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Which Laptop?

juanpabloingram

By juanpabloingram
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Tegis Grand Master

Tegis

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I will have a look but don't want to spend more than £150.

 

Out of interest, is this any good:

 

Interl Core i5 CPU, M430 @2.27ghz 

RAM 4.0

500gb hd

 

Is that better than the above?

Yep, thats pretty solid. I would argue SSD but I don't think your budget would allow it

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Davkaus Grand Master

Davkaus

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That's as good as you'll get for that money.

 

For web browsing Limpid has a point, but if she wants to play The Sims, a chromebook is useless. May as well use a hammer as a screwdriver.

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kurtsimonw Rising Star

kurtsimonw

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Didn't want to open a new thread for it. I've got a few hundred £ in PCWorld vouchers and my old laptop is on its way out. I know naff all about laptops really, but want something that's relatively decent. My old laptop was this one from Toshiba and I liked it. I'm guessing these 4 are all upgrades on that one, so which offers the best value for money? I basically have to get one from PCWorld since I'll get a few hundred quid off.

 

Samsung - Toshiba - Acer - Dell

 

I'm really shit with tech stuff so any opinions appreciated, cheers.

Edited by kurtsimonw
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Tegis Grand Master

Tegis

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Are they all 399? I get different quotes at times clicking the links. Very similar all 4. Slow harddrives is the drawback on them. Id go for dell or sammy if the prices are the same

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kurtsimonw Rising Star

kurtsimonw

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Are they all 399? I get different quotes at times clicking the links. Very similar all 4. Slow harddrives is the drawback on them. Id go for dell or sammy if the prices are the same

Dell £550, Samsung £450, Toshiba £450, Acer £400.

 

So Samsung being £100 cheaper than the Dell I'm guessing that'd be the best of the 4? What denotes a slow harddrive in terms of the numbers exactly? I have no idea what I'm looking at.

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Davkaus Grand Master

Davkaus

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Are they all 399? I get different quotes at times clicking the links. Very similar all 4. Slow harddrives is the drawback on them. Id go for dell or sammy if the prices are the same

Dell £550, Samsung £450, Toshiba £450, Acer £400.

 

So Samsung being £100 cheaper than the Dell I'm guessing that'd be the best of the 4? What denotes a slow harddrive in terms of the numbers exactly? I have no idea what I'm looking at.

 

 

 

The RPM, 5400 is pretty standard for laptops now (as opposed to 7200 for most, if not all, desktops), especially low/mid end ones as they're much cheaper to make. 

 

As Limpid says, without knowing what you need it for, it's impossible to offer suggestions. As those 4 are all very similar in terms of size, weight, screen resolution and battery, I guess you're not overly concerned about any of that, but do you just use it for web browsing, a bit of Youtube, or games and other demanding software?

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kurtsimonw Rising Star

kurtsimonw

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Are they all 399? I get different quotes at times clicking the links. Very similar all 4. Slow harddrives is the drawback on them. Id go for dell or sammy if the prices are the same

Dell £550, Samsung £450, Toshiba £450, Acer £400.

 

So Samsung being £100 cheaper than the Dell I'm guessing that'd be the best of the 4? What denotes a slow harddrive in terms of the numbers exactly? I have no idea what I'm looking at.

 

 

 

The RPM, 5400 is pretty standard for laptops now (as opposed to 7200 for most, if not all, desktops), especially low/mid end ones as they're much cheaper to make. 

 

As Limpid says, without knowing what you need it for, it's impossible to offer suggestions. As those 4 are all very similar in terms of size, weight, screen resolution and battery, I guess you're not overly concerned about any of that, but do you just use it for web browsing, a bit of Youtube, or games and other demanding software?

 

Mostly for general use and probably some gaming since my little cousins often use my laptop.

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bromsgrove_avfc Newbie

bromsgrove_avfc

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I don't want to start another thread for this but I can't believe how out of touch I am on this now. I need to get my son a new laptop. It'll be for school and play but he wants to start playing World of Warcraft and Skyrim on PC now rather than on his Xbox. Is there a laptop in the £300-500 are that will handle these games well or does he need a desktop?

