Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Sign in to follow this  
pritch

Laptops/notebooks?

Recommended Posts

I'm going to have to buy my first ever laptop thingie for my impending postgrad studies and I wanted some general advice/tips from dw's great and good.

I'll need it for work obviously, but games would be a welcome diversion. One thing I want to know is just how power-hungry mobile p4/athlon machines are over Centrinos, I can't seem to find actual comparisons. Best mobile graphics? etc.

I've been looking at anandtech but your comments are appreciated.

Share this post


Link to post

I can't advise on the technical side of things, especially since it's about 3 years since I last bought a notebook. However, I can recommend ajp. I bought my last two notebooks from them, and have been pleased with their service, quality and value. I imagine I'll buy from them again, and probably quite soon too.

That 17" widescreen jobby looks tempting, though it might be a bitch if you need to carry it around a lot.

Share this post


Link to post

my personal laptop is the Dell Inspiron 9100. it isnt exactly hte most mobile, its like 8.6 pounds and a good 1.5-2.25 inches thick. its a desktop replacement, however, so that wasnt taken into too much serious consideration probably. it has everything though. i got it as a gift for hs graduation, 1600 dollars is the price tag. i dont recommend it if youre gona be lugging the thing around, but if u take it out at random times and performance is a must then i say go right ahead. mainly i use it for lan parties, and for when i go on vacations. battery life is about 2 hours idle, 1.5 when doing a lot of shit.

Share this post


Link to post
Arioch said:

I would definitely recommend the emachines M6811.

http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_M6811

Heh, that's definitely nice but a bit beyond my budget. I should have said this before; I guess I want to max out at £600 ($1100?).

I know I'll need to comprimise but hopefully can get good value for money.

I've found a Medion (same make as my Desktop which has been excellent, but I know this is a different game) with a p4 2.53, 1024 ddr-ram (prolly 233 or 266), 40gb hd, geforce 440 Go 64MB (comments?), 15" XGA screen. 3.4 kg. It's just £549 and I'm tempted I must say. I didn't realise Medion had started selling online in the UK, their customer support has been better than expected for my desktop, seeing as they are budget. I doubt their notebooks have long battery lives but yeah I guess I'm more in need of desktop replacement than massive portability.

Also; Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ or Mobile Intel P4 with 2.53 GHz? There's a choice.

Share this post


Link to post
pritch said:

I guess I want to max out at £600 ($1100?).

In that case I'd suggest popping into London and seeing what deals are on offer in the little shops on Tottenham Court Road. Say, Micro Anvika. I've bought a fair amount of stuff from them, and it has always been OK.

Share this post


Link to post

Not sure. I'd probably want one on a new notebook just because I have a number of old PCMCIA cards.

My impression is that USB devices have taken over many of the functions that used to be handled by PCMCIA cards. So much stuff is built in to modern notebooks that you may never need to add functionality via a PCMCIA card.

Bottom line: you can almost certainly manage without one.

BTW, I'm a little bit tempted by this. The battery life and weight look especially attractive, given that I've got a trip to NZ coming up soon.

Share this post


Link to post

You can always get extra batteries and I think they have external ones as well if you don't mind lugging the extra stuff around. The new Dell's are pretty nice, my bro has one and it's awesome for watching DVD's on.

I've got an awesome Compaq notebook I could sell ya, 486-75mghz, 12mb ram... small amount of dried cat puke in the keyboard. Let me know, I'll make ya a deal. :)

Share this post


Link to post

Get one of the new Acer Travelmates. It's a small bit over your budget (€1300 last time I checked), but it might just be the best deal you'll get for that amount of cash. The laptop I saw at that price had this configuration: 1.5GHz Pentium-M, 60GB HDD, 512MB DDR333 RAM, 64MB Radeon Mobility 9700 (best thing ever, I guess) and a DVDRW drive. I don't really know about the battery life, but I suspect it'll average 4.5 hours as is usual with Centrino laptops. This beast is set to hit 2500+ 3DMarks.

