Help Choosing Laptop

MarkWildey · 24 January 2007, 12:55

Ok boys and girls...

I'm in the market for a new Laptop and suspect there are some geeks out there with advice..

What I'm considering is a Dell 9400, Core2 duo, with 2Gb mem, 100Gb hd, Nvida 7900 graphics card. There's a few of these on EBay which are much discounted compared with buying it from Dell. Was up the smoke yesterday and went down Tottenham Court Road but nothing jumped out.

I use PhotoShop and some other cpu/memory heavy tasks related to my work hence 2Gb of memory.

Being that I get out and about I'm not sure about the 17" screen but have used a laptop in the past and found it much nicer to use than a 15.4"

Any thoughts on alternate.

Thanks in advance.

Mark

The Garfish · 24 January 2007, 13:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkWildey

and suspect there are some geeks out there with advice..

duz dat meen dat eny nobbur wot reeplyes wiv de addvice iz a geak cuz ifn sow noe nobbur iz gonna reeply forr feer ov bein sean az a geak yew nobbur

gaRf

Biggles · 24 January 2007, 13:04

If its this one seems like a fairly good buy. Not a bargain but good enough.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-Dell-e1705...QQcmdZViewItem

Be aware that the 7900 GS card in this Laptop is only 256 MB and it will not function any ware as good as a Desk top PC.

Biggles · 24 January 2007, 13:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Garfish

duz dat meen dat eny nobbur wot reeplyes wiv de addvice iz a geak cuz ifn sow noe nobbur iz gonna reeply forr feer ov bein sean az a geak yew nobbur

gaRf

Well I took the bait the same time as you Garf.

John Kennett · 24 January 2007, 13:05

I bought a Dell laptop a few months ago. The price was good, and it seems to be OK.

General opinion from other Dell users seems to be that the hardware is fine, but if you need any after sales service you're fscked. I needed a new mouse driver and gave up with Dell support after getting absolutely nowhere on the phone or on their (barely) live chat.

John

Andy Moore · 24 January 2007, 14:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkWildey

Any thoughts on alternate.

An Apple MacBook Pro.

MarkWildey · 24 January 2007, 16:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy Moore

An Apple MacBook Pro.

The Dark Side.

Not for me!

Andy Moore · 24 January 2007, 17:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkWildey

The Dark Side.

Not for me!

Think Different. Think Mac.

wavecrosschris · 24 January 2007, 18:48

Dell all the way, unless you consider asthetics and simplicty of use as more important then go for a mac. Or that super slim Sony Vaio thing which weights about as much as the battery I have in mine on its own and is made out of carbon fibre...costs a fortune though.

Biggles · 24 January 2007, 18:53

Mark,

Take a look at the following manufacturers web sites. They all make serious laptops.

Rock

Evesham

AJP

Novatech

Dell, as you've said

slimtim · 25 January 2007, 08:44

The new HP ones are stunning, very nice piano black finish, slim and light and great spec for the money. I was going to get a 15 inch one, with 1.8GHz processor, 2 gig of ram, 120gig Hdd and loads of other bells and whistles for only £729 on dabs. All the components should work better together than a custom built one from Dell for example...kind of half way to going the mac route. Also look at fujitsu siemens ones, they are slim and good spec too.

John Kennett · 25 January 2007, 09:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by slimtim

All the components should work better together than a custom built one from Dell for example

Why's that?

I had a look at a HP/Compaq laptop the other day and it had a really shiny reflective screen that I wasn't very keen on.

John

Bern Hanreck · 25 January 2007, 09:56

I tried to buy a Dell laptop in mid November for work . They completely c****d up the order by duplicating it and then cancelling both ! It was totally impossible to speak to onyone on the phone other than in Hydrabad . ( All very polite and wanting to help but totally ineffective ). The emails were also directed to India .
I do believe that if they got it right first time , you might be OK but otherwise hopeless ! In my experience the basic deals looked ok pricewise , but all add-ons proved costly .

