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New lap top advice


Nantwich girl
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I've decided to buy a new lap top but I don't know which are good or bad. I went to pc world on Saturday and the nerd in the shop spent ages yapping on to me and I didn't have much of a clue what he was babbling on about. Anyway he recommended this hp pavilion Dv7 4020sa. It's about £580. I tried to find reviews if it on the web but couldn't find a single one. Does anybody know if it's any good or are there other recommendations? Thanks!

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Guest Scaramanga
Upto £1000. I want something that can used for everything really. I don't have the space for a desk top pc so I could do with a desktop replacement. I would like a 17" screen though

 

That's still a little vague dude:smile:, but with a bag of sand burning a hole in your pocket, you've quite a choice.

 

Alienware M15x Laptop Product Details | Dell UK - Only a 15" screen but that laptop is the bollocks. £999

 

https://shop.sony.co.uk/shop/ipc/displayLayout/%28cScrollCharGroupName=%24BASE_GROUP&cInstId=1&layout=25_173_74_75_77_78_79_80_82_91_92_141&cCharName=C1000000009_F13&next=looks&carea=4B423D4AEFE20122E10080002BC29BDF&isProdDetailPageCTO=true&order=null&citem=4B423D4AEFE20122E10080002BC29BDF4C801D38C3B100B2E10080002BC29B72&uiarea=2&cCharGroupName=%24BASE_GROUP&ctype=areaDetails&isHideActive=true%29/.do - Sony Vaio F Series, 16.4" screen. High end laptop. Start from £729 upwards and is customisable.

 

Kikatek.com | (N73JN-TY035V) Asus N73JN-TY035V Notebook Core i5 Dual Core (i5-520M) 2.4GHz 4096MB 640GB (2x320GB) 17.3 inch TFT Blu-Ray Drive LAN WLAN BT Windows 7 Home Premium (GeForce GT335M) - Asus N73, 17.3" screen with blu ray player. £997

 

You've literally hundreds to choose from, but honestly i'd first consider what your going to be using it for. If your just going to use your laptop for browsing, shopping, word processing and what not. You could pick up a 17" laptop for under £400 and spend the remaining £600 on shoes or something.

 

I know absolutely fuck all about Mac books so someone else may be able to help with that, but i'm pretty sure that you won't get a Mac book with a 17"+ screen for a grand.

 

If your after an all-rounder i'd plump for the Asus with it's built in blu ray player. As a personal choice, i'd go for the Alienware because it looks cool as fuck and is a serious bit of kit for that money.

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That's still a little vague dude:smile:, but with a bag of sand burning a hole in your pocket, you've quite a choice.

 

Alienware M15x Laptop Product Details | Dell UK - Only a 15" screen but that laptop is the bollocks. £999

 

https://shop.sony.co.uk/shop/ipc/displayLayout/%28cScrollCharGroupName=%24BASE_GROUP&cInstId=1&layout=25_173_74_75_77_78_79_80_82_91_92_141&cCharName=C1000000009_F13&next=looks&carea=4B423D4AEFE20122E10080002BC29BDF&isProdDetailPageCTO=true&order=null&citem=4B423D4AEFE20122E10080002BC29BDF4C801D38C3B100B2E10080002BC29B72&uiarea=2&cCharGroupName=%24BASE_GROUP&ctype=areaDetails&isHideActive=true%29/.do - Sony Vaio F Series, 16.4" screen. High end laptop. Start from £729 upwards and is customisable.

 

Kikatek.com | (N73JN-TY035V) Asus N73JN-TY035V Notebook Core i5 Dual Core (i5-520M) 2.4GHz 4096MB 640GB (2x320GB) 17.3 inch TFT Blu-Ray Drive LAN WLAN BT Windows 7 Home Premium (GeForce GT335M) - Asus N73, 17.3" screen with blu ray player. £997

 

You've literally hundreds to choose from, but honestly i'd first consider what your going to be using it for. If your just going to use your laptop for browsing, shopping, word processing and what not. You could pick up a 17" laptop for under £400 and spend the remaining £600 on shoes or something.

 

I know absolutely fuck all about Mac books so someone else may be able to help with that, but i'm pretty sure that you won't get a Mac book with a 17"+ screen for a grand.

 

If your after an all-rounder i'd plump for the Asus with it's built in blu ray player. As a personal choice, i'd go for the Alienware because it looks cool as fuck and is a serious bit of kit for that money.

 

Thanks that's fab!!. I've got a lot of looking up to do know ;-)

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That's still a little vague dude:smile:, but with a bag of sand burning a hole in your pocket, you've quite a choice.

