Some help about laptops

viper_biker

viper_biker

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Gareth
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Sorry, its not specifically camera ralated, but it is in a way. Basically my 5 year old PC is on its last legs and will be used as a mass storage device now (no point in not using the 500GB HDD) and was looking at replacing it was a laptop.

What I need/want/would like

A decent processor 2GHz or better)
Plenty of RAM (about 4gig sould do it)
Good sized HDD space (300-500gig)
Ability to take with me on shoots/weekends away
Blu-Ray would be a bonus and HDMI out to shoot it to my TV should I need it

A friend told me to have a look at the VIAO range and I stumbled accross the FW31J which seems to have ticked all the correct boxes, but, being that this is my first laptop (I've always used desktops in the past) is it overpriced for its spec, anyone know of reliability issue or even suggest an alternative. My budget was circa £7-800 but can stretch a little over that (maybe another £50) I did also take a trip to the local apple store and the MacBook are too expensive for me. I think the similar spec one to the VIAO was around £1300, if I had that sorta money I'd be looking a 70-200VR :naughty:
 
A bit cheeky but are you after buying new as i have a 17" Toshiba in the F/S forum?
 
have you tried dell?

i have a advent(pcworld rebranded medion) and cant fault it.what operating system you thinking of using, since 32bit windows wont recognize more than 3.5gb ram?
 
Yes, I will be buyig new, but thanks for the offer. As for O/S, I've always used XP Pro but I've played about with my mums laptop with 32bit Vista and it was 'OK' for normal applicaations, but I could see it having issues with photoshop and the likes (hence why 4gig of RAM would help)
 
I've got a Viao. Not the best with Vista. Then again not the best of specs.
If I were you, I'd go a Macbook, even a good conditon second hand Macbook.
 
Dont bother with the Vaio, your paying loads extra for a name and a few flashy buttons.

Look at the Dell range, or Toshiba.
 
hey! take a look at nova-tech. they do some really good laptops, the prices are average... but what attracted me to them, was that they give you the laptop, with just the OS installed... none of the added crap that other companies put on...(had previously brought a hp laptop, where 20gig of the hardrive was full of random software and generall useless-ness)... less installed, means better performance, for fancy software like CS3 :thumbs:
 
Have a look at the dell outlet, they have some really cheap one there with a great spec.
 
viper_biker said:
Yes, I will be buyig new, but thanks for the offer. As for O/S, I've always used XP Pro but I've played about with my mums laptop with 32bit Vista and it was 'OK' for normal applicaations, but I could see it having issues with photoshop and the likes (hence why 4gig of RAM would help)
Click to expand...

What issues do you think vista would have with Photoshop? In fact with 4GB of ram I would reccomend you go for 64x Vista every time (although some companies seem to shy away from it and just install 32x:shrug:

(I use Vista 64x with 2GB of ram and have no problems with it, in fact it's only when you get down to 1GB that it starts to play up a bit.)

pixeljunkie said:
I've got a Viao. Not the best with Vista. Then again not the best of specs.
If I were you, I'd go a Macbook, even a good conditon second hand Macbook.
Click to expand...

Why a macbook? Especially second hand, there is no benefit for using PS (in fact PS actually runs better on Vista), and he will just be paying over the odds.:)

If I were you I would look at the XPS laptop range from Dell, I went for a 13" XPS last year for my mobile computing needs as it was the best performing machine for the price (especially from the Outlet store), although if you are looking for a 15" or bigger there is more choice, but I would still go for one of the more custom machines.

What I would strongly suggest though is to go for a machine with a 7200RPM Hard Drive, as the standard 5400RPM drives are about the biggest performance dropper you get with modern laptops, especially when playing around with big files.:)
 
Thanks for the help, as always. The Acer looks an identical spec to the VIAO (or am I missing sonething) at a more affordable (read cheaper) price. The MacBooks were something I was really interested in until I saw what price they are :o

I'm off to Curry's and PC world now to have a look and feel as to what they have on offer then I'll be back home to see what the best prices are. Does PC World still do a price matching service, and if so does that also cover online prices? I have also seen the PC World Business website and they have the VIAO at £100 less than the shop price, are they one and the same people???
 
