Another ‘what laptop’ but I am really stuck. My current laptop is a hand me down Dell Latitude X300 with a Pentium-M 1.4 which I got in about 2007 and before that I was using a couple of P3-700 IBM X21 Thinkpads so I have never had anything new and up to date! They have all been well used by me to the point of the keyboards and buttons wearing out and going through multiple batteries, HDDs etc etc.

Use:

mainly Word, PPT, Excel, internet and basic picture editing. Also need to get into running Ansys etc (will remoting into a workstation for that).

Budget around £600 excl. VAT, maybe a bit more

Needs to multitask well.

CPU – thinking Intel i5 but i7 would be nice.
Graphics – really want to avoid integrated graphics
Screen – this is a major one – I find 1366×768 15.6″ screens a bit of a waste. 1600×900 or 1920×1080 on a 15.6″ would be better or maybe 1366×768 on a 13-14″ screen.
Webcam as often do video conferences, BT would be nice and Blueray if possible as not exactly cost effective to upgrade.
RAM can be upgraded easily so not an issue, doubt I need more thann 500Gb HDD as will be making more use of backups from now on.

So far liking Dells, HP and Lenovos, saw a nice Samsung today, don’t think an Acer will stand up to my level of use (and don’t like the keys).

Anyone spotted any bargains?

Worth keeping an eye on the dell factory outlet, although wanting something with non-integrated graphics limits the choice a fair bit. Precision model might be your best bet but they’re fairly hefty. Only one I can see at about your budget and suitable spec is http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dfb&cs=ukdfb1&puid=9e88304e

Ah – I was gonna suggest the Dell Factory Outlet too….

I thought acer were meant to be good.

Otherwise, I’d avoid Dell, and go for Toshiba or HP. They have always seemed well built to me.

I’ve got one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006UCNVO4/ref=asc_df_B006UCNVO47677379?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B006UCNVO4

and it’s very good indeed.

Ticks most of your boxes, although not sure on display (1600×900 17.3″).

I thought acer were meant to be good.

Oh gosh no. Stay well away from them. Good price up front but goodness help you if anything goes wrong with it. Awful.

http://www.itcsales.co.uk/acatalog/Dell_Precision_Series_Laptops.html

slightly over your budget but its got power and they do some killer deals

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ a bit hit and miss

Struggling to see why you need an i7 for Word and a bit of Internet.

You’re right about the screen / integrated graphics though. I found it was a real battle to get a decent video output without also getting lots of crap I didn’t want included in the spec at a premium. In the end, the -only- way I found to get what I wanted was with Dell, as they were the only ones at the time doing a ‘configure your own’ setup.

Bear in mind that whilst any discrete GFX adapter is going to be better than integrated + UMA, the higher resolutions will require a much beefier adapter to run at any sort of decent lick. This is where I fell down; the adapter in my Dell is alright, but at a native res of 1920×1200 it’s just not up to driving the display with any sort of real performance. I’m not a big PC gamer, but as an example I ran the Diablo 3 beta on it; it stutters at full resolution even with all the effects down low, but if I knock it down to ~1020 then it flies.

That said of course, for the usage you listed it won’t be an issue.

Don’t discount memory. A lack of RAM can be the single biggest cause of performance degradation. Most modern machines should have ample, but I’d be considering 3Gb as an absolute minimum and if I were buying a new one today I’d be looking to go 64bit with about 8Gb.

Brands wise, what others have said. For build quality you can’t beat Lenovo, the only downside is they look like they were designed in 1985. But when the bomb drops, the only thing to survive the blast will be cockroaches and Lenovo PCs.

Cheers guys, just going to take a look at the links.

Cougar – agree about the i7. Just I spotted a few Acers with the i7 for the same price as i5 from other makes so it made me wonder.

17″ is too big. I am used to 13″ ish 4:3 screens so I would rather a 13″ screen with the same 720p res as a 15.6″ screen and a nice portable laptop. I have been using Kates Toshiba Satellite with a pentium dual core and intel graphics and I bring it to a crawl easily. Also hate the plastic casing. Went to see the Acers in the flesh today and discounted them straight away on feel and button layout.

