General Laptop Advice From An Old Pro.

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Owing to your thorough knowledge in this field, please guide me

I'm planning to buy a laptop in near future so far i've these 2 models on my mind please advice which to buy

1) Dell inspiron 15r
2nd gen core i3 2310m 2.1GHz dual core processor
3GB RAM
Nvidia geforce gt 525m card with 1GB Memory

2)Inspiron 15r
core i5 480m processor 2.66GHz turbo boost upto 2.93GHz
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 550v with 1GB Memory

Primary use will be gaming (crysis2, CoD:black ops, mafia2, etc) i'm prepared to play at medium settings
Also since i'm on a shoestring budget here will core i3 suffice? as i might not get to lay my hands on the core i5 one.
 

I'm afraid you haven't given me any useful information here. All you've told me is that you want to play high-end games on a shoestring budget (on a laptop?!) with two laptops that I would never have recommended for gaming because of their poor value. How about you tell me what your budget actually is and why you want to do something dumb like blow all your money on a gaming laptop when it's obvious that you don't have the money to blow in the first place. Here's a neat little find that I came across the other day, I think that it just might suit your purposes:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=59810&vpn=LX.RC402.067&manufacture=Acer
You're going to have to lose your tunnel vision and realise that if you want the most for your money, there are other names besides Dell and Intel with which to get it. Remember, it is better to get the Honda you can afford rather than the Cadillac that you can't (Not that Dell is a Cadillac by an means). :sol:
 



Sorry that couldn't provide more useful information as
from what i've been goggling lately the i3 config looked fine

http://www.youtube.com/user/Duradurax#p/u/15/2G1LA9GPsMA

Another problem is that the part of the world i live in you don't get to have much choices when it comes to laptops and coffee 🙁 , believe me I've been to almost every store in my city, checked under every rock. My budget is around $800-840

Chanced upon a good one from acer
Acer Aspire 5742G
core i5 480m
3GB RAM
nVIDIA GT 420M

to me above config is a dream come true, what say?
should i go for it, also sorry if i sound noobish but is acer a reliable company( after sales support etc)
 

Yes, Acer is reliable. In my original post I pointed out that Acer owns Gateway, eMachines and Packard-Bell. They're one of, if not THE biggest laptop company in the world. My own laptop is an eMachines E620 which is a rebranded Acer Aspire 5515. All these companies are huge although I can't comment on their after-sales support because I never use after-sales support except for RMA. I've never had any trouble with RMA from any company I've ever dealt with but at the same time, I've never had to RMA a laptop. I also don't need Windows support because I've been tinkering with Windows since 1992. That does seem like a good deal and if it's the best you can get (wherever you are) then I would say go for it. :sol:
 
I need to buy a new laptop (previously had a lenovo, which is also what I have at work). Between the other members of my household, there's a Dell, a Sony Vaio & a Toshiba.

I'm a basic user - emails, online banking, surfing, you tube, photos, music, tons of spreadsheets, etc. But I'm also very impatient when it comes to waiting for things to load.

I've read and re-read through this entire thread. I thought I understood the basics of what to look for in a new laptop but other than 'big names mean nothing', I'm finding I'm just as confused now as I was before I started reading this.

Long story, but I have to buy this at Best Buy - so I'm limited to the selection there.

The salesman I talked too was really pushing the ASUS - Laptop / Intel® PentiumP6200 // Model: K52F-BIN6 (3 GB DDR3 / 500 GB 7200 RPM) which sells for $400.

I've never heard of that brand and my husband thinks it's too cheap - meaning that we'll just end up replacing it sooner.
I figure whatever I get is going to malfunction in about 3 years (like my Lenovo) and will need to be replaced. Better to replace a $400 laptop than an $800 laptop - especially since I really don't want to spend too much as my son's birthday is coming up.

Now here's the twist - Microsoft has a special going at the moment for students - buy a 'qualifying laptop' over $699 and an X-Box 360 and they will take $200 off the price - which is basically the cost of the Xbox. It just so happens I have a son starting college and guess what .... I promised my other son (the birthday boy) an XBox 360 for his birthday!