 

Alienware M15x Laptop Product Details | Dell UK - Only a 15" screen but that laptop is the bollocks. £999

 

https://shop.sony.co.uk/shop/ipc/displayLayout/%28cScrollCharGroupName=%24BASE_GROUP&cInstId=1&layout=25_173_74_75_77_78_79_80_82_91_92_141&cCharName=C1000000009_F13&next=looks&carea=4B423D4AEFE20122E10080002BC29BDF&isProdDetailPageCTO=true&order=null&citem=4B423D4AEFE20122E10080002BC29BDF4C801D38C3B100B2E10080002BC29B72&uiarea=2&cCharGroupName=%24BASE_GROUP&ctype=areaDetails&isHideActive=true%29/.do - Sony Vaio F Series, 16.4" screen. High end laptop. Start from £729 upwards and is customisable.

 

Kikatek.com | (N73JN-TY035V) Asus N73JN-TY035V Notebook Core i5 Dual Core (i5-520M) 2.4GHz 4096MB 640GB (2x320GB) 17.3 inch TFT Blu-Ray Drive LAN WLAN BT Windows 7 Home Premium (GeForce GT335M) - Asus N73, 17.3" screen with blu ray player. £997

 

You've literally hundreds to choose from, but honestly i'd first consider what your going to be using it for. If your just going to use your laptop for browsing, shopping, word processing and what not. You could pick up a 17" laptop for under £400 and spend the remaining £600 on shoes or something.

 

I know absolutely fuck all about Mac books so someone else may be able to help with that, but i'm pretty sure that you won't get a Mac book with a 17"+ screen for a grand.

 

If your after an all-rounder i'd plump for the Asus with it's built in blu ray player. As a personal choice, i'd go for the Alienware because it looks cool as fuck and is a serious bit of kit for that money.

 

 

Alienware's stuff always looks a bit too bling for my taste, also 15" screens are very 2002. Can't argue with the specs though, very nice.

 

The Asus one would be my pick out of those three. With a budget of a grand, you're not going to buy a shite one unless you really work at it but if all you use it for is internet, office stuff, downloading your camera and watching the odd film, you could spend half that and still get something perfectly adequate.

 

Definitely don't buy any kind of Mac, unless you're sufficiently well-off to be able to afford to pay roughly 150% of market price in terms of performance just to get a pretty case and a massively misplaced sense of superiority.

 

Oh and don't buy anything from PC World. Ever.

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Thanks for your help. I've got way too much choice now!!

My ex was always into his computers an computer games. If he wasn't such a shit I'd have asked him. One last one though. Somebody in work bought a hp envy 17 ? I think and he said it was superb and wouldn't be our of date for a few years. He did say they are about £1200 though but he recons it's the one to go for.

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Guest Scaramanga
Alienware's stuff always looks a bit too bling for my taste, also 15" screens are very 2002. Can't argue with the specs though, very nice.

 

The Asus one would be my pick out of those three. With a budget of a grand, you're not going to buy a shite one unless you really work at it but if all you use it for is internet, office stuff, downloading your camera and watching the odd film, you could spend half that and still get something perfectly adequate.

 

Definitely don't buy any kind of Mac, unless you're sufficiently well-off to be able to afford to pay roughly 150% of market price in terms of performance just to get a pretty case and a massively misplaced sense of superiority.

 

Oh and don't buy anything from PC World. Ever.

 

Agreed. I don't slate Macs because I don't want to come across as a "hater" but you've stated pretty much every reason why I wouldn't buy one or advise someone to.

 

I had a problem with PC world many years ago which opened my eyes to how many of their staff are complete and utter clueless cunts. It's a shame a lot of their customers are as clueless as them otherwise they'd have been out of business years ago.

 

@ Nantwich girl - Your mate is half correct. You won't need to upgrade, but you probably (like everyone else) will. I guarantee, when Intel work out how to put their new i9 CPU in a laptop a shit load of people will buy one, for no other reason than it's "faster".

 

Like RoboRiise said, make sure your buying the laptop that suits your needs. Don't waste money on processing power your never going to use. And, for £1000, you'd have to struggle to find a laptop that is shit.

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Agreed. I don't slate Macs because I don't want to come across as a "hater" but you've stated pretty much every reason why I wouldn't buy one or advise someone to.

 

I had a problem with PC world many years ago which opened my eyes to how many of their staff are complete and utter clueless cunts. It's a shame a lot of their customers are as clueless as them otherwise they'd have been out of business years ago.

 

@ Nantwich girl - Your mate is half correct. You won't need to upgrade, but you probably (like everyone else) will. I guarantee, when Intel work out how to put their new i9 CPU in a laptop a shit load of people will buy one, for no other reason than it's "faster".

 

Like RoboRiise said, make sure your buying the laptop that suits your needs. Don't waste money on processing power your never going to use. And, for £1000, you'd have to struggle to find a laptop that is shit.