PC World Business are linked to PC World, but not the same.

I use an Aspire 6935 myself and I can vouch for its build quality, its only downside is the vertical screen resolution of 768 pixels.
 
I wouldnt bother with sony, as already said your coughing up for the name.

My girlfriend has an acer and to be honest the build isn't that great. Soft key board, poor balance and a nightmare for overheating even on a table. For the money the performance is good though.

Have a look on amazon site as there are quite a few useful reviews on there.

Quick note, when you buy quite a few of them dont ship with windows discs (Acer dont!) so make a recovery disc soon as!
 
A Dell XPS would be nice, but to get it to where I want it to be its gonna cost slightly over £1300 and I don't have that sort of money.The Acer is £700 and the Sony is just over £800 and the build quality difference might be worth the extra. I didn't get out tonight to go have a look as I was rebuilding the bikes fork-legs (one of those 30 minute jobs that ends up taking a few hours) but should get to see both at PC World over the weekend. Am I missing anything then other than the Acer and VIAO. I know a lot are saying you're paying for the name/brand but I hope also for the build quality.
 
This particular Acer is well built. I'm more than happy to say that some of them aren't (5101 series anyone?). If the Sony is the same spec I would go for that though. Another two brands to consider would be Fujitsu and Asus.
 
for 800 quid you should be looking at the serious end of the laptop market. that means discounting all the rubbish - tosh satellite, acer aspire, dell inspiron.

The more you spend, the better level of engineering you get. For decent build quality, reliability and a good spec, you should be looking at Toshiba portege/tecra, HP HDX, Lenovo T Series and maybe the Dell higher end stuff.
 
lazaroonie said:
for 800 quid you should be looking at the serious end of the laptop market. that means discounting all the rubbish - tosh satellite, acer aspire, dell inspiron.

The more you spend, the better level of engineering you get. For decent build quality, reliability and a good spec, you should be looking at Toshiba portege/tecra, HP HDX, Lenovo T Series and maybe the Dell higher end stuff.
Click to expand...

£800 is mid-range to be fair. The serious end is nearer £2-3k. There are however good machines available for £800.
 
Heh, for £800 you could get a new dell studio laptop with a 17" screen and the super high res of 1900x1200 screen. Or even cheaper go through dell buisness and get a 17"vostro.

I'd never buy a sony as they are just an insane price.

Just look at the dell page and customise your pc to what you want. You can add extras and remove stuff if its getting expensive.
Im after a decent laptop, really high spec but I dont think i'll pay more than £800 for it. Well I know I wont be ;)
 
ACer are good bang for your buck but not the greatest.
DEll are a nice balance
sony are lovely, there is a lot more to a laptop than just the specification
the screens on the Dell are nice and very good on the Sony VAIO range.

here's a quick tip, look up the Samsung Rxx range. see how they float your boat.

and running vista? if you want to spice up a nice laptop because it's a bit slow, get rid of vista. put XP on it (sata install pack) or windows 7 and see how that goes.
 
WOW, what a day, A lot of shopping, a lot of idiots and 1 really nice sales guy.

If you'll allow me to put myself into the picture. I know a little bit about computers, enough to get me by and enough to know what is decent and what came over the hills with Julie Andrews, my friend also runs a local PC store (but they don't deal in laptops) so if I'm really stuck I speak to him for advice.

1 - PC World - Staff are a bunch of effing idiots. I was in 2 very large stores today and on both occassion I had to ask for assistance a few times befor someone actualy stopped to talk to me. Now I'm not hard to miss, I 6'2 and hobbling about on crutches at the minute (I had ACL surgery a few weeks ago). On thing I will say, the staff training is consistant. Consistantly poor that is. The first store I was in the sales guy simply read a printout for their website (which I'd already done at home as I like to do at least a bit of research about what I'm about to spend money on). The 2nd store was even worse, but without getting really boring multiply store 1 by a million and you're still no quite there.