So, now I'm not sure - does it make more sense to go for the Microsoft 'deal' - I could take my college kid's Dell and buy him a new more expensive laptop for school and get the birthday boy his Xbox in one fell swoop...saving $200.

Or is it wiser to purchase a less expensive laptop and pick up the XBox separately.

Either way, I'm now confused on which laptop(s) at Best Buy would be wise choice(s) for me.

And regardless of which way I go, I'm going to have to pay Best Buy to remove all the bloatware, etc because if you can't already tell, I have very limited knowledge in this area !!

Any help or suggestions that anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.
 

Well Virginia, it sounds like you're in a bit of a quandary. I can tell you that ASUS is one of the largest makers of computer hardware in the world and also one of the most respected. ASUS makes laptops and video cards but are world-renowned for their motherboards among enthusiasts. Type ASUS in the tomshardware search bar and you will see probably 1000 pages of content. Now, from what I'm seeing here, that Microsoft offer is really too good to pass up because you'll get a more powerful laptop and the Xbox for essentially the same price as a less powerful laptop and an Xbox. That's a bit of a no-brainer. I would say however that your son doesn't need your new laptop and should be just fine with the one he has (especially considering he's getting an Xbox for gaming). I would definitely recommend that you go for the Microsoft offer and enjoy the rewards of it. I know that I wouldn't think twice. I hope this helps you and your family. :sol:
 



Finally found the one :bounce:
Acer 5750g
core i5 2410
4 GB RAM
Nvidia 540m gt 1 GB Memory
500 GB HDD

Seems like an uber laptop for gaming considering my budget.

Thanks For your advice.
 

You're welcome! BTW, love the name! :sol:
 
Hello Avro Arrow, I'm currently looking for a "gaming" laptop. My budget is up to 725 USD (450 Pounds) Will you please help me select the best bang for the buck?
 
I have read in notebookcheck.net about Acer, HP MSI and other notebooks throttling when you are playing games.

They said Intel processores slowdown when it reach certain temperature.

I don't think this is good if you are playing games right?
 

It completely depends... if the notebook is getting too hot and the CPU throttles back to make sure it doesn't overheat or damage the battery, it could be a good thing. Most games are GPU-limited and the throttling back of the CPU might not make much of a difference anyway. :sol:
 


Well, Best Buy discontinued their end of the promo, so I'll end up buying the two separate - but I'm still confused about the right laptop. The Best Buy salesman yesterday was all over Asus with Lenovo coming in second. Which are the two brands I'm leaning towards anyway, but it does makes me wonder if Asus is really that good or if Best Buy is running an incentive for their employees if they sell more Asus laptops ?!? I have a Lenovo for work and my personal laptop was a Lenovo too. Unfortunately, the connector for battery that plugs into the laptop was a straight connection, which ended up being 'bent' enough times that it ended up breaking the actual piece off inside the laptop itself.

So, now based on what I've been reading, specs and the way the battery plugs into the computer (an L connection vs a straight connection) these are the laptops I've looked at in my budget range. Is the $600 end really that much better ?

Lenovo  IdeaPad Laptop - Model: B575-1450A5U / SKU: 2731052
AMD E-Series Processor / 15.6" Display / 4GB Memory / 320GB Hard Drive
1 GHz / Cache Mem 1MB / AMD Radeon HD 6310
$329.99

ASUS  Laptop - Model: K52N-BIN6 / SKU: 2043044
AMD Athlon™ II Processor / 15.6" Display / 3GB Memory / 320GB Hard Drive
2.1 GHz / Cache Mem 1MB on die level 2 / ATI Mobility Radeon 4200
$479.99


ASUS  Laptop - Model: K52DR-BIN6 / SKU: 2042036
AMD Turion™ II Processor / 15.6" Display / 4GB Memory / 500GB Hard Drive
2.3 GHz / Cache Mem 2MB on die level 2 / ATI Park XT ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
$579.99

Asus  Laptop - Model: U56E-BBL5 / SKU: 2712418
Intel® Core™ i5 Processor / 15.6" Display / 6GB Memory / 640GB Hard Drive
2.3 GHz / Cache Mem 3MB on die Level 3 / UMA / 4GWiMax
$599.99

Any thoughts on these or is there something more reliable out there that I should be considering ?

