I have a budget and need a good laptop, Suggestions?

[Mchotdoggy]

I have £300 - £400 to spend on a new laptop.
I live in the UK so would prefer UK shops to other shops,

Anyone give me a good one ? :)

[lemongrapes]

What will it be used for?

[Tezza1234]

Damn, If you'd asked about a week back, Dell had a furious Back-to-college sale on!

[editline]09:17PM[/editline]

[url]http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164845[/url]
Pros:
Feature packed
Upgradable Via Express card slot (PCI-E 1x)
Core2 Duo PRocessor

Cons:
Intel Graphics
SD only card reader
[b]£400[/b]

[url]http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164692[/url]
Pros:
Decent Graphics (For a laptop)
HDMI Output (Wether you need this depends on your circumstances, But HDMI can be easily adapted to DVI)
Wecam In Lid
Good Multiformat Card reader
16:9 Screen

Cons:
AMD CPU, Now I am a huge AMD Fan but their mobile chips aren't brilliant
[b]£400[/b]

Stay away from semprons and celerons, They get hot and don't offer much in terms of performance and energy efficiency.
Need to know what you want it for though to better target your needs.

[Mchotdoggy]

Used for college, I'm doing software development, and games. half life 2 and all the trimmings.

And yeah I've been looking on dell, i think I'm going to bump my budget up to £500 mark,
It seems there really isn't much choice for money.

I've seen the HP one on ebuyer, it looked decent, it's just the graphics let it down.
I might just sponge out the money and get a beast from dell instead :D
What do you recommend from dell which can run games with decent quality ??

[Tezza1234]

I ordered a Dell Studio 15 on friday (The one that is priced at £499 now) in Lime green
[url]http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Laptops/laptop-studio-1555/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-1555&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&~ck=mn[/url]

Pros:
The pentium Dual core isn't THAT far off the core2s in terms of performance (I read heavily on this to make my chocie to save £100 and loose minute performance)
ATi HD 4570 with 512MB of [b]Dedicated[/b] Graphics memory
4GB Of memory
Firewire!
Express card slot
64 Bit O/S as standard
Getting replacement parts is easy
16:9 Screen with LED backlight

Cons:
It can take a while for delivery, Ordered mine on friday and it just got sent out today after being built.
Silly bandwagon surrounding Dell [i]Desktops[/i] Seems to leak into the laptops, which are very nice.
Slot load drive, Some people don't like these, I prefer them.
LED technology used for screen can impose strange colour banding from what I have heard.

The mobility 4570 Is roughly equal (A bit more powerful than) the Desktop 4550.

Mine too is being used at college for software development, but aswell as that I will be using mine as a primary gaming computer and an audio production workstation (Hence why I wanted a laptop with Firewire)

[b]Edited:[/b]
The wait is aggonizing

[Arteus]

A few from PC world (They're having a bit of a sale)
[url]http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1692487042.1251808376@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdiadeieklklikcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=275742&category_oid=-36730[/url]
[url]http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1692487042.1251808376@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdiadeieklklikcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=092092&category_oid=-36730[/url]
[url]http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1692487042.1251808376@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdiadeieklklikcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=676251&category_oid=-36730[/url]

Or if you want to lean it more towards gaming
[url]http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/laptop/range/x16hd.html[/url]

[Tezza1234]

From Notebookcheck:
[img]http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/6614/nbgfx.png[/img]

Impressive card if you ask me.

I would of thought the 105M would of smoked it, But it trails behind? Having a hard time believing it, but these benches are from submissions that are averaged... So they must be, withtin some error, correct :s

[editline]01:46PM[/editline]

Just this very second my Dell is now trackable :D

[Mchotdoggy]

I've decided to stop being such a tight bastard with my money, and get myself an XPS M1730.

Here's the build i have from dell, what do you guys thing about it?

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T8300 2.40GHz 800MHz FSB 3 MB L2 Cache
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64bit
4092MB 667MHz Duel Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x 2048)
Dual SLI 512mb nVidia GeForce 9800GT Graphics
DVD RW Drive
Intel Next Gen Wirelss-N Mini-Card
9-cell Lithium-Ion Battery

And a partridge in a pear tree.
Dell doesn't let me change the ram to any higher, it's part of their deal.
Total cost about £1150. But I'm getting it on pay monthly so around £1500 by the end of it.
£42 a month on a 36 month contract.

Should i go for it or not bother ? :)

[Tezza1234]

If they will allow you to take the finance deal then I don't see why not* :) - alot of people whine about laptops being overpriced, but I don't think they get one thing... It's a [i]Laptop[/i] by their very nature they are going to be more expensive than a desktop :downs:

Go looking on some voucher sites for discount deals before you buy, There's always Dell vouchers out there! - I would of got an extra 10% off If had ordered 3 days before I did :o

*25 Years Home owner, 30 years With bank, Self-employed and they turned us down on a £500 purchase.. What. Ended up taking it out of my fathers ISA and I am paying him £55 a month for 5 months.

[Legend286]

[QUOTE=Mchotdoggy;17113947]I've decided to stop being such a tight bastard with my money, and get myself an XPS M1730.

Here's the build i have from dell, what do you guys thing about it?