Share this post


Link to post

aviod compaq!!!! chirst i have had to rebuild this thing 3 times
display
floppy
CMOS issue, needed to reset

the emachines 6811 is a good buy, i think that model is also a 64 bit CPU

centrino has great battery life, athlons either tie it or come second, then celerons fallowed by P4.

this will NOT be a system for gaming. gameing laptops cost a shit load and some have heat issues. get something that is durable and worth while. dells are also good, i may not like their desktops but their laptops are great. if a dell laptop can survive my brother it should do well with you.
as with any prebuilt system i recommend wipeing out the OS that is pre installed and installing a fresh winXP if you can get it. HP's and others often ship with spyware preinstalled. things like GAIN, MyWebSearch and webtangent.

Share this post


Link to post

My compaq Presario 2100 is a perfect little box for me. 64 shared video though, so not for gaming... I love my laptop. I'll never go desktop again.

Share this post


Link to post

Thanks for all the advice guys. I've decided that £600 is definitely my limit. It should really be £300 but lol. Nuno I checked out everywhere British and decent that does Acers, that spec you quoted was nearly or more than £1000 from them :(

Medion is still the only thing I can find with this spec at these prices. So now I have a choice and can't decide...

Laptop 1
£599 ($1075)

15" TFT XGA Colour Display
Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ CPU
512 MB DDR-RAM
40 GB hard disk
Combined DVD/CD-RW drive: CDR 24X /CDRW 12X /CDROM 24X /DVDROM 8X
Graphics: nVidia GeForce4 488 Go with 64 MB DDR-RAM
16 bit Sound chip
Internal 56K V.90 Modem
10/100 Mbit Fast Ethernet LAN port
2 integrated speakers
Integrated Touchpad with two mouse buttons
UK Keyboard with 2 Multimedia Hotkeys
External AC adapter & Li-Ion battery VDE/GS approved
1x PCMCIA Type II
1x Parallel (EPP/ECP)
1x VGA out
1x Microphone in
3x USB 2.0
1x Line-out incl. S/P-DIF
1x Serial
1x Modem (RJ 11)
1x LAN (RJ 45)
1x FireWire (IEEE-1394)
1x IrDa (infrared)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition (recovery version and CD-ROM)
Workssuite 2003 (OEM Version)
Nero Burning ROM (OEM Version)
Cyberlink Power DVD (OEM Version)
Dimensions (WxDxH): 330x280x41mm
Weight: 3.5kg incl. battery

Laptop 2
£549 ($985)

15" TFT XGA Colour Display
Intel® P4 with 2.53 GHz CPU
1024 MB DDR-RAM
40 GB hard disk
Combined DVD/CD-RW drive
Graphics: NVidia® GeForce4# 440 Go with 64 MB
16 bit Sound chip
Internal 56K V.90 Modem
10/100 Mbit Fast Ethernet LAN port
2 integrated speakers
Integrated Touchpad with two mouse buttons
UK Keyboard with 2 Multimedia Hotkeys
External AC adapter & Li-Ion battery VDE/GS approved
1x Parallel (EPP/ECP)
1x TV out
1x VGA out
1x Microphone in
4x USB 2.0
1x Line-out
1x Serial
1x Modem (RJ 11)
1x LAN (RJ 45)
1x FireWire (IEEE-1394)
1x IrDa (infrared)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition (recovery version and CD-ROM)
Microsoft Workssuite 2003 (OEM Version)
Nero Burning ROM (OEM Version)
Cyberlink Power DVD (OEM Version)
Dimensions (WxDxH): 330x280x42mm
Weight: 3.4kg incl. battery

What do you think?

Share this post


Link to post

you may get more life out of the mobile athlonXP system. however my brother would get 3+ hours on his dell P4 2.4 laptop, a friend told me she gets about 5 hours on her mobil athlon system but i dont entirly trust her

however if it was me, go with that P4 based system. just look at the memmory!

anyways also remember to update to service pack2 if it isnt already. i would strongly recommened installing XP home/professional from scratch, than add the software. but like i said i have only known HP and compaq to ship it as "junk" or to ship with spyware.