Thanks !!
 
Seems like I should have posted my question in this thread instead of starting a new one.

I'm trying to decide between Toshiba Satellite L755 154 & Samsung NP RF511 S01UK.

Almost identical spec - both have: i5 2410M processor, 6GB RAM, 640GB, clock speed 2.3-2.9 ghz, 15.6" screen, but the Samsung has a smidge better graphics card.

I've always had Toshibas & found them reliable & don't really know much about Samsung.

Prefer the Samsung keyboard & the Toshiba looks cheap & plasticky, but in the end I'm more concerned about reliability & performance than looks.

Any advice welcome.

http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/product/Satellite-L755-154/1106398/toshibaShop/false/

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-np-rf511-s01uk-15-6-laptop-black-silver-09785389-pdt.html
 
Hi, Avro Arrow. I think it is great to get some info from you on the retail point-of-view. I've been selling computers and laptops for almost 20 years and have just a few points I'd like to add to your comments.
About the brand laptops I disagree a little with you in the point that you would be comparing laptops from different companies to have a fair difference, not a compaq against an HP or an eMachines against Acer. Comparing them, anything I had experience with Dell's as an example, being a cheaper line took way more into consideration than a higher end Dell. Indeed, if you buy a business line from any brand or higher end of any brand you aren't only paying for the hardware/software aspect of it but there's technical support and warranties that, for sure you're going to face a huge difference, starting by an USA/Canada based support centers against overseas, hard to understand unprepared tech personnel.
Lately, as brand goes, I have a little problem with the Lenovo brand that USED TO be IBM but IT IS NOT ANYMORE!! The lenovos have left a really bitter taste in my mouth when it comes to speed and system response as much as not recommending them to any of my customers as I don't recommend a lower end Dell as well.
Any time you pay the price for a higher end/business line laptop, it will be easier, quicker, less problematic to deal with any sort of replacement parts and warranties alike.
When it comes to hardware I'd like to point out that there are some differences on processors that can add up some performance gain even for the normal user as you point them out. Comparing Intel processors that have a better L2 cache (6MB or 8MB) to other lower end ones with less cache will give you a better performance no matter what application you use it for. Also, when recommending a laptop, I try to show my customers the slight differences in price versus huge difference in performance. Sometimes, as TD is known for, a mere $50 - $100 price difference can put you in a way worse laptop and that's not fair or wise. At TD I had numerous times when I caught salesmen trying to push products they would benefit from selling instead what would be best for the customer. These salesmen would sale a craptop just to make an extra $5 or $10 a piece and leave the customer with an inferior product. My customers were paying me to protect them against these games and it is wise, if you, as a customer, don't know anything about the subject, to spend some money and protect yourself bringing along a professional you know and trust to pick the best bang for your buck and not the best brand or looks.
As per video cards, to simplify, just tell the customer to ALWAYS prefer a dedicated video card over a shared one and that would take care of the better performance you preach.
I own a toshiba Tecra A10 with nVidia quadro, a DV6880se HP with nVidia 8400M, a HP Elitebook 13", a HP 14" business line and a Netbook Compaq for laptops and 3 intel i7's 1366 920 all running at speeds over 4GHz.
The netbook Compaq runs windows 7 and beats a LAPTOP Lenovo 12 or 13" that I've tried for a customer, the DV6880se is one of the fastest older laptops I've seen running my Photoshop 5.5 and other graphical application flawlessly, the Tecra A10 is a killer as it has all the features plus a 6MB cache on the 9500 processor and the list goes on. ALL OF THEM ARE INTEL CPU'S. I sold AMD for almost 10 years based on the cost/benefit that they would bring to my customers but after the intel 775's and on I cannot say the same, unfortunately. Intel came to a point where, specs apart, provides a more solid and responsive machine, either desktop or laptop.
I really don't preach the lower end laptops as I prefer to look into the specs and compare them before deciding what would be best for my customer and, always, mentioning that there's a one step up model for a few bucks more that would do something extra they may want or need.
Even though every customer is going to do "only" web, email and "some" pictures, I don't recommend to buy a laptop based on price believing the specs will do the same for them as ALL of them ended up asking for more off the machine and got a big surprise and I don't want my name right beside the machine which let my customers down. I even let them pick one, I install, test it, charge for it and they get very disappointed with the results. That can happen even on higher end ones.
I always tell them they need a "balanced" machine. It is like a car, if you put too much engine but no breaks, guess what?

I hope my answer comes to complete any doubts regular customers would find hard to understand with your point of view that I respect and appreciate and shine some light from the guy who is used to be on the store to protect them against sales techniques that can harm the customer and only the customer alone, that you have mentioned here.

Best of luck.
 
Hey Avro Arrow, first off I just read through the entire thread and all of this is fantastic info. Thanks for putting so much time into this!

Now on to my situation. I'm going into senior year in the fall and I'm in the process of convincing my parents to help me purchase my laptop that I'll use in college a year early due to a lack of computers to go around between everyone in my household. It seems like a better idea than buying a desktop computer now and then buying a computer next year when they're worrying about paying for college.

I'm looking for a laptop that's 13-16 inches, has good/decent battery life, portable (less than 5lbs? not super important if it's a good deal), future proof (at least last through college. 5 years?), and able to do all of my web browsing, multitasking and word processing needs. I'm not a gamer, but the ability to play games on occasion would be nice (nothing more than a few steam games). For everything else though, I'm just looking for the best deal, performance, and highest specs that I can get for the price. It looks like my budget will be nothing more than $700. I can go up a little in price if it is worth it, but I definitely wouldn't mind it being cheaper if I can get a package that would work for my situation.

Basically I'm just wondering if you could just post a couple links to laptops that would fit my criteria that you think are good deals. I have been looking around a lot on TigerDirect and Newegg and reading reviews and such, but since I'm not exactly sure what I want and what to look for on a lot of the specs, it's hard for me to pick out the best deals.

These two laptops caught my eye, but I really don't know what I should be looking for.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215119
Acer Aspire AS5750G-6496 Notebook Intel Core i5 2410M(2.30GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR3 1066 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M $679.99
Click to expand...
and

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=411806&CatId=4939
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 1143-3FU Notebook PC - Intel Core i5-2410M 2.30GHz, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD 7200 RPM, DVDRW, 15.6" Display, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit $569.99
Click to expand...

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

-Tim
 



I have been riveted by this post and all its threads. I am quite staggered by the generosity of the time and effort you put into answering all the queries, for which a huge thank you. I don't think in all the websites devoted to laptop-buying advice, I've found one cutting to the chase as much as yours. (Which I will now do - sorry about all my burbling...)

I am looking for two computers: one now - a 14" laptop for my husband, and later, a desktop/laptop for myself.

We use the computer for very different things.
My husband does a lot of number-crunching on his; he uses Windows Office with Excel etc and will take this on travel to the UK etc. He couldn't care what it looks like; wants it to be relatively portable(about 2kg) and to be fast and powerful and have a good battery life. I thought the Dell 3450 looked like a good machine for him, although its resolution isn't that great or its battery life, but he wanted me to check on either a Sony or a Samsung offering the same sort of specs.

I, on the other hand want to use whatever machine I get for all the usual rubbish, but then to be able to store a LOT of photos, and to work on them with my Photoshop CS5 plus Wacom Intuos4. I will also be drawing and storing cartoons. I also have a lot of music on my computer. Would a really powerful Dell be the way to go? I know I should have a Mac because of my Photoshop, but I've never worked with one before, and wonder if after all these years, my ancient brain and possible disinclination to change(!) would preclude this...

