no apologies for “let me google that for you” responses ;-p

Ive always been a user of the “£299” laptop, and treated them as semi disposable, ie: in 4 years, when its a bit slow, a bit out of date, and full, bin it and get a new one.

my current laptop is damaged.
as in, it works fine, but gets to a point of working (usually on STW) where it decides it cant handle itunes, msn AND firefox, and dies. (poor show)
from my chattings with IT geeks around here the agree with my hypothisis that it is likely due to permenant CPU damage/battery damage.

lack of cooling, + a demanding user (once upon a time i had a photoshop intrest) + a fan likely to be clogged with dust, = cooked cpu.

ive had 3 die this way now, im thinking a laptop may not be for me.

i understand apples to be MUCH better, however they arn’t cheap, but then if its going to last twice as long, it can be twice as expensive?

perhaps a proper “pc” tower would help with cooling, and not having a battery, there is no issue with the battery not being able the provide the voltage for the cpu (the power supply charges the battery, the computer runs off the battery at all times, so when ithe battery has got a bit old, it affects performance, apparently)

if i went down the tower route, i could also get myself a nice 20″ monitor with a digital tv tuner built in perhaps? allowing to watch tv without having the computer turned on?

how does vista compare to XP?

basicly im pulled between a few ideas

any opinions?
any suggestions?
any reccomended purchases?

thanks all

In typical STWylee, I disagree with

(the power supply charges the battery, the computer runs off the battery at all times, so when ithe battery has got a bit old, it affects performance, apparently

Take the battery out, plug the laptop in and see if it starts…

I have a work laptop and a desktop PC at home. The desktop PC I’ve had for 6 years or so and has seen additional memory added, a new power supply and a new motherboard as well as some new bits added like more USB 2 ports. Much as I love the convenience of a laptop, you can’t argue with the relative ease with which a desktop can be fixed/upgraded etc

As for Apple, I’ve pondered for many years about getting one, but mainly for the software that comes bundled with it rather than the hardware. I believe – but could be wrong – that Apples are’t very easy to get under the hood other than perhaps upgrading RAM. In recent years though operating systems and software have all caught up with Apple’s ease of use so not sure I’d bother looking at one now.

Call me an old cynic, but it matters not what you buy. One day, eventually, it will mysteriously start running slow 🙂

er, clean the fan? 😯

My collegue charged someone £50 to “fix” their laptop, same symptoms, he used a hoover, took him less than a minute. He didnt feel guilty though because they also refer to IT people as geeks.. 😆

CPUs don’t degrade, they either work or they don’t. Battery life will degrade though.

Backup your important files, format the drive and re-install XP, will work as well as it used to. If that was fine, it’s still fine…

Mac might be a bit better for SOME S/W uses, but not for others, and there is no difference in hardware quality/life.

Like anything in life, don’t buy cheap if you are going to wring its neck week in week out on performance. i.e. don’t buy a Fiat 500 if you are going to charge up and down the motorways at 80mph 5 days a week

1) Buy a decent brand laptop – get Vista now and upgrade to Windows 6 months after first release
2) Make sure it has enough processor power, especially if you are doing lots of graphics manipulation or other multimedia stuff
3) Make sure it has plenty of memory – for multimedia preferably 8GB
4) Switch it off when you are not using it!
5) On a regular basis use the disk cleanup utility. Start>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup