OK, I thought I’d narrowed this one down to a Toshiba Satellite or a Fujitsu thingy both of which look (to my uneducated eyes) quite good.
However, I’ve just been talking to a mate who knows his computer stuff and he reckoned it’d be far better with 4Gb of RAM to comfortably run Vista and my intended photoprocessing needs so he suggested something from the Dell Outlet store (refurbished laptop) for just under £500 which has 4Gb RAM, dedicated graphics card, 17″ screen, 320Gb hard drive etc.

Any further suggestions from the Font Of All Knowledge that is STW?
Requirements:
Internet/email/Word, the usual…
Photo Processing, (often 10-15Mb RAW files)
17″ screen
£500 max. No more. Don’t go suggesting one at £650 cos I can’t “just stretch the budget” a bit.

Any thoughts as well on where to buy, any specific specialist outlets/refurb places people can recommend rather than going to the likes of Comet or Currys?

Cheers for any help.

I’d not get Dell lately. They come with tons of crap installed, and things are generally a bit annoying. Plus, a few of the components are a bit pants I think. I spent a little more on a Toshiba and it was loads better than the other Dells I’ve seen.

4Gb comes in handy but 2 will work fine, and you can always upgrade later. It’s not that expensive and is a really really really easy job to upgrade – remove cover, plug in chip, replace cover.

Only thing to watch for is that there’s usually only two slots. So a 2Gb laptop would have two 1Gb Dimms (chips) in it, so to upgrade you have to ditch one. It’s worth asking if you are in a shop (or if buying from someone that gives advice like Scan or most other decent online places – dabs.com, aria.co.uk etc) how many memory slots it has and if any are free. I would expect most shops to be able to sell it to you with extra memory in anyway – it’s not just Dell that do that.

Best advice tho is go and look at the laptops, see which one looks or feels nicer and seems more usable when you try it.

Does it ‘really’ have to be a laptop? You’d get more bangs for your bucks with a desktop.

If you’re running 32bit Vista, any RAM over 3gb is pointless as Vista cant address it

my dell precision laptop is great, as was the inspiron before it. if you don’t like some of the software that comes with them, you can just re install the OS.

My precision has 2Gb or RAM, has Vista business installed and runs Photoshop, Lightroom and Solidworks (3D engineering CAD software) just fine. OK, it would be better with 4Gb, but it’s performance on 2Gb is fine. It does have a ‘proper’ graphics processor in it with seperate RAM, rather than something by Intel.

if you don’t like some of the software that comes with them, you can just re install the OS.

Only if you have the Windows CD – NOT just the system restore one that you get with it, since that’ll just make it like it was when you bought it. I think having a Windows CD is an option on some laptops.

If you’re running 32bit Vista, any RAM over 3gb is pointless as Vista cant address it

4Gb is the limit on 32 bit systems – and that’s the same for anything not just Vista.

my dell came with a vista disc, not just a system restore disc

and besides, if you don’t, just ask a mate for one and use the licence key on the sticker on the bottom of your laptop…

not a specific recommendation, but AVOID the Currys/Dixons/PCWorld conglomerate if you can. My (admittedly cheap) refurbed laptop battery failed. I called and asked for a replacement battery. Nope, laptop needs to be send back to them. But laptop works fine as long as it’s plugged into the mains, Tough still needs to go back to them, even after I offered to send them the battery (at my expense) so as I can get on with what I bought the laptop for. So, in short
12/1 – collection arranged for 13/1
13/1 courier goes to wrong address. given correct address and my phone number – doesn’t bother.
13/1 – ONE HOUR and SIX PHONE CALLS, collecion arranged for 14/1
14/1 – collected
21/1 – where’s my latop? in our workshop awaiting repair
27/1 – see 20/1
4/2 – where’s my laptop? we don’t have it. where is it? don’t know
12/2 – aha, found it. it had been taken to an HP service centre. it’s not an hp, so they sent it back. it was delivered to a different part of the building with soeone else’s name on it, persumabley the person who was trying to return an hp
14/2 – apparently, if it’s not repaired after 28 days, they’ll replace it. great, but that means making double extra certain that everything’s backed up. pickup arranged from work for 18/2
16/2 – courier arrives looking for laptop – it’s not there
18/2 – courier arrives to collect laptop. takes it away
18/2 – (about an hour later) see 16/2

To be continued………..

freddyg – you are quite correct. On 32bit Vista, you can only “make use” of the first 3Gb of memory. This is because 32bit systems can only address 4Gb of memory and, because of the way Vista works, the top 1Gb of a 4Gb system is only used as a Video memory “slot”.

Sorry, that’s a terrible explanation but it will have to do!

Either way – it doesn’t really matter as a £Gb system is still a lot better than a 2Gb system for Vista.

You could, in theory, use 64bit Vista. Trouble is so many 3rd party things just don’t get along with it.

You could, in theory, use 64bit Vista. Trouble is so many 3rd party things just don’t get along with it.

I’ve had no bother at all, with drivers or software. Tell a lie – the only one single thing I’ve seen that doesn’t work is the flash movie player. But you get a 32 bit version of IE which does work, so I use that for this site and the 64 for everything else.

I stand corrected on the Vista 3Gb thing. Thanks for telling me that before I splashed out on ram!

4Gb is the limit on 32 bit systems – and that’s the same for anything not just Vista.

The 4GB limit refers to total addressable memory space and not just the RAM installed. It’s a total made up of system RAM, graphics RAM, PCI memory range, ACPI and a few other bits and pieces. And if you think that your system RAM is the only significant factor, think again. You can buy graphics cards fitted with 1GB or RAM, and if you wanted (and had the spare cash!) you could fit three of these into a system. There’s not a 1 to 1 relationship between graphics memeory consuming system RAM, but the larger the memory, the more the card sets aside for itself. Now that 4GB limit doesn’t leave you a lot of space for system RAM.

not a 17 screen but i,ve just bought an acer 5735 (3gb/250gb, vista premium, 2ghz 6400 2 core duo) from dixons for about 370quid.

its 429 on the website, got a price match as comet do a 5735 for 389 (but lower spec), extra 2.5% disacount and bout through topcasback so got an extra 3.5% back plus 1% cb on my credit card.

Lenovo’s are pretty good, much more robust this one is <500, decent GF; Lenovo 3000 N200

But not 17″ and 1Gb ram but they do upgrades. I ordered a laptop from them last year at 4pm and it arrived 10am the next day, with upgraded ram. Also my desktop has 4Gb and even processing video (according to the monitor) never uses more than 2.

Ooh, that LaptopsDirect site looks quite good, thanks tinribz. 🙂