I would so love to get your input, even if it's a universe away from all these vastly knowledgeable queries you keep getting (and answering in the same vein!!)
 

For school use, I wouldn't recommend either of those now that Llano is out. AMD managed to literally DOUBLE their battery life by fusing the CPU and GPU onto one chip die. Not only that, Llano's graphics capabilities are far above that of a typical IGP. I remember in university that the only thing I wanted more of from even my primitive laptop is battery life. The Llano platform has answered that in spades. Because of this and because of the great value offered by AMD hardware, I recommend the following laptop to you:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101252
Good luck in school, you'll love it! :sol:
 

Well congratulations, you managed to make me blush... just a little, mind you! 😉

Thank you for your kind words. Your situation is very easy to solve and we'll start with your husband. Believe it or not, MS-Office and Excel are the exact same programs used by students and their CPU requirements were completely met about 10 years ago. He doesn't need a brutish computer for office applications. Brutish computers are for high-end gaming, machine virtualization and functioning as webservers. What your husband needs most is battery life if he's travelling a lot because to do the same work with a high-end machine, he'd have to carry an extra battery which is a real pain the caboose. Believe it or not, your needs are actually higher than his because of your need for good quality graphics. However, a macbook you do not need. Photoshop was a PC application long before it was a mac application and purchasing a mac would be a serious waste of your hard-earned dollars. I'll recommend the same laptop to you that I recommended to Causticrain for all the same reasons. Photos are tiny (generally under 500k in size) and so you can fit over 500,000 of them on that machine. The Llano's GPU is quite powerful and it can handle photoshop and your cartoons with absolute ease. For the computing side, the Llano is essentially an upgraded AMD Athlon II X4 Quad-Core CPU which will handle anything you can throw at it. The Llano's battery life is literally triple what AMD laptops used to do and has far surpassed Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture with regard to battery life. The $500 price tag doesn't hurt either:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101252
Here's a review of the Llano portable platform for you to read and a video for you to watch comparing it to the Intel Sandy-Bridge. Are the Intel CPUs faster? Absolutely, but their integrated graphics are just terrible and having a discrete ATi or nVidia card drains your battery life faster. Here is some literature for you to read:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1636/1/
To REALLY drive the point home, last summer a game was released called Starcraft II. People were going crazy on the forums because they'd waited over 10 years for this sequel to Starcraft. People wanted to be sure that their computers were powerful enough to run Starcraft II and everyone was asking the same question "Will my computer run it?". They were generally referring to desktop computers which are generally more powerful than laptops. I can assure you that Starcraft II is far more taxing on a computer system than photoshop or any office application. Here we see the exact Llano platform that I recommended to you (A6-3400M) handling Starcraft II with ease:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=m8RUTrlpEHg&gl=US
Seeing is believing and I hope that this makes the choice easy for the both of you. The Llano APU (CPU/GPU) is a serious winner in this mobile category and the fact that I can lucidly recommend the same machine to 3 different people with 3 different needs is a perfect example of its versatility. Now, your husband might be a bit pig-headed and want some massive i7 which will just prove to be a real pain in the butt because of its relatively short battery life (or maybe he'll read this and say "That's a great idea!") so I'd recommend that you get this laptop first and let him try it out. I can guarantee you that he'll be quite impressed and will say "Yeah, I want one too!". 😀
 
Thank you! Thank you! I really appreciate your taking the time to reply, and I feel a vast sense of relief in finding a "voice" out there I can utterly rely on in this massively confusing market. I have spent an absorbing hour or so reading about Llano and am completely won over by the promise it holds in terms of performance upgrade, battery life etc.

My husband seems bent on keeping to a more portable format than a 15" laptop, but has never been sold on the i7! What does concern me about your recommendation however (the Gateway computer) is that we live in South Africa, and Gateway doesn't have a high profile here (i.e. not too sure where I'd be able to buy it). We are visiting our daughter and her husband in the UK in about a month's time, and could conceivably buy his laptop there. I did some research on which laptops based on the A-Series APU had been launched in the UK and came up with a Toshiba L755D and an HP DV6 - 610EA. I will now research these two . Is there any indication that more companies will be launching APU based (for lack of a better term) laptops soon?

