Help on a new lappy

digitalfailure

digitalfailure

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Brian
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Hi chaps

I'm thinking of upgrading my laptop

I've come up with 2 possibles so far, Ones a Dell inspiron 6000 and the others a sony vaio

Both have the centrino 1.73ghz chip with 512mb ram as standard and both are 15.4 widescreen.

the sony has the "bling" xblack screen at 1280x800 and a 80gb hdd
and the dell with a couple of upgrades has a normal screen but at 1680x1050 and the 80gb hdd

The sony works out around 60quid more............does anyone have experience with vaios or the dell 6000?

The size is a maximum and 799.gbp is a max too! I'll up the ram at a later date if i go with either of them.

To date my dell inspiron has been great and hasn't so much as crashed once but it's a little heavy for moving round with. My dell also doesn't have onboard wifi, so i have to use a pcmica card.......and that means I can't download from the card reader while surfin the net.

anyone still awake?
 
does the $ony have onboard WiFi
 
Both have onboard b and g wifi as part of the centrino doings so i'll still be able to connect to my router at 54mbs
 
Arkady posted some negatives about Sony a while back. Something about the Sony customisation of XP being a pain with some software?
 
I read that, but i think he was given the topspec vaio.....that also sucked in this months what laptop review too, so he's right about it :D

The lower spec'd item doesn't come with alot of the drivel it would seem.

I wonder how he's getting on with picture detail on the xblack screen?
 
I've had a Dell 6000 for about nine months. It is heavily used but has been perfectly reliable and I am very happy with it. I spent quite a bit of time deciding what laptop to buy and the Dell finally won out for me overall with the screen size (I didnt want true widescreen because you dont actually get a lot of height for the size and opted for the 1680x1050) and the ability to upgrade to harddrive to 7200rpm (this makes a very significant impact on the performance of any app that uses the disk heavily) being the clinchers. I also upgraded the graphics to the ATI Radeon X300.

Plug for another forum coming up but hopefully doesnt break the rules as its not really a competing site. Keep an eye out on hotukdeals as they track all the Dell deals and if you also buy via the referral site quidco then you can save another 5%. Note that I have NO involvement in these two sites other than using them to save me money.

If there is anything specific you want to know then just shout. Mark
 
its a hard choice, i hate the sony software infestation of the vaios but the x-black screens are oh-so-gorgeous and have to be seen in real life. but then the high res and fast hdd of the dell are nice too. me... i'd be too tempted by the x-black to resist.
 
The screen is the best thing about this thing (VGN-A317M), but as I said it had only a 1.73Ghz processor and 1.0Gb RAM - good RAM but could have specc'd a better processor.

The unit came with loads of bundled Vaio software on it that conflicted with almost everything else on it - the DVD-RW drive didn't initially recognise anything other that store-bought DVD films, until we took off the Vaio DVD-writing software and installed Nero.
Since that worked, I reformatted the entire HD and loaded a basic Win-WP-Pro build on instead, plus all the bits n bobs I use day-to-day.
Just heard the we're getting the Dell Inspirons next month because of all the dramas. Money well-spent then...
 
Thanks for the updates on this, I've decided that i'm going to stick with what I know.

My current Dell inspiron has been bullet proof, so i'll just upspec the inspiron 6000, except for the ram.
I'll be opting for a single stick of 512mb from dell as it's cheaper to get another stick of ram from elsewhere.

After all the careful consideration, the 100 extra for the Sony unit is better saved at purchase and used to fund the ram.
 
Good choice on the Dell, I wish I had looked more carefully before buying a Sony !

If you are not in a hurry to buy a new Dell, keep checking http://www.hotukdeals.com/ ( Dell link is down the page at the left hand side)

Most of the really good Evalue codes are for Desktops, but occasionally you get a laptop deal that is worth having :thumb:

Might just save you another £100 or get you some more memory etc.

There have been some absolute bargain desktops at times !


Mark.
 
I've ordered the Dell as I've already lined up a buyer for my current Dell :banana:

I went for the upgraded GFX, Screen, and battery.

The HDD was big enough for what i'll do with it and the DVD re writer will store the photos with ease.

I just need to wait for it to turn up now :woot:
 
Sorry to drag this thread back up but I'm looking to get a new lappy next year was wondering how the 6000 is working out? any glitches or gripes? how hard is it to read stuff on a 15" 1680x1050 screen? oh and does the upgraded battery stick out at all?
 
If I ever do get one for myself I'll get the smaller (13.5" diagonal screen dimensions) version of the Sony I currently use - bigger memory and turbo-nutter processor as well - about £1700. I need something I can carry in a backpack with all my other kit - as it is I carry a Peli case with all the crap I'm currently lumbered with.

Worth it for this screen IMO
 
No problems at all reading things on my screen now, the inital niggles have been worked out.

The main concern I had was poor images and text, this was more apparent when using Internet Explorer for surfing and checking webmail, or anything that had a HTML type interface. This was caused by some of Dell's own software :(

IE's setting for auto scaling was at it's defaulted setting of ON, but Dell's Quickset software has it defaulted to OFF, and that overrides IE. Thats something even Dell customer support didn't know :dizzy:

Another issue with the display that I found, but probably won't cause a problem was, the native resolution of the screen is 128dpi, but the ATI graphics driver sets the screen to 120dpi.

Both issues are now sorted and images on the screen look great :clap:

The battery lasts well over 5hours and doesn't look any different to the standard unit, so nothing sticks out.

The only thing I could add a negertive comment about is on the case, it has a white strip around the edges of the case which looks a little bright against the silver bits. The dell website doesn't really show the white edging.
 
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