Help please in deciding on a laptop

[Suomi]

After maxising out the present laptop (sony vaio, T5800 2Ghz, 4GB, 120GB SSD) with panoramas and rendering a couple of timelapse, now considering time to look for a replacement.

Budget is max £800 (but paying less is better), and must be a laptop as there is no room in this studio flat for a desktop.

Thinking that a i7 processor is a must (but saying that would go down to a i5 if the real world experince is not much different).

Want the most screen res as possible so nothing less than 1600x900 and no smaller than 16" screen.

Will mainly be used to do photos on (PS Elements and Lightroom) single image and some film (going to ty and learn PS premier this year), internet and movies.

Blu-ray would be nice as some blu-ray movies (but would consider a machine without if everything else was there).

I can put in more memory if it does not come with 8Gb.

Ideally would like a laptop with space to put a SSD in alongside a HDD.

These laptops seem to fit most of the bill, can't have everything in the budget :-( all secondhand apart from where indicated.

Sony Vaio F13M0E - £550
1.73GHz with 2.93GHz Turbo Boost Intel Core i7-740QM
4GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M
16.4in, 1600x900 screen
Blu-ray Disc
2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0
500GB

Sony Vaio F12M0E -£570
Intel Core i7 720QM
4GB DDR3 SDRAM, 1333 MHz
Serial ATA, 500 GB,
BD-ROM
16.4" TFT, 1600x900 (WXGA++), 16:9
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
USB, 2x SuperSpeed USB 3.0, FireWire

Sony Vaio F13Z1E - £685
Intel® Core™ i7-740QM Processor
Blu-ray Disc
8GB DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Hard Drive
16.4 Inch 1920 x 1200 Resolution

Sony Vaio F226FM - £780
Processor Name Intel Core i7-2630QM - 2 GHz
RAM 8 GB
Screen Size 16.4 inches
Native Resolution 1920 x 1080
Graphics Card nVidia GeForce GT 540M 1GB
Storage Capacity 750 GB


Sony Vaio VPCEJ2B1E - £699 (new)
Processor i5-2430M
Processor Speed (GHz) 2.40 with Turbo Boost up to 3.00
Memory Size (GB) 6
Hard Drive Capacity 500 GB
Blu-ray Disc
Screen (in) 17.3
Resolution WXGA++ (1600 x 900)
Graphic Card NVIDIA® GeForce® 410M GPU
Video RAM memory size 512 MB
USB Port(s) USB 2.0 x4

HP Pavilion g7-1255sa (New) £490
Core i5 2430M 2.4 GHz - 17.3" TFT
Processor - Intel Core i5 2430M / 2.4 GHz ( Dual-Core )
RAM - 4 GB (installed) / 6 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM ( 1 x 4 GB )
Hard Drive - 500 GB - Serial ATA-300 - 5400 rpm
Optical Storage - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM
Display - 17.3" LED backlight HD+ BrightView TFT 1600 x 900 ( WXGA++ )

Does anyone have any of these laptops? If so how do you find them?

Any help or suggestions most welcome.

Cheers
Mark

 

[arad85]

Forget the first gen ix processors (i.e. i7-740QM and i7-720QM). They are slow in comparison to the second gen.

Next question is dual or quad core vs lower/higher clock speed. The i7-2630QM will be faster than the i5-2430M for heavy photoshop or video encoding where the 8 cores can be used over the 4 of the i5. The i5-2430M will beat the i7-2630QM for things like zip or mp3 encoding where the clock speed of the processor is more important. To be honest, my order for the last 3 would be:

1) Sony Vaio F226FM: due to high screen res, better HDD ands more memory
2) HP Pavillion: faster i5 processor and better value for money
3) Sony Vaio VPCE: £200 more than 2) for a little more meory, a BR drive (not important to me) and an extra graphics card (not needed for PS/LR)

HTH

 

[Suomi]

Thanks Andy, that is helpful.