I have a fatal error when doing research on things though - I always want the best there is, the most powerful etc, which seldom translates, in real life, to an appreciably enhanced experience... So I'm slowly learning my lesson. However, as this APU (although as I read in one of the articles you suggested) is in its third phase, and hasn't yet been massively accepted by the bigger manufacturers, wouldn't it be advisable for me to wait ( at least for my own computer) for a while yet? The A8 - 3500M APU seems to be the pick of the bunch, but a few months down the line, it will no doubt be superceded by something "better" - especially since in the decades-long battle between AMD and Intel, the latter will surely push the envelope...

A lot of the photos I work on end up being 6 - 15 MB each, and I have thousands of them (both my sister and my son-in-law are phenomenal photographers with very high-end cameras and I have all their photos on my computer as well...) so when I buy, I need vast storage. However, that is down the line: we'll be buying his laptop first. Thank you for the advice on the Mac: I will certainly heed it!

I guess my bottom line query for my husband's laptop is - would you at least recommend the Dell 3450 as he IS being a bit pigheadedly fixed on it? He says he's not THAT worried about battery life.. Hmm...he seems to change his mind quite often. Both my daughter and her husband as computer programmers, and their whole company uses Dell, so I gather they (the computers, that is!) are good work-horses, which is basically what my husband needs. I, on the other hand , am sailing into a wonderful computing future based on your recommendations, for which, yet again, my most profound thanks...
 

Well try to remember that Gateway is a division of Acer along with eMachines and Packard-Bell. Acer might have a larger profile there because they are a huge laptop maker but you might be able to find Packard-Bell or eMachines there as well. As I always say, laptops are like people and are all the same under the skin. It doesn't matter if it's Acer, Toshiba, Sony, Dell, etc. as long as it has the specifications you're looking for, in this case, an A6 or A8-series AMD APU. As for the market for Llano expanding, absolutely! Llano has become the darling of OEM manufacturers everywhere because of its simplicity to manufacture coming from the fact that the CPU and GPU are all in one chip. I chose the one I did because it's the most common size. I'm certain that 15" Llano-based laptops are also available.

Well of course, that is very true. The problem is that this is ALWAYS true. There is always something new around the corner and so all that you can do is wait as long as you can and get what's best on the day that you buy. If we are constantly waiting for the next big thing then we'll never end up getting anything. A good example is my desktop. I bought the first model of Phenom II X4 that came out, the Phenom II X4 940. Now, I knew that 6 months later, the AM3 CPUs would be out that would use DDR3 RAM but I needed something right away. My Phenom II doesn't support DDR3 but after using a friend's machine with the 955 and DDR3 RAM, I realised that there is not an appreciable difference between his computer and mine. The differences between CPUs in the same family tends to be very slight because hardware has completely outpaced software and pretty much all modern computers are able to handle the computational requirements of all programs on the market. As you saw, the A6 will run Starcraft II with no problems which means that anything weaker than that (pretty much anything that isn't gaming) will be an absolute breeze.

If your photos are 6-15MB each then they are very high resolution but that's not an issue here because that laptop has a 500GB hard drive which actually translates into 488GB. That means 488,000MB which also means over 30,000 15MB pictures. I don't think you're going to have a storage issue here. In fact, I think you're most likely going to have at least 100GB free at any given time. Llano-based laptops also have a HDMI output which will allow you to plug into a 52" HDTV and allow you to do the photo work on a grand scale.

