Laptop suggestions for School

mspisz

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Jun 6, 2010
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Hi,

1. What is your budget?

£800 (can add more if required)

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

17"

3. What screen resolution do you want?

------

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

no

5. How much battery life do you need?

doesn't matter

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

Dont expect to play high end games on it... maybe Counter strike source

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)

Mainly CAD and Photoshop

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

300gb would be max I have backup externals

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

Official sites, pcworld, amazon

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?

3 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?

Doesnt matter

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

Toshiba, Vaio, ASUS, ACER, LENOVO

NOT DELL OR HP... had bad experience with them

13. What country do you live in?

UK


14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
 

mspisz

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Between those,the second one has a more powerful VGAl;therefore,it does better in games.
And no,Intel i7 mobile CPUs are significantly slower than their desktop models(and AMD Phenom II X4/X6 CPUs)
 
I agree with Maziar, shoot for the 2nd one out of the two Toshiba's if you'll be doing a lot of gaming. In regard to the performance, question, yes, even a mobile i7 would be out done by a variety of desktop CPU's. Have a look at the link in my sig., as they have some desktop CPU benchmarks in there as well for comparison's sake.
 

mspisz

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Hi,

Ok cool I go with i7 then... But yeah those two models have been discontinued but just received a reply from Toshiba and newer models will be released on 21st October so I check then.

Thanks
 

mspisz

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Hi,

Its such a pain with Toshiba... they show laptops on their websites but 3/4 of their models have been discontinued... Might be a difficult task to find i7 Laptop.

But there are plenty of i5 with dedicated graphics like radeon 5650 or Nvidia 310/330 cuda.

Would these be still strong options for a laptop?
 

mspisz

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Went on Sony site and I though maybe go with a stronger i5 CPU and strong GPU like on the image below... Is SONY VAIO a good reliable brand?

There is newer tech everyday right so at some point this laptop will get outdated and instead of spending a lot of money on a very expensive computer might aswell get a cheaper one and maybe spend the rest on like a bigger monitor for my desktop?

scaled.php
 
It looks good but for about 50 pounds more,you can get even a better one
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-025-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=
MSI GX660 is the best gaming laptop for under 1000 pounds.
 

mspisz

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yeah looks cool with nice specs and its much smaller... I was looking for some bags for the 18" but didnt find anything interesting... Now I know I should go with 17" at max
 

mspisz

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I am definitely going with Vaio I like their specs and the look of the laptop.
One of the things I noticed on the sony website is that some models that I can configure myself on the sony website will take about 3-4 or even 6-7 weeks to arrive with me.
I went to my local sony center and they have a laptop in stock with following specs:

i5-430
6GB RAM
500GB HDD
ATI 5470 1GB
and it costs £800

But on the official website if I was to go with F series which would take 3-4 weeks I would get following specs:

i5-460
Nvidia GT 425 1GB
6GB RAM
500GB HDD

and it costs £850

I checked both processors and 460 is newer than 430 ... both are dual cores but have different clock speeds:


i5-430 i5-460

Clock Speed 2.26 GHz 2.53 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 2.53 GHz 2.8 GHz