New Laptop

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First of all Hi everybody

Been some time since I've logged on.


I want to buy a new laptop for my father for christmas and was looking for some advice from you tech savvy members!!

Budget is £600 to absolute max of £800. My dad doesn't know much about computing and has pretty much left it to me to decide on spec etc. Only thing he has stipulated is a large screen size.

Biggest screen sizes i've ssen are 16.4" on a Sony Vaio and 17" on the Dell Studio 17. I think Toshiba may also offer a 17" laptop too. Both have all round good spec it seems. I realise that that bigger screens make for heavier laptops but thats not a concern really.

Personally, I'm tempted to go with Dell Studio 17. I think it has a pretty good spec for the money and to be honest, it's actually over specced for what my Dad uses pc's for. But in my view that will see him okay without upgrades etc. for the next couple of years or so.

I have two friends in IT, who use them in the workplace and at home. But they have also told me not rule out systems by Acer and HP.

I'm really interested in what you guys think. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

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Sounds like you have some smart friends (I'd also steer away from Acer and HP)

I think the Dell Studio would be your best bet. It'd probably be at the top of my list of laptops to purchase in the price range you're talking about. You're probably going to overpay for Sony, and I haven't heard much (good or bad) about Toshiba in a while.

 

I agree DELL are generally good machines and quite robust. That said, I like the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo series of laptops as well. They tend to come with good RAM, and big Hard Disk Drives.

 

i would recommend toshiba i have used the Satellite Pro P300 theyre good value for money and come with a execlent spec. you can find it here

 

Although we buy lots of HP's and a few Toshiba I'd personally go for IBM thinkpad or one along those lines. The IBM laptop's are usually solid builds and robust. Cheerio and lets know what you decide

 

What are the reasons for ruling out HP and Acer?? Price or something else

 

In my opinion, build quality. I haven't heard much good about either, and my personal experience with HP is that they feel much cheaper than other laptops in the same range. Both Acer and HP are, for the most part, attempting to compete on price. This results in using cheaper materials. For the last few years, Dell has also been falling into this trap. However, the recent Dell laptops I've seen have been better quality than they were a few years ago.

I've heard a lot of good things about Lenovo, too. However, for a consumer-oriented laptop, I'd go with Dell over a Lenovo.

 

A few months ago I finally persuaded my company to issue me with a new laptop. They gave me a HP/Compaq nc4400 which has been very good so far.

This particular model has a smaller screen, as a CD/DVD drive isn't included. I haven't missed the drive much - I can mostly transfer files over the network. And it makes the unit *much* lighter!

Harry.

 

I actually own a HP laptop(250hdd, 2GB RAM[DIMM] 2 memory slots, AMD Turion(tm) 64X2 mobile TL60, maximum speed 2GHZ) and have not had any problems with it yet, same with most of my friends and people that i know. As for Lenovo its a no no, most of the laptop that i had to deal with; Acer and Lenovo.