The biggest reason a company would have all-Dell computers is that Dell gave them a good deal. Their internal parts are no different from anyone else's because they don't manufacture CPUs, motherboards, hard drives, RAM, DVD drives, power supplies, etc. They just assemble them and put their name on them. Having said that, if they are acolytes of Dell, then let them get Dell. The Vostro 3450 looks like a fine machine that will do all he needs without being overly expensive so if he gets that one, it's not a real problem. I was thinking only of the battery life which would be relevant to his travels as it's not always easy to find a place (or the time) to plug in your laptop to recharge it when you're on the run. If he wants the Dell, let him get the Dell. The Dell is not by any means a bad machine, far from it. I just base my recommendations on the absolute best value for what you need it to do. In this particular case, the biggest advantage that the Llano brings is the battery life because your computational needs and graphics requirements are not tremendously high. Non-moving 2D photographs are a snap for even my primitive eMachines laptop with the ATI Radeon X1200 GPU. The Llano A6 could handle them while lying in a sofa eating grapes and watching TV, so to speak. Get the Dell for your husband (just to make him happy) and let him see what your laptop can do as well. He may well get pig-headed about getting his own AMD Trinity laptop a year or two down the road. :sol:
 
SUMMARY: My advent laptop of about 4yrs is malfunctioning so I need a new laptop, I need to buy a new one fast but I am looking for a long lasting laptop with battery life over 3 hours, I am really interested in acer aspire series but am getting mixed internet reviews ( I am not a brand's person btw)

1. What is your budget? £250-£500 (about $400-$800 USD)

2. How much battery life do you need? over 3hours

3. Do you want to play games with your laptop? No

4. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) surf the web for my research, only watch videos and online programmes


5. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? enough to store hundreds of essays and pictures

6. How long do you want to keep your laptop? minimum 3 years


Any advice and/or comments would be much appreciated!
 

Well it looks like PCWorld, Dixon's and Curry's have the exact same laptop for the exact same price. Their websites are also more or less identical so it makes me think that they may be one and the same company. They are Toshiba Satellites.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-l755d-12l-15-6-laptop-red-10732329-pdt.html
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-l755d-12l-15-6-laptop-red-10732329-pdt.html
http://www.dixons.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-l755d-12l-15-6-laptop-red-10732329-pdt.html
If you really are interested in the Acer Aspire series (which yes, get mixed reviews on the web but so does every other brand), then play.com might have what you're looking for:
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/3227/2494/-/21427696/Acer-Aspire-5560-AMD-A6-340M-6GB-500GB-15-6-inch-Windows-7-Home-Premium-64-bit-Laptop-Notebook-Black/Product.html
Those are the ones I'd recommend for the same reasons stated above. :sol:
 
Hi dear,
thanks for maintaining this thread for such a long time with this level of care and benevolence..!!!

Here is my Q. I wanna run AutoCAD, Mathematica and Age of Empires 3. Max I can spend is almost 625 USD. Please recommend a few laptops for me....

What about AMD A series APUs???
 
Hey,
Read everything in this thread and just want to thank you for all the info you've been putting out and just how eye-opening this has been.

However, I'm not too amazing at laptops. Always been a desktop guy. Was kinda hoping you could help me out with what kinda laptop I should be looking at, or a specific one.

My max limit is about 1400 USD. Pretty sure I can find something below that, but that's what I've got to work with currently.
I'm honestly not sure how much battery I'll need. But for flights, or where battery is only power available, I suppose 4 hours would be reasonable. Not too certain how long average is anyways.

The only games I really play very often is WoW. Not mandatory for my laptop though, but would be nice to be able to play on low/medium just for performance incase something big occurs, theres no chance it'll lag.

Currently, I have a 2TB external harddrive in which I store all my movies, tv shows, and backup copies of my personally owned xbox 360 games. I do occasionally burn the movies and games. But having a nice burner would be nice as well. Though, I always burn at lowest speed anyways just for as near perfect burns as possible. Not to mention, most of my burning would be done at my desktop, except for long periods of time I'm out of the country, which doesn't happen very often. Maybe once a year.

Kinda want to be able to keep the laptop for a good long while. Somewhere in the area of 5years+ if possible.

Only thing really extra I need is a DVD burner capable of doing a DL DVD.

Basically, I do a lot of video watching. Online and on harddrive. Something able to handle that and online gaming enough to be able to handle WoW raids if I so desire without DC or lag.
 
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