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T8300 2.40GHz 800MHz FSB 3 MB L2 Cache
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64bit
4092MB 667MHz Duel Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x 2048)
Dual SLI 512mb nVidia GeForce 9800GT Graphics
DVD RW Drive
Intel Next Gen Wirelss-N Mini-Card
9-cell Lithium-Ion Battery

And a partridge in a pear tree.
Dell doesn't let me change the ram to any higher, it's part of their deal.
Total cost about £1150. But I'm getting it on pay monthly so around £1500 by the end of it.
£42 a month on a 36 month contract.

Should i go for it or not bother ? :)[/QUOTE]

Don't, get this instead: [url]http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-020-MS[/url]

[Tezza1234]

Can't even begin to image how short the battery life in that is :v:

[Mchotdoggy]

[QUOTE=Tezza1234;17118484]If they will allow you to take the finance deal then I don't see why not* :) - alot of people whine about laptops being overpriced, but I don't think they get one thing... It's a [i]Laptop[/i] by their very nature they are going to be more expensive than a desktop :downs:

Go looking on some voucher sites for discount deals before you buy, There's always Dell vouchers out there! - I would of got an extra 10% off If had ordered 3 days before I did :o

*25 Years Home owner, 30 years With bank, Self-employed and they turned us down on a £500 purchase.. What. Ended up taking it out of my fathers ISA and I am paying him £55 a month for 5 months.[/QUOTE]

If you got turned down for that, I'm screwed then ha ha. I'm 18, unemployed, starting college in a week and have no income whatsoever. Thankfully i have a dad with a credit card :D
Still haven't ordered it, but it's just a matter of time :D

Where would i go to find a voucher for dell ?

[Tezza1234]

[url]http://myvouchercodes.co.uk[/url]
[url]http://vouchercodes.co.uk[/url]

Are good voucher sites

[Mchotdoggy]

Damn there is one there for 10% off XPS but it says it's no longer valid.
Cheers for the help :D
I will probably post a final build of what i get just to make sure.

[Nori]

I have an XPS m1530 myself and let me tell you, I don't regret the purchase at all. This baby can handle just about everything but GTAIV.
I liked it so much, I just gave my old desktop to my brothers and basically hooked the laptop up to be a desktop by adding mouse, keyboard, soundsystem, and monitor.

The only difference is that you somehow are getting two SLI'd 9800M GT graphics, whereas I only have one 8600M GT. :ohdear:

[Mchotdoggy]

Haha thanks for that man, now I'm getting one for sure :D
I've given my desktop to my sister, so I'm stuck using my mums laptop ugh.
Hopefully i will have it very very soon.

Do you think with the two 9800M GT i will be able to play GTAIV ?

[Nori]

It's mainly a VRAM issue, so if you get a lot of VRAM (512mb should do) it should work fine. Oh, and ARMA2 is too slow for me as well.
I can usually run TF2 at a nice 60fps on high settings on 1600x1200, along with UT3 at max settings.

I forgot to mention, my laptop already gets hotter than fuck as it is so you may have problems with two 9800s, although most of the heat comes from the CPU region.

[Mchotdoggy]

That's pretty good, TF2 and UT3 on high :D
I can't wait to get it man, ringing dell up Monday.

As for the heat, the laptop I'm using at the moment gets stupidly hot anyway, so i can deal with that.

I'm getting my XPS from the dell business section, but the name is the Dell XPS M1530 NB but the same model with same parts on personal is without the NB. Just to make sure, NB stands for notebook and doesn't mean it's shit right ?

[Nori]

Probably just an internal thing. I personally got mine 25% off with a Business discount. Make SURE you get the 4-year accidental breakage and on-site repair warranties. I called them up about the heat and how I had a dent here and there and they practically replaced the entire laptop at my house the next day, including the case!

[Mchotdoggy]

Did they? That sounds pretty good. I doubt mine will get dented though.
As for the heat, does it cause any actual damage or is it just hot ?

I might get it, at the moment i just have the base warranty package.

[Tezza1234]

Haha same position as me.

I gave my computer to my brother, Using my dad's laptop - Complete gender swap (apart from me :v, I'm male) - My laptop comes on the 8th - 10 Days total delivery+build time. Totally worth it for the lime green lid :D

[Mchotdoggy]

10 days? My dell desktop was here within a week :D
Mine is Crimson Red with White LED back lights :D

I can't wait :D

[Mchotdoggy]

Oh and nori, does your XPS keyboard light up? is that standard with all of them?
As well do the lights on the front change colour or is that an optional extra ?

[Nori]

My keyboard doesn't light up and I wouldn't need that because I never look at the keyboard anyways. 1730 may have that, I dunno.

I don't know what you mean by the second question.

[Mchotdoggy]

Well on you tube videos the keyboard is back lit, and the lights on the front and mouse pad all change colors to red, green blue. Which model do you have ?

[butre]

If you haven't already ordered, skip the SLI. It's pretty useless in a laptop, all it does is drain your battery faster.

[Asar]

Get a Sony vaio VGN-NR38S on ebay or amazon. They are about £399 used, i got a bid one for £300.

2GHz Core 2
2GB DDR2 ram
250GB HD
8400M GT

It'll be better than that dell because the processor won't be bottlenecking the gpu. CSS is 100fps avg, TF2 is 40fps avg. That's all on high/very high as well.

[Mchotdoggy]

I can't skip the sli =/ it's the only options there.

[Nori]

Asar, I get those FPS with my model and he's getting even better hardware than I am.