New Laptop

P

paddyknight

Championship
11 November 2003
Hi all, this summer ive finally decided to buy a laptop, not least cos im going to spain next year and cant really lug around my 6 year old desktop!

Thing is, looking around the net i have no idea what i should be looking for in a laptop!

Ideally i want to be able to play games, but i think media storage capacity is more important cos have heaps of films music and photos on my old one, i certainly wouldnt object to being play pro evo on it or whatever tho :)
erm wireless, dvd writer... dunno what else.

yeah just really looking for some recommendations, i hadnt even seen this part of the forum but you seem quite knowledgeable from a quick look! :)
budget ideally under £500, but yeah, ideas please! :)
cheers guys
 
you can buy a laptop for 300 quid that will do what you need, BUT be prepared to shell out an extra couple of hundred, just to be able to play 3d games, and an extra 400 to play them well...
 
Stick with Football Manager and you wont need to spend all that money.
 
yeah i still need to know whats good tho guys!
processor, hard drive etc.!?

any recommended deals from anyone?

spunk of mj (lovely name) any recommendatins for once which might start in a reasonable state in terms of game capability!?
 
dell laptop's are pretty good. i didnt buy the extended warranty and like a week after my warranty expired my dvd drive broke. they replaced it free of charge.

as for the laptop itself i bought a low spec one a while back. go on their website as im sure the specs have changed since the time i bought mine.
customer service is really good.
 
the problem with that is the graphics memory is shared, which means it come from the installed RAM.

if i was you, i'd forget about playing 3d games on it (unless you are prepared to spend around a grand, you may forget it) and buy one that costs around 300 quid, and you'll still be able to play footie manager on that and do pretty much everything else...

here is an example of one: http://www.ebuyer.com:80/UK/product/123115/rb/0

but you will need AT LEAST 1gb of ram, preferably 2...
 
yeah beginning to think that myself. cheers mate.
should i be looking for core 2 duo, or is amd and stuff ok?
i really know nothing :( !
 
my advice is to stick with amd. with intel, you pay for the name as much as the spec, and nowadays amd is up there with them in the performance stakes, and probably even beats them - it certainly does in a price/performance ratio...

if all you want to do is: use office, surf the net, watch movies, burn dvds, listen to mp3s, play footie manager and view/upload photos, then the one i linked to will more than suffice - just make sure you buy another 512mb of ram...
 
ok mate, cheers.
would there be a way to get a bigger hard drive with that one? im not sure 60 would be enough...
and could i add this to it
http://www.ebuyer.com:80/UK/product/123115/rb/0

that would make it pretty solid wouldnt it?
(as its listed as one of the bundles. and if its not, what memory would be suitable to .. ideally more than another 512)

thanks for all your help by the way, hugely appreciated.
 
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...i thought you said to stick with amd?! my plan after much consideration was to get this one:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...uct_uid=123116

and get 2x1g memory (or 1x2g if i can find the right one would make more sense!), id hope that would be pretty powerful and from the reviews there is the suggestion that a couple of games play on it, it also has vista, and all in all to get the core 2 duo with the memory upgrade and if i needed anything else would be a couple hundred more than the amd one....

do my plans need to change again then?! lol :)



(and this one looks pretty good http://www.shopacer.co.uk/pp/Acer_A...re_5100_Series/Aspire_5103WLMi_Vista_-_2.html cos has an ok graphics card aswell as good spec... think the prob for me with the core 2 duo is the graphics card isnt meant to be good atall, whereas i think this ones ok, and the one in the first amd apparently can play some games..... still if you reckon the first idea is ok ill go for that...saying that this above one seems to be abit of a beast..)


(aaaaaaaaaah, and this ones got a good gfx card for under 500 http://www.shopacer.co.uk/pp/Acer_Aspire_Laptops/Acer_Aspire_9300_Series/Aspire_9301WSMi_Vista.html .........this is such hard work, think gonna constantly be finding alternatives!)
 
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paddyknight said:
...i thought you said to stick with amd?!
Click to expand...

yeah, i did...

on the basis that you seemed to know very little about computer specs and are working on a budget, then i'd say go for amd (more power for your pound), but personally, i'd go for the core 2 duo laptop and spend that little bit more...
 
i think cos of the graphics id like to go with one of the other 3, just cos the core 2 duo barely has one. and from reviews on ebuyer the suggestion is the amd can play some games. i think the bottom link i put has a v.good graphics card and i cant see much wrong with it as a laptop, is there anything obvious missing from the bottom 2 links?

i hate this :(

and cheers for all your help, massive thanks
 
the thing is mate, it's NOT a v.good graphics card - it's pretty crap actually...

you will definitely not be able to play any modern 3d games with anything other than the completely basic settings with it, so if i was you i'd forget about it - unless you are willing to spend about a grand, and even then you would still struggle to play them to the quality that they were designed...

proper gaming laptops cost over 2k!
 
which one did you go for in the end?

also, if you bought one of the acer laptops, you may have to go into the bios and manually change the memory allocation settings for the video card...
 
the aspire 5101 one with a gig of extra memory.
how do i change that and why do that...to allocate it more/less memory?
 
when the laptop is booting, press F1/2 or the DEL key to go into the bios (it may not be one of those keys, but it will tell you on the screen once you turn it on) and from there you should be able to find where the video card memory allocation is. then just save and quit out of the bios...

if you're playing a 3d game, try giving the maximum amount of ram to the video card, and likewise, if you aren't, then give it back the the computer memory...

another tip when using laptops, is you have to juggle the resources so that the battery lasts longer...

turn off things like wireless and ports when not using them, reduce the cpu power if you're just using microsoft office, maximise it when playing football manager, knock the screen brightness down to as dull as you can handle - things like that. there should be an option on the taskbar for all of this...

i advise you to set up profiles to do this automatically at the click of a mouse.
 
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