2 - The Laptop Shop - Worst place EVER. They stocked 8 laptops in the whole shop and the sales guy didn't even know the spec of what was in the shop. I'd asked him to price me up a Blu-Ray reader/writer (just for sh!ts and giggles) and his response was 'Ring the shop tomorrow and ask to speak to me so you can remind me to do that for you, I'm on my way home in 10 minutes' Best part of it was, he gave me a spec sheet for a laptop he was trying to sell me and the sheet was a direct printout from the Toshiba website. That's OK, I'm down with that, but the best bit was, it had the Toshiba RRP on the page which was £880 (incl tax) and they are selling it to me for £899, ex-display and loaded with buckets of crap software that they had put on it.

3 - Currys - Walked in, walked past the laptops, stodd in front of one of the new 46' LED TV and watched Ice Age. Man I want one of those TV's.

4 - Harvey Norman - 10/10 for customer service. Sales guy went through everything. The differences in processors, graphics cards, screens, everything. Gave quick demos of them all, couldn't have been happier.

As a result of todays excursion, I almost bought a VAIO. I say almost, because I had a little (and I mean a very little) bit of self control, plus the one that I almost bought is ex-display and me being me, I want one new in a box, one that hasn't been fingered by greasy teenage children or wannabe techies who look at the shiny pictures on the screen and wonder how they can get people small enough to fit inside them.

Many have already posted about the VAIO and about how its not the best value for money and that I'm buying into the name as much as I am the product, but all my routes today ended in me looking at a FW series VAIO and I think it will be one of these,

FW21E

http://www.vaio.sony.co.uk/view/Sho...s&category=VN+FW+Series&assetid=1218032875460

FW31M

http://www.vaio.sony.co.uk/view/Sho...s&category=VN+FW+Series&assetid=1218032875460

Or if I can hold of for about a month and save a little more, an FW31ZJ

http://www.vaio.sony.co.uk/view/Sho...s&category=VN+FW+Series&assetid=1218032875460

(I apologise again) If there is anything else that I have missed can you please post links for me along with prices, and I can possibly stretch up to £1000. No MacBooks (sorry), must have the following (as per the original post)

2GHz or more processos
4gig of RAM
Quality graphics card
Blu-Ray player
HD screen (although 1600x900 is good enough)
A good bit of hard-disc space (circa 500gig) and a decent speed too

Thank you all for your help.
 
My missus BT uses her toshiba laptop with CS3 and only has 2GB ram and never has any problems by the way its Vista home premium 32
 
seriously mate you can get a very good spec dell studio 17" with blu-ray for £799 rrp. its got a slightly lower rated processor (a whole 2.6 vs 2.4) and its got a slightly lower spec graphics card but i seriously doubt youll notice the difference.

plus with dell you can usually phone them up and haggle a bit.

if you do opt for the sony, i would highly recommend wiping it and doing a fresh install of the OS. the amount of rubbish they install on them grinds even the highest spec machine to a halt.
 
viper_biker said:
A Dell XPS would be nice, but to get it to where I want it to be its gonna cost slightly over £1300 and I don't have that sort of money.The Acer is £700 and the Sony is just over £800 and the build quality difference might be worth the extra. I didn't get out tonight to go have a look as I was rebuilding the bikes fork-legs (one of those 30 minute jobs that ends up taking a few hours) but should get to see both at PC World over the weekend. Am I missing anything then other than the Acer and VIAO. I know a lot are saying you're paying for the name/brand but I hope also for the build quality.
Click to expand...

That's odd, as usually Dell are pretty good for mid range latops. As for money I went with Dell Outlet and got a £1100 spec for £660 delivered. I was laughing.:D

neil_g said:
to be honest ive seen dell and hp laptops built to the same quality as sony. theyre nothing special.
Click to expand...

I have to say sony are pretty good, yes their cheap ones are a bit lacking but the higher end products are very good, same with HP and Dell, and far in away better than the Acers and pretty much anything sold in PC world. They may not be up there with the Panasonics and Lenovo's but thne they are another step up in price.:)
 
Thanks for the help. I'm gonna go for the Vaio VGN-FW31M and Tesco seem to be cheapest at £899. Everyone else is £100 or more, more expensive. Now if only I could find someone who worked for Tesco...
 
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