't think this has, but father says it has ) EDIT: Actually it doesn't matter does it as the Modem is next to the main computer so the router would have to go there anyway and there will be ethernet port(s) on the router so i can just use an ethernet cable between them. Yes?

(This is how crap applied ICT is, I got an A but know nothing useful about what to look for xD)

[Behelzebub]

Dell computers are usually pretty reliable, I've had an Inspiron 1525 for just over a year now and haven't had any problems with it so far. Can't really give you any more help than that I'm afraid as I'm not much of a computer geek - Tim (as in Timsk off of this site) may be able to give you some useful advice though.

[lareneg]

Thanks for all this input . Quite liked this one http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_M51A-AP082C_Laptop_M51A-AP082C/version.asp at first but i thought the battery was a bit rubbish but it ties in with what you've just put.

If you can fork out that much, that is a good laptop. That is a good CPU which will not disappoint you, it has 4GB RAM, a good sized hard drive and a 2 year warranty (usually it's one year). Asus is a good brand.

The description does contradict itself - it says "coming stacked with wireless capabilities, Bluetooth technology and a built-in webcam", but just a few lines down it then states:

• Bluetooth - No
  

If bluetooth is important to you, bear in mind it might not have it.

Also, you get a free upgrade to Windows 7, according to the description.

[midnight]

Is there a particular brand to stay clear of?

Yes don't go for a compaq or hp. I have a compaq laptop and have done for a year and have had numerous problems with it since I got it with it overheating, charger never lasts long (i'm on my third charger for it and its only just turned the year old), internet will randomly decide the security key is incorrect for a wireless network and then refuse to save the correct one, meanwhile the boyfriend has just got himself a new dell and his old one is three years old now and still work s(bit slow but that's due to the parts that the laptop has been built with when it was made so long ago. Hope this helps.

[Ratscallion]

I've got an HP and am very happy with it... Sure the battery life isn't very long but that's probably because I power use and shove it on high performance all the time!

[me_54m]

Went for the tesco one in the end.

Set up wireless and everything is working. Just one question on vista how do you manually connect to a secure network. The instructions for the router said to double click on the name and then enter the password, but when I tried i just got an error noise. Ended up doing it by memory stick. - Wont be able to do that at Uni and that though.

[Ratscallion]

Went for the tesco one in the end.

Set up wireless and everything is working. Just one question on vista how do you manually connect to a secure network. The instructions for the router said to double click on the name and then enter the password, but when I tried i just got an error noise. Ended up doing it by memory stick. - Wont be able to do that at Uni and that though.

Well, if you can do something like Hidden Network? Maybe try just restarting the router? Might be the card, try the diagnostics. What wireless card have you got?

[me_54m]

I think it was because the pc remembered the settings from when there was no password - the instructions said to conect and then add the password.