Which laptop should I buy?

[Asian]

For all the computer boyos out there,

I need a laptop for Uni and work and need to buy it as soon as possible cause I leave next friday to do me masters!

What do I need, should I just wax the lot and go for the top end?

Is Athlon 64 3000 better than P4 or Centurion(Sp)

Do I need 1024MB, 512 Mb or just 256 RAM?

60Gb or 40GB?

HP, Tiny, Dell, Toshiba or non branded?

I want it to last a good few years and support good quality CAD drawing programs and the likes and for use where ever when ever for mostly what ever.

Any one give me a heads up as I ain't got a clue?

cheers

Asian

[brooner]

Get as high end as you can afford, it'll last longer for it, get as much memory as possible and go for an amd processor over intel. dont have time at the mo for a wee hunt around but i'll try later.

[PeterG]

Here we go.

Centrino is by far the best for a combination of battery life and power and is more powerful than a P4 per Ghz (add about 1GHz to the Centrino speed to get the equivelant P4). If you need battery life in the region of 5 hours then Centrino is the way to go. If not then there's very little to choose from between the P4 and the Athlon64. Bear in mind that Athlon64 3000 is about the same speed as a P4 3.0GHz.

512MB is a good amount of memory to aim for for general use but if you're serious about doing CAD stuff then the more the better (i.e. 1024+). More important is the graphics card. There are a number of laptops around specially designed for CAD with an ATI FireGL or nVidia Quadro graphics system but these can cost over £3500. Again, this depends on how serious you are about CAD.

60Gb or 40Gb is really just a matter of preference. The more Gb you have the more stuff you can install/save. Again, more important for performance is the speed of the hard drive but this can be hard to find out for most mainstream laptops.

Centrino laptops all come with wireless for things like surfing the web in airports. Also worth looking for is bluetooth if you have a compatible phone as this will give you internet access anywhere you have mobile signal.

Which manufacturer you choose comes mostly down to personal preference but IBM make very good machines. I personally have a ThinkPad T41 and it's built well enough for me to walk over it while it's working and not cause any damage. Dell are also a good bet. Most high street manufacturers (Tiny, Time etc...) should be avoided and I've heard of problems with HP machines.

Any more questions?

[rob f]

Dell, or like peter says one with centrino
40gb is a lot so enless you making games or movies you probably won't need it

[chrisecurtis]

Best advice is to get the fastest, most memory and most capable you can afford - it will last longer.

I acquired a Dell inspiron 9100 recently - fantastic machine - stunningly better than the good Acer it replaced. It has Centrino, 512Mb RAM and 80Gb of Hard DIsk, plus lots of bells and whistles like built-in wi-fi and bluetooth. Most impressive, it has a proper graphics card & really good built-in sound - makes a big difference - and a DVD burner. The downside is it weighs half a ton and the battery lasts an hour and a half.

You end up needing more than you think. Once you realise a more powerful machine can do more powerful things, you end up using it to capacity no matter how powerful it is - I edit video on this one as well as doing "proper" CAD and DTP.

[samsonite]

asian, wax the lot

i was pretty impressed with peter g's ibm machine, its nice.

centrino will give u wireless which means u can take advantage of wireless hotspots - areas where u can tap into a wireless network to gain access to t'internet, and apparently there are a lto of spots in sweden, according to marty mcfly.

40 gig aint nuthin when u get into hardcore graphics (not like chepls hardcore graphics, i mean cad and the like) so get 60, maybe more if u can

bluetooth is nice cos its means u can sync your phone etc to your laptop for contact lists, calendar etc with no trouble.

firewire is basically a must i would say, as it means u can attach really fast things, such as extra hard drives which u may want to use if ur doing a lot of cad. you also have to face up to the fact that before you replace it u will probably have a video camera, as they will become the new digital stills cams in the next few years. everyone will have one, and be able to edit stuff and burn to dvd with ease. so u need a firewire port for that. some companies call firewire other things like iLink, but its the same thing.

therefore also get a dvd burner. not only can u "back up" movies, but u can burn ur own films if u have footage, and also back up big files to dvd that wont fit on a cd.

a network port is a must, but i think most come with these things now.

im only saying all this cos i know u can afford it and will get good use out of it.

and if u take my advice, u will be spending a fair bit, so make sure u get a free printer, scanner etc if u get it from a standard puter shop.

and get a 'skin' for it to put in your bag. this is a padded case that the laptop goes into, then u put that in your bag. cos even the most modern laptop bags scream mug me even more than white ipod earphones or an england football top.

as for processors etc, see above in peters post, he knows what he is talking about.

thankyou please.

[middleditch]

Its as easy as Dell. Bollocks it is. Dell laptops are good but don't expect them to send you it for at least 3 months and don't expect them to ever return your phone calls.

At least they'll send you a laptop without dirty microsoft on it though.

[FreePlasma]

definitely. windows is crap. linux rules the world

[samsonite]

asian, dont go with linux, go with windows. it may be a bit jobby but its what u know and ur cad programs probably wont run on linux, and u would have to learn how to use it like learning to use windows all over again, but much harder

[the duncan]

whatever they say asian, Size Does Matter, the bigger the better is what i'm told, band Width and well as band Length.

a nice fast one is good, but some operations need to be done a bit slower with more time spent on it.

a good big screen also helps for looking at the pictures too, just imagin life size!!!!

[pyrat]

peterg and samsonite have basically summed it all up..

centrino
1gb ram
120gb hdd
dvd burner
radeon graphics
wireless
bluetooth
medium sized -> 15inch tft

and yes ibm make good stuff but it is well priced.

aim to spend about £1.5k including vat for something like the above. Get as mch hdd as you can cos tunes n porn are good.

-a

[pyrat]

oh yeah, and linux is for big geeks, you dont need it. MAC OSX on the other hand is pretty schweet.

but thats another can of worms. samsonite will speak to you about macs, but there more for girls than snus packed war veterans.

-a

[Simon]

I will ignore the can of worms other than to say that Linux is best


The other point to consider is support contract. By the very nature of their use and the technology laptops are more prone to accidents. A much higher proportion of laptops have to go back to be repaired (than their desktop equivalents). Read carefully what the company you are getting offers in the way of repair/replace/servicing in the eventuality that something goes wrong.

[Rach]

i got my laptop about 9 months ago off http://www.dabs.com they had laptops of pretty much every brand at decent reductions. decide what you want then see if its any cheaper there. mines an acer with 40gb hard drive and 256 ram but then i don't play with hardcore graphics

[Braddie]

oh yeah, and linux is for big geeks, you dont need it. MAC OSX on the other hand is pretty schweet.

but thats another can of worms. samsonite will speak to you about macs, but there more for girls than snus packed war veterans.

-a

I have 2 macs and a PC. I have never ever had issues with my macs, but my PC is reet jobby. I only ever use it for games(maybe twice a week), whereas my macs are used day in day out. PC loves crashing, mac loves me and plays fair.

Before ordering the PC phone up the uni and ask them what they recommend and what they are compatable with. May sound stupid, but you don't want to turn up to uni with 3+ grands worth of kit that you can't just plug in and use.