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The_Rev Mentor

The_Rev

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I don't want to start another thread for this but I can't believe how out of touch I am on this now. I need to get my son a new laptop. It'll be for school and play but he wants to start playing World of Warcraft and Skyrim on PC now rather than on his Xbox. Is there a laptop in the £300-500 are that will handle these games well or does he need a desktop?

World of Warcraft will run on anything. Skyrim will need something with a bit of grunt that is probably out of your price range.

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Danwichmann Enthusiast

Danwichmann

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I've been looking at the Dell Inspiron 14z Ultrabook on their clearance site, and noticed some of them have "32GB mSATA3 SSD for Minicard Slots". Am I right in thinking that would basically just be an expansion slot for an SSD drive? If so, how much would it cost me, and how difficult would it be, to install one?

 

Thanks. 

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Davkaus Grand Master

Davkaus

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It's not just the expansion slot, or it wouldn't mention the capacity. It's got the miniport slot, which already has a 32GB SSD in it, likely just to be used for caching to improve performance rather than having the OS actually installed on it, due to size

 

You can upgrade it, just be careful to get an mSATA SSD, a regular one won't fit. A quick look on Ebuyer/Amazon and it seems like it'll cost you about £100 for a 128GB one. The manual for that model is here. You can replace it, but you have to take out the RAM, optical drive, keyboard and palm rest first (page 43). I accept no liability if you blow it up, if it's not something you've done before, buy your local geek a couple of beers.  ;)

 

If you do think it's worth going ahead you might need to do a bit of research to see if other people have got it working for that model. Some manufacturers make it very difficult to get the machine to boot from the mSATA drive as they only intended it to be used for caching.

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Danwichmann Enthusiast

Danwichmann

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It's not just the expansion slot, or it wouldn't mention the capacity. It's got the miniport slot, which already has a 32GB SSD in it, likely just to be used for caching to improve performance rather than having the OS actually installed on it, due to size

 

You can upgrade it, just be careful to get an mSATA SSD, a regular one won't fit. A quick look on Ebuyer/Amazon and it seems like it'll cost you about £100 for a 128GB one. The manual for that model is here. You can replace it, but you have to take out the RAM, optical drive, keyboard and palm rest first (page 43). I accept no liability if you blow it up, if it's not something you've done before, buy your local geek a couple of beers.  ;)

 

If you do think it's worth going ahead you might need to do a bit of research to see if other people have got it working for that model. Some manufacturers make it very difficult to get the machine to boot from the mSATA drive as they only intended it to be used for caching.

 

Thanks! If the SSD is just for caching then that will probably be more than enough for me. 

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Don_Simon Grand Master

Don_Simon

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Hey Guys,

 

Firstly, this Techy part of the forum is becoming a staple part of my web-surfing diet! I'm learning more here than I have in last 29 years! (I'm a proper technophobe). So cheers for all the advice and guidance being dished out, its hugely appreciated.

 

Secondly, my Sony Vaio laptop has died. RIP Lappie. So I'm in dire need of a new one before the teaching year starts and I'm tying to prep lesson on PowerPoint via my phone. My budget is between £300-£400 and the laptop will be used pretty much solely for Microsoft Office, Football Manager, and web browsing. I'm interested in this SSD thing as I would like to get the most out of my computer, this is a lot of money to me! (But I have no idea how to install the SSD thing and would need to get a computer shop to do that bit!)

 

Again, as ever, all advice gratefully received. Cheers!

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KHV Newbie

KHV

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Posted (edited)

Hey Guys,

Firstly, this Techy part of the forum is becoming a staple part of my web-surfing diet! I'm learning more here than I have in last 29 years! (I'm a proper technophobe). So cheers for all the advice and guidance being dished out, its hugely appreciated.

Secondly, my Sony Vaio laptop has died. RIP Lappie. So I'm in dire need of a new one before the teaching year starts and I'm tying to prep lesson on PowerPoint via my phone. My budget is between £300-£400 and the laptop will be used pretty much solely for Microsoft Office, Football Manager, and web browsing. I'm interested in this SSD thing as I would like to get the most out of my computer, this is a lot of money to me! (But I have no idea how to install the SSD thing and would need to get a computer shop to do that bit!)

Again, as ever, all advice gratefully received. Cheers!

For running football manager which is clearly the main thing for £400 get the lenovo ideapad z585 quad core 8GB 1TB laptop with windows 8. I got that last month. it rocks! Edited by KHV
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