Aidan · 26 January 2007, 00:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by slimtim

The new HP ones are stunning, very nice piano black finish, slim and light and great spec for the money. I was going to get a 15 inch one, with 1.8GHz processor, 2 gig of ram, 120gig Hdd and loads of other bells and whistles for only £729 on dabs. All the components should work better together than a custom built one from Dell for example...kind of half way to going the mac route. Also look at fujitsu siemens ones, they are slim and good spec too.

Yep, I am on one (HP) at the moment with two gigs of Ram and god knows what else. Got it in PC world for 1600 Euro vat inc.
It is great and has everything, it is a duo 1.6ghz something or other.
Its sex on legs (very small ones) and sleek and Cute, and I mean the computer, oh and it works too.

Ask Codders, he does them as far as I know. Dell are great, just make sure you go through the Service centre for small to medium Bus or you will go via along way and several languages.

codprawn · 26 January 2007, 01:44

Dell are NOT great - they deliberately try to tie you into them for life - they even epoxy heat sinks onto the CPUs to stop you upgrading!!!

What many people fail to realise is that very few of even the main brand laptops are actually made by the companies concerned - they are designed and built in China and then branded as Sony - Dell or whatever.

1600 Euros for a laptop should be all singing and dancing and yes HP is good stuff - was even better when it was Compaq - HP should stick to printers - their servers are nowhere near as good as the old Compaq ones.

Tony · 26 January 2007, 05:23

We use Sony Vaio's here. I have had 4 now and they all have been brilliant. The newest one has a carbon case with a finger print reader!.
If you come to guernsey you can get it VAT free too (LOL)

blimp · 26 January 2007, 16:27

I notice you mentioned that you use photoshop a lot ... I presume you're aware that most design professionals stick rigidly to Macs and the primary software used is Adobe (photoshop / illustrator). I run a Mac Pro for the desktop but have a MacBook for on the road. You don't need the MacBook Pro - the normal one does the job - and I regularly work in photoshop on it with files in excess of 1gb

DJL · 26 January 2007, 18:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by blimp

I notice you mentioned that you use photoshop a lot ... I presume you're aware that most design professionals stick rigidly to Macs and the primary software used is Adobe (photoshop / illustrator). I run a Mac Pro for the desktop but have a MacBook for on the road. You don't need the MacBook Pro - the normal one does the job - and I regularly work in photoshop on it with files in excess of 1gb

Seen as all news Macs are now running Intel Core 2 Duo processors, you won't see any real performance difference between a Mac and PC. In fact at the moment Photoshop will run slower on an Intel Mac than Intel PC due to the fact that Photoshop CS 2 and below have to be run in an emulator. Photoshop CS 3 which is still in Beta will be native to Intel Mac.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tony

We use Sony Vaio's here. I have had 4 now and they all have been brilliant. The newest one has a carbon case with a finger print reader!.

We dumped 30 ish Vaios of varying ages - wouldn't use them ever again. Huge problems getting alternative OS's to run correctly, even changing from XP Home to XP Pro. Sony knew there were problems but never fixed them. They were also flimsy and generally fell apart.

I would stick with HP or Dell. As Aidan says if you go Dell, go through the business side, they provide better support.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Biggles

Be aware that the 7900 GS card in this Laptop is only 256 MB and it will not function any ware as good as a Desk top PC.

The 7900GS is a pretty good graphics card. Speed wise there is negligable speed difference between the 256MB and 512MB versions - mainly due to slower memory speeds on the 512MB version - in some cases the 512MB will perform worse than the 256MB version. Also unless your running at really high resolutions, which you won't be on a laptop (screens not big enough), you won't need the extra RAM anyway.

Also, I would recommend getting one with Windows Vista. Power management has been significantly improved, so much so my Acer Tablet now runs for longer with Vista than XP

nick wood · 30 January 2007, 10:32

I would suggest Acer Ferrari 4005, Have had mine for 6 months, 2ghz & 2g mem & 100gb HD. etc 15.4inch screen etc. It is very good and has gven me no problems.

osprey__viper · 30 January 2007, 10:45

Toshiba sattelite for me. 17" screen, full keyboard, duo core two processor, 1gb ram and not shared with the Nvida graphics card. Plays Flight Sim X a treat. Very satisfied with it.