Share this post


Link to post

heh well as it happened there was another model on there I missed. This time it was an Athlon XP-M 2500, 512 ddr-ram, the geforce 488 card with the faster ram and apart from that the same spec as the £599 laptop 1. Except that it was £499!

I tried to figure out why it would be that much cheaper with better spec, and the only difference I could see is this comes with Staroffice rather than MS Works Suite. Except that doesn't really bother me that much as Works Suite came on disk with my Medion desktop, heh.

So I've taken the plunge. I get 14 days to decide if I don't want it anyway.

Share this post


Link to post

I have a Toshiba Satellite which has a Celeron 2.8ghz, 256mb of memory and an intel gfx chipset that can run Q3 and even UT2k3 (barely). Costs $1000 normally I believe, but after some rebates from Circuit City it only set me back $800. Quite a nice machine, really. The battery lasts anywhere from 1 - 4 hours depending on what you're doing (just sitting around typing or using various MS applications you'll get a good 3 hours out of it). It doesn't come with a wireless card, but I snagged one + and access point off ebay slightly used on the cheap ($45). I think the newer models have wireless built in now too, but overall I'm quite happy with it, though don't expect to play any super modern games on it, it's more than adequate for regular tasks.

Oh, another thing I might mention is that the celery processor never gets very hot compared to a P4 or Athlon, so I can safely keep it on my lap without any danger of cooking my nanners as my dad's old Athlon XP and his new P4 can sometimes do.

edit: damnit I should read all the posts before I post :P

Share this post


Link to post
Silverwyvern said:

My compaq Presario 2100 is a perfect little box for me. 64 shared video though, so not for gaming... I love my laptop. I'll never go desktop again.

Desktop is where that gaming's at dude... Laptops ain't shit. Get a bomb case with a fat power supply, then continue to pimp it out...

Share this post


Link to post
Stealthy Ivan said:

Desktop is where that gaming's at dude... Laptops ain't shit. Get a bomb case with a fat power supply, then continue to pimp it out...


Heh. I tend to console game actually... cept for like.. diablo 2 or something.

Share this post


Link to post
Cyb said:

cooking my nanners

Heh, I heard about this guy who had a P4 Satellite and once used it on his lap for two hours. He sued Toshiba for second degree burns on his scrotum! So what you said is not so farfetched.

Share this post


Link to post

This MicronPC laptop is getting pretty hot here right now. Maybe I should find my way to a desk or something before it burns my nuts off.

Anyways, I don't exactly know of a laptop/notebook to recommend, but I certainly would like a new laptop. Right now I'm using some laptop that my dad got from his work office, and still has even after he quit the job. Looks like they forgot about it, so I get me a pretty decent laptop on my hands. It does what I really want to use it for, and that is to play Doom and map.

Share this post


Link to post

BTW, today I took the plunge too. I gave up on the Asus M6N I was longing to buy and, on a brief twist of fate, ordered the Acer I told you about. It was around €450 cheaper than the Asus with the same configuration (even better, since the M6N has a 9600) and looks far more robust than I'd expect from an Acer laptop.

It's a Travelmate 4001WLMi in case you're interested in knowing better.

Share this post


Link to post

emachines are decent but they can be cheap bastards. My sister got an emachine with 512MB ram.... 64MB video ram and 448MB normal ram.

Share this post


Link to post
Sephiroth said:

aviod compaq!!!! chirst i have had to rebuild this thing 3 times
display
floppy
CMOS issue, needed to reset

the emachines 6811 is a good buy, i think that model is also a 64 bit CPU

centrino has great battery life, athlons either tie it or come second, then celerons fallowed by P4.

this will NOT be a system for gaming. gameing laptops cost a shit load and some have heat issues. get something that is durable and worth while. dells are also good, i may not like their desktops but their laptops are great. if a dell laptop can survive my brother it should do well with you.
as with any prebuilt system i recommend wipeing out the OS that is pre installed and installing a fresh winXP if you can get it. HP's and others often ship with spyware preinstalled. things like GAIN, MyWebSearch and webtangent.


AKA nothing ad-aware cant fix

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  
×