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My 4 year old laptop is on its last legs now, so time has come for a new one to be purchased.
Will be used mainly for surfing the web, watching films, photo editing, editing the footage from my HD camcorder and storing music.
Budget is £600, would like a good quality 15.5" screen (would possibly go slightly larger on the screen) and decent sound quality from the built in speakers. Needs to have a built in SD card reader, webcam would be nice too and ideally have HDMI and VGA graphics output.
Oh and I fully expect a good flaming for this, but I would ideally like to be able to buy it from PC World/currys/comet.
Spec wise I'm thinking 4Gb RAM and a 320/500Gb HDD (I already have a 1Tb external HDD for storage and back-up, but HD video really eats up space) but I have no idea whats good processor/graphics card wise.
I need advice on a new laptop too. I know from personal experience that it is very easy to spend a pile of money to get the best machine with every conceivable upgrade, only for it to turn into an underperfoming worthless pile of tin in not many years! My next machine was hugely better in many respects and cost less than a third of the first one.
My requirements are pretty straightforward; I do the usual web browsing, office functions etc. I'm not interested in gaming but will be ripping DVD's and compressing them to more manageable file sizes to backup to my NAS. This video manipulation will take some processing power and RAM, so this is probably the only thing that will put the machine through it's paces. I also do the odd bit of photo editing, but nothing heavy duty.
In the old days, choosing a CPU was relatively simple, but the choice these days seems a bit bewildering.
So, what would be useful is if someone can give us a quick summary of the different CPU's available and what level of performance each level one is aimed at.
The other area is GPU's. A few years ago, there was no choice of onboard graphics and these laptops were mediocre, or worse when replaying video. What would be the minimum spec graphics card needed for smooth HD HDMI/DVI output to an HDTV/large LCD monitor?
Storage and RAM are pretty easy to work out, but I have found it's usually cost effective to buy a PC with underpopulated RAM slots and max it out with aftermarket chips.
I would now never go for leading edge products, but something just adequate for the job and preferrably as cheap as possible. This would preclude buying from Comet, Dixons etc because I have never found them to be anywhere near competitve on price, or that up to date with the latest crop of technology. The other thing is that their customer service will almost certainly be total rubbish (I've heard many horror stories of needless data loss and overcharging and am completely aware of the lack of knowledge/gumption the staff generally have in firms like this. I can only blame the management for hiring monkeys, but when you pay peanuts what do you expect?? ..... no offence 😉 ). Wouldn't let them anywhere near my PC, but then being ex-hardwares support, i'd be fixing faults myself.
I like HP and Dell as brands, but it all really comes down to specification. Battery life is of interest as is a cool running machine.
save up for a macbook? mines 4 years old and runs like new, brilliant machine and fits your purpose well. although if you must have a 15" screen you're into daft money for a macbook pro…
Toshiba Core i3 laptop.. 100 quid under your budget
So, what would be useful is if someone can give us a quick summary of the different CPU's available and what level of performance each level one is aimed at.
can't do the summary but [url= http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php ]look here to compare cpu performance[/url]
Cheers fubar!
MacBook Pro - no messin'!
MacBook Pro! 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
Toshiba Core i3 laptop.. 100 quid under your budget
Which will be a good machine (though you can get similarly specced core i3 models for under £400 now!), but if you're spending £600 you really want to be aiming for a core i5 processor, and capability to upgrade past 4GB of RAM in the future should you require it, as pretty soon 4GB is going to be old hat, and now that most machines ship with a 64 bit OS you will be able to utilise more RAM when the time comes.
MacBook Pro - no messin'!
For £1200 maybe, £600 no chance... Unless you're looking at a 2nd hand machine a couple of years old or more.
[url= http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=HP+DV6&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=8812995459877351210&ei=45OnTI66J8WOjAeI3pTEDA&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ8wIwBA# ]My choice[/url]
Beware that there are different versions of the HP DV6 some are not i5 processor etc.
ps. could pay more from John Lewis and get 2 year warranty.
pps. HP have a £150 cash-back offer on this model if you send them an old (but less than 4 years) working laptop back...check details !
My Macbook pro was great till it burnt the logic board out 🙁 Replaced it with a basic 13"Macbook wish I went for the basic 13"Macbook pro though.
Kuco, out of interest, why the regrets on not going for the pro? I'm just considering these 2 options too, and wondering whether it's worth splashing the cash for the pro, as the spec seem similar.
Interastingly all the dual core chips have a score atlease 5x more than my celeron - the new i3/i5/i7 atleast 10x faster. My system is fairly snappy at the moment so there is more to it than just cpu.
The pro can have up to 8mb memory the macbook only 4mb and I miss the back lit keyboard and a SD card slot plus the aluminium does look nice.