Which Laptop?

davewalnut

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Mar 24, 2011
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Hello Ladies and Gents, I'm new here so please be gentle.

Since my 5 year old desktop gave up the ghost I've been looking into getting a new laptop. I've found a couple and wondered if you good people would cast your eye over the specs and make a suggestion as to which is the better system. If you've got anything other than the two I've mentioned here please point me to them.

I intend to use it largely for running standard Microsoft Office apps plus others such as Access, Publisher, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. I will use it for the odd bit of gaming, but not extensively.

Laptop 1
Packard Bell TK87-G0-035UK
Screen 15.6"
Processor Intel Core I5 480
Processor Speed/Cache 2.66GHz/3MB
Memory 4Gb
Graphics Intel HD
Cost £479.99

Laptop 2
Acer
Screen 15.6"
Processor AMD Phenom II X3 N830
Processor Speed/Cache 2.1GHz/1.5MB
Memory 4Gb
Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon 4250
Cost £450

Your suggestions are welcome!

Thanks.
 

daniel123244

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Jan 29, 2010
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I would go with the first laptop for the sole reason that a core i5 runs circles around a phenom x3 in a laptop. Intel just released a new type of processor that will give better graphics/cpu performance if you are willing to wait. The one thing i would say is bad about laptop 1 is that you should not even bother to game with the graphics on any intel corei5 xxx processors, although laptop 2's graphics is not much better.

In conclusion, i say go for laptop 1.
 

dalauder

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Aug 30, 2010
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I'd say you should either get a 2nd Gen i7 for $775 (http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np5160-clevo-w150hn-pre-order-p-2999.html?wconfigure=yes).

I know it's a bit more than you were planning on paying, but it's that or a $450 i3. Either go cheap, or go big. In between, you don't really get much useful. An i3 laptop can actually do everything.

EDIT: Btw, the laptop I linked doesn't come with Windows. If you need Windows, HP's laptops might be more cost effective ($800's with coupons).
 
Can you expand on what this means? Neither of the laptops you listed are suited for what we thinking of as 'gaming'.
 

dalauder

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Aug 30, 2010
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I didn't look at your prices earlier. £479.99 is close to $800. You can get a 2nd generation i7 w/ a legitimate mid/low-end gaming card from xoticpc (Sager laptop reseller) shipped to the UK for not much more than that. I don't know if HP ships to the UK, but that's a viable direction.
 

davewalnut

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Mar 24, 2011
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I'll try.

I'm into gaming but have a 360, so if my laptop can't manage games its not the end of the world. As a minimum I need to be able to play roller coaster tycoon 3 and zoo tycoon 2 as I'm using these as part of a Business unit I'm teaching. I can't imagine either system struggling to play those. On top of that I basically want as much as I can get for money; if there is a laptop around that is capable of playing perhaps slightly older games on low settings I'll make use of it. But it seems that I will have to spend £150 on top of the two I've suggested to get decent graphics and I can't really afford/justify it.

The priority is a laptop allowing me to run the stuff I mentioned in the OP, if I can get more gaming features on top of that without costing loads more then great.

Incidentally, this has been my comparison and seems to be the cheapest around with a similar spec plus a half decent graphics card, it costs £600: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-15/pd?oc=n00xl503epp&model_id=xps-15

 

davewalnut

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Mar 24, 2011
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Great. That's what I had kind of assumed but didn't know too much about the AMD processors.

Do you think performance would be significantly better if I went for the following instead of the I5 above?

Dell XPS 15
Screen 15.6"
Processor Intel Core I5 480M
Processor Speed/Cache 2.66GHz/3MB
Memory 4Gb
Graphics 1024Mb GeForce GT420M
Cost £598.99