 

 

Yeah, not really a Mac hater myself, other than for the company's appalling smugness* - I used to be back in the days of Mac-only addons and upgrades and one button mice but these days they're perfectly fine machines and they look great, it just pisses me off when people equate more expensive with better. If money isn't a concern, people can buy what they want as far as I'm concerned and good luck to them but for those of us on a budget, they aren't usually the best option in terms of performance versus price.

 

I do get a bit pissed off with the ridiculous "they're better for photo editing/design/music" argument though. It's the reverse of the argument about people thinking Macs are difficult to use because they've been brought up with PCs - people in the creative industries historically used Macs pretty much exclusively but Photoshop is Photoshop and Pro Tools is Pro Tools, regardless of what they're running on. I built the PC that my mate's home studio is based around and he's never found himself longing for a Mac.

 

Another point to bear in mind Nantwich girl - as long as the processor in the laptop is halfway decent (and it will be if you spend anything like a grand) I can pretty much guarantee that you'll see better performance in everyday use by looking at a laptop with more memory, rather than one with the next processor up the range. At the end of the market you're talking about, if you have two similar spec laptops to chose from, especially running Windows 7, I'd always choose more memory over a slightly faster processor.

 

I'm not one of the forum's resident hardcore tech heads though, so if someone like Uncle Meat comes along and shoots me down, listen to them.

 

 

*One example - when Apple brough the new iPhone out and their answer to people's complaints about losing the signal was that they should shell out £20 for a fucking case! Yeah, great idea Steve. Or, here's a though - why not:

 

a) design a phone that works regardless of how you hold it, or if that's beyond you,

 

b) accept that you fucked up before the world's media get on your back and just give the fucking case away with the phone. You cheap fuck.

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Guest Scaramanga
Yeah, not really a Mac hater myself, other than for the company's appalling smugness* - I used to be back in the days of Mac-only addons and upgrades and one button mice but these days they're perfectly fine machines and they look great, it just pisses me off when people equate more expensive with better. If money isn't a concern, people can buy what they want as far as I'm concerned and good luck to them but for those of us on a budget, they aren't usually the best option in terms of performance versus price.

 

I do get a bit pissed off with the ridiculous "they're better for photo editing/design/music" argument though. It's the reverse of the argument about people thinking Macs are difficult to use because they've been brought up with PCs - people in the creative industries historically used Macs pretty much exclusively but Photoshop is Photoshop and Pro Tools is Pro Tools, regardless of what they're running on. I built the PC that my mate's home studio is based around and he's never found himself longing for a Mac.

 

Another point to bear in mind Nantwich girl - as long as the processor in the laptop is halfway decent (and it will be if you spend anything like a grand) I can pretty much guarantee that you'll see better performance in everyday use by looking at a laptop with more memory, rather than one with the next processor up the range. At the end of the market you're talking about, if you have two similar spec laptops to chose from, especially running Windows 7, I'd always choose more memory over a slightly faster processor.

 

I'm not one of the forum's resident hardcore tech heads though, so if someone like Uncle Meat comes along and shoots me down, listen to them.

 

 

*One example - when Apple brough the new iPhone out and their answer to people's complaints about losing the signal was that they should shell out £20 for a fucking case! Yeah, great idea Steve. Or, here's a though - why not:

 

a) design a phone that works regardless of how you hold it, or if that's beyond you,

 

b) accept that you fucked up before the world's media get on your back and just give the fucking case away with the phone. You cheap fuck.

 

I must admit to hating Apple dude, lots of reasons spring to mind but one in particular irks me. A mate of mine ran his own one man band software house and used to write apps for the Apple store, until Apple told him to fuck off because they were taking the piss and he wouldn't be treated like a cunt. That story has a more technical background, but when he starts rabbiting on about development my eyes glaze over.

 

Another great one is Apple refusing to honour the warranties of people who smoke because opening the case would constitute a bio-hazard (only the US so far, as far as I know). No problem with taking the chain smoking fat fuckers money as you sold it to him though. Pricks.

 

The whole Mac/PC debate pisses me off no end. I had lads in my last place acting all superior for no other reason than, they own a Mac. Like you say though, most equate expense to quality.

 

It did piss on their bonfire though when they found out my graphics card cost more (and has more under the bonnet) than their whole fucking computer :yes:.

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Guest davelfc
I must admit to hating Apple dude, lots of reasons spring to mind but one in particular irks me. A mate of mine ran his own one man band software house and used to write apps for the Apple store, until Apple told him to fuck off because they were taking the piss and he wouldn't be treated like a cunt. That story has a more technical background, but when he starts rabbiting on about development my eyes glaze over.