The Lenovo Z series (metal) are very nice but I love the old joystick on the Thinkpads as I used to have 3 of them but the build didn’t feel as tough as a Thinkpad should be. Shame dell ditched the Studio XPS as they were nice but I have been checking out the outlet there for something to come up. Got all excited by the £150 trade in on a Dell 15Z but then realised all my laptops are >5 years old 🙁

PS ram – not a huge problem on the spec as it’s easy to upgrade unlike everything else which you are stuck with. Looking for a min of 6gb with 8 preferred. Would rather not be paying for Windows too as I have my own license for 7 which I’ve not used yet (no machine).

Seems not much choice of laptops between 11.6″ and 15.6″.

A small hi-res screen is very much the holy grail IMHO. I think it’s pie in the sky, but I’d be very interested to see what you find.

Might be worth going into PC Wally World just to have a look at all the laptops (if you haven’t already!).

Reading the comments I don’t think spec is an issue. Blueray + decent graphics card is mega bucks, forget about it.

My Vaio is still running strong after 4 years the only thing I did was reformat it and reinstall windows to get rid of the trash that all laptops seem to come with these days…

http://www.johnlewis.com/231577635/Product.aspx

Don’t get too hung up on the processors you honestly won’t notice the 0.2 seconds faster word load time. 😉

Have you considered saving a bit more cash and looking at a Mac? Well worth going into an apple store just to browse (just leave the wallet at home!!) some great little tools for photo editing.

Good luck, its never easy as the markets move so quickly. Maybe find reviews from 3 months ago and see if you can pick up a bargain now for a laptop that was 3 months ago the bee’s knees.

My Samsung X9 seems to do what I want a laptop to do – email/ surfing/ office + driving PowerPoint presentations via the difficult to find micro hdmi to VGA connector. I also use it to show large 3D PDF files which work just fine, it renders quickly and will also run hefty multi ref file microstation models. Oh, and the Microsoft snap flat mouse is very good.
My main requirement is light weight, but reasonable performance is good too.

Quite happy with my Dell Vostro.

The hard drive got flagged as “predicted to fail” recently, though I guess that could have happened on any given drive.

Fortunately it was about 20 days inside of the warranty, Dell sent a guy out to swap it over within a couple of days, no hassles.

Macs are a no due to FEA software. Although the 13″ macbook would be perfect!

Spotted this HP: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-dv6-6156ea-15-6-laptop-steel-grey-10725096-pdt.html?intcmp=pcworld_home-slider__goals-hp__04_25-04-12

but you can get them ‘refurbed’ for £450 which seems a bargain as long as the refurb is done right.

This little HP Beats 14″ laptop had a nice screen but stupid red ‘Beats’ logo on the back which would look silly when I pull it out in meatings: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-dm4-3002ea-entertainment-beats-edition-14-laptop-black-11884676-pdt.html

Screen I liked the most was a Samsung which I think was this one I saw today in Currys: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-series-7-np700z5a-a01dx-15-6-laptop-11296512-pdt.html

15.6″ screen with very little border and 1600×900 res. Tried it in 1366 res and then back to the native 1600 and much better for me. But it has Intel graphics.

Tempted to ditch the dedicated graphics for something a bit slimmer and with better battery life to make it more portable. hmm

I was looking at a vostro 14″ but Dells site annoys me when you see all the advertising then go to spec your laptop and the only options are silly laptop bags and wireless mice and none of the options you were promised.

hmm Asus 14″? http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-ultra-slim-u46sv-core-i5-2410m-4gb-ram-500gb-hdd-dvd-supermulti-14-1–nvidia-gt540-w7pro-7XGV.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product+search&utm_content=Q200

£650 inc. vat

stupid red ‘Beats’ logo on the back

That’s not a dealbreaker, whack a sticker over it.

update…

Well I decided on a Dell XPS 15 or the Asus N55. Went to see the Asus screen and the Sony next to it blew it away and I believe (and going on the XPS 13 they had in store) the 15.6″ Dell screen should be the same as the Sony one.

With all the special offers they had on and the extra 15% off I get on Dells I specced the following:

1920×1080 15.6″ LED screen
i7 (had to come with i7, no i5 option for the screen)
nvidia 540m 2Gb
8gb ram
1Tb hdd
Dual channel wifi with bluetooth
Backlit keyboard

£758 inc. vat with my discounts

Or for £70 less the same spec without blueray and 6gb ram

Just went to order and..they changed the offer and all the prices seem to have jumped up a couple of hundred and now they say £400 off compared to £200 off but the prices are higher with a lower spec 😥