OK, will cut to the chase - 14 year old son looking for a laptop for his Xmas.
In our house we currently have in the way of computers:
daughter's Toshiba 17" thing, 2 years old
our Samsung NC20 12" netbook.
Netbook can do most things but its only when I pick up my daughters laptop I realise how slow the netbook is.
Son will use it for
schoolwork (so will need to try and get MS Office put on it for word,powerpoint etc)
web surfing
facebook
itunes
watching dvds
watching live streams of football (something that the netbook just can't do - it even struggles with youtube clips)
In fact if it had HDMI as well then I wouldn't mind being able to hook it up to the TV to watch youtube or live football streams.
Think probably looking at 15" as I think the 17" is just too big and bulky but anything smaller probably not suitable for extended homework use.
Lenovo on another thread was receommended, father in law got one last year and so far it has proved well although on one occasion where he had to contact their customer services, it was awful (based in Athens).
As is often the case, I started the ball rolling just looking at PC World website but already I am too confused especially with the choice of processors - I remember when the choice was Intel or AMD but now its dual core, quad cores and god knows what else!
Budget would ideally be about the £300 mark though would be prepared to go a bit higher if I thought it meant we could hook it up to TV and see a good picture.
Thoughts, or starters for ten?
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If you want fast frame rates, in HD, on your bigscreen TV, a 300 quid laptop aint gonna cut it.
As far a spec confusion goes, the bigger then number the better it is and the higher the bill.
quad core better than dual core
I5 better than I3, I7 better than I5
As before if you want durability go Lenovo, check out their website and their Ebay site for the good, but not the latest, model specials.
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A netbook with the Intel Ion graphics chipset should stream HDTV fine, that's what it's designed for, although I want to see one doing it before committing my dosh. In terms of processors then pretty much anything will be fast enough, unless you're going to major on re-encoding video, so I'd concentrate on required features and durability.
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>> A netbook with the Intel Ion graphics chipset should stream HDTV fine
ION is an Nvidia component not Intel. It is on motherboards for Intel CPUs but is not an Intel graphics chipset.
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N550 Atom or above spec machine will stream no problem.
Of course that mean dual core but at this end of the market still won't break the bank.
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>> >> A netbook with the Intel Ion graphics chipset should stream HDTV fine
>>
>> ION is an Nvidia component not Intel. It is on motherboards for Intel CPUs but
>> is not an Intel graphics chipset.
>>
True, not quite sure why I added 'Intel' in there, my bad.
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Zero, how do you find Lenovos shop on Ebay if you don't know their id?
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>>Lenovo on another thread was receommended, father in law got one last year and so far it has proved well although on one occasion where he had to contact their customer services, it was awful (based in Athens)<<
I phoned Lenovo C/S recently when trying to figure out how to connect my new notebook wirelessly
(little switch on the front!)
I'd give their C/S 10/10
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Shame about their sales people though, in the corporate world. Had reason to use support and they were good.
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Remember that he'll qualify for Students and Teachers version of MS Office and save a packet.
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save even more if you load it with Open Office.
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>> save even more if you load it with Open Office.
>>
Good luck with that, tried it with both Spamettes and the trivial amount of brain re-aligment required was too much for the poor little lambs!
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Oh yes Sorry, I think two menu items are transposed. Lord knows how they will cope if they ever see a mac.,
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 20 Nov 11 at 18:36
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>> Oh yes Sorry, I think two menu items are transposed. Lord knows how they will
>> cope if they ever see a mac.,
>>
LOL, I was tempted to replace Vista with Ubuntu on their laptops.
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I'm dual booting with Linux Mint at present - seems OK.
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Not just that Z, Calc uses different syntax for the same commands.
Flipin' nightmare if you're trying to do any analysis.
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Toshiba Satellite C660-21Z 15.6 inch Notebook (Intel Core i3-370M 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows 7 Home Premium) - £321.95
Reasonable spec. -
www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Satellite-C660-21Z-Notebook-i3-370M/dp/tech-data/B005TU8B1G/ref=de_a_smtd
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I've just been through all of this myself - getting opinions, checking out prices and so on. I started a thread on another forum to gauge what was out there and how good value and reliable it all was. I don't know if the responses I got would apply equally in the UK, but the general consensus was that the best out there at the lower end of the price range was Lenovo. They're not available from too many retailers, but you can order them online from Lenovo, and they usually have somme good offers or discounts available (a bit like Dell)
www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=63763
I ended up buying a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520. Hopefully it will arrive in a few days....
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Save starting another thread il use this one
The wife wants to replace the computer desk because its looking old and takes up
a lot of room and wants to get a small one, and wants to replace are 6yr old desk top
and all the cables that goes with it with a laptop.
So which is the best a intel processor or a AMD?
The desk top we are replacing is a
Acer aspireT660
2.9 GHZ intel (R) pentium 4
1.5GB memory and 2 hard drives a
(c)75GB and (d) 75GB
32 BIT operating system
Running vista home basic
Iv looked at a few but would like your opinions
www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/lenovo-essential-g575-15-6-laptop-11358337-pdt.html
www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-g6-1378ea-15-6-laptop-11884722-pdt.html
www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-c660-1ld-15-6-laptop-11884708-pdt.html
Are needs are web browsing, download the occasional movie but often downloads music from i tunes and amazon ,and music play back and storing photoes.
Broadband is virgin 50mb and being upgraded to 100mb sometime
this year.
thanks
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>> When it comes to laptops I say two things.
>> Lenovo and Intel
If you can live without Intel, PC World are doing a quad core AMD Lenovo 6GB 500GB for £400 online:
www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/lenovo-z575-15-6-laptop-gun-metal-11884717-pdt.html
Any good Z?
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well its ok, but you can get an Intel chipper for not much more.
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Sorry - another new laptop recommendation thread! - Zero