 

Another great one is Apple refusing to honour the warranties of people who smoke because opening the case would constitute a bio-hazard (only the US so far, as far as I know). No problem with taking the chain smoking fat fuckers money as you sold it to him though. Pricks.

 

The whole Mac/PC debate pisses me off no end. I had lads in my last place acting all superior for no other reason than, they own a Mac. Like you say though, most equate expense to quality.

 

 

It did piss on their bonfire though when they found out my graphics card cost more (and has more under the bonnet) than their whole fucking computer :yes:.

 

You sound so much like an apple owner it's unreal.

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Gotta say I don't understand all the anti Apple stuff.

 

Yes I have a MacBook but I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron i3 laptop so I can look at it from both sides.

 

For £1,000, I'd be looking for a MacBook. Apple's UK website has refurbed kit on there and you get a full 12 month warranty. You usually get a decent amount off. It changes day by day so always worth a peek. Google it - I can't post links yet.

 

I got my Mac that way and it arrived in perfect nick.

 

The whole fanboy thing is annoying I agree but I like my Mac just because..., well because it's a Mac.

 

While you do pay top dollar for them, there are some small kick backs:

 

Apple's own version of Office (iWorks) is about £50 or so - loads cheaper than MS Office.

 

O/S upgrades are cheap - Snow Leopard is £22 on Amazon. While I don't condone software theft, Mac's O/S doesn't have serial numbers.

 

Battery life on them is pretty good - my old MacBook still gets 3-4 hours from a full charge.

 

Just a personal preference and like I say I also have a Windows laptop for other stuff, mainly MS Publisher.

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Gotta say I don't understand all the anti Apple stuff.

 

Yes I have a MacBook but I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron i3 laptop so I can look at it from both sides.

 

For £1,000, I'd be looking for a MacBook. Apple's UK website has refurbed kit on there and you get a full 12 month warranty. You usually get a decent amount off. It changes day by day so always worth a peek. Google it - I can't post links yet.

 

I got my Mac that way and it arrived in perfect nick.

 

The whole fanboy thing is annoying I agree but I like my Mac just because..., well because it's a Mac.

 

While you do pay top dollar for them, there are some small kick backs:

 

Apple's own version of Office (iWorks) is about £50 or so - loads cheaper than MS Office.

 

O/S upgrades are cheap - Snow Leopard is £22 on Amazon. While I don't condone software theft, Mac's O/S doesn't have serial numbers.

 

Battery life on them is pretty good - my old MacBook still gets 3-4 hours from a full charge.

 

Just a personal preference and like I say I also have a Windows laptop for other stuff, mainly MS Publisher.

 

Applespacks.

Look, it's a computer, big wow, it's got applemac on the side and makes you look good in front of shallow people and makes you feel good inside. Well done the marketing dept.

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I love this forum.

 

You're right, it is just a computer.

 

I have one that is white, one that is red.

 

I like the white one because it's easy to use and the battery lasts a long time.

 

I like the red one because it means I can use Publisher.

 

If pushed, I like the white one better. If someone asked should I buy a white one or a red one, my suggestion would be a white one.

 

But you're right, it is only a computer.

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I'm too old skool, if it doesn't have a 'turbo' button on, a cream-coloured faded case that's covered in dust and make a whirrring sound with Windows 98 in 16 bit graphics mode then it isn't as good as mine.

 

They can make it look pretty but if it doesn't have a turbo button then yours can't live with mine.

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Applespacks.

Look, it's a computer, big wow, it's got applemac on the side and makes you look good in front of shallow people and makes you feel good inside. Well done the marketing dept.

 

 

I wasn't going to post this again but you've set it up so well that it would be rude not to.

 

iproduct.jpg

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Well are you going to be encoding 1080p? Doing some heavy video editing? Playing 3D games with hardware acceleration? Setting up a home server?

 

I'd recommend a simple Intel Core 2 Duo (or AMD Turion X2) with 4GB RAM and a respectable Video Card. It'll do the trick, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and a Alienware M15x.

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If by budget you mean cheap, then:

 

Samsung R700 - Core 2 Duo 2 GHz - 17″ - 2 GB Ram - 160 GB HDD

 

It comes with Vista but that's easily downgraded/upgraded.

 

There's a cheaper one from Novatech. Don't buy from Novatech though. Ever.

 

You do know that Acer, Samsung and indeed Novatech don't have anything to do with the hardware of operating system of the computer? And that the motherboard, graphics cards and processors are all made by the same few companies?

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Guest Scaramanga
You do know that Acer, Samsung and indeed Novatech don't have anything to do with the hardware of operating system of the computer? And that the motherboard, graphics cards and processors are all made by the same few companies?

 

Yes.

 

But you do know that manufacturing standards vary from company to company?

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