Help me to choose a laptop pc

[ddavidebor]

Hi guys

I need a laptop pc, but i know nothing about this market so i'd like to ask you some help.

I need a medium screen (14" looks good) and no need for long battery life.
I only want something of good quality.

No need for media center stuff or anything like that.

Max budget 400€

Have you any suggestion?

[Crockett]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545. It's a workhorse and very user serviceable. Of course it's been a few years since I bought it and I don't know what's available nowadays. It does only have a duo core processor (a great processor) but I much prefer i7. I bought my Inspiron without much consideration for how I would use it, though, and now it is limited because I really need it to have a Nvidia graphics card. (I'm not sure it is capable though).
Don't know if that was any help or not, but it was just a snippet of my own personal experience in the matter. I will say this, I like the one I got, even still now, long after the newness and warranty has worn off.

[amyk]

You may want to look at this site, unless you want to ask some deeply technical questions the EEs here will be interested in answering.

[Fsck]

notebookreview has good forums but not a decent selection of reviews.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/  has a good selection of reviews for like all common enthusiast notebooks

[GeoffS]

I just bought a Toshiba L850 to replace an old (nearly 10 years) IBM Thinkpad.
Build quality and performance are OK  - Linux installed and running.

Not sure on Euro conversion rates but I paid $A700 for it.

[IanB]

Look at physical factors.

Screen size is one thing, but what about the pixel resolution? More pixels generally improves display clarity.

Is the screen comfortable to look at? Shiny surface or anti-glare finish? Easy to see from different angles?

Are the keys nice to the touch? Is the keyboard layout to your liking? Are the arrow keys and Home/Page Up/Page Down keys easy to use? Is there space around the arrow keys so you can find them easily with your fingers?

Does it have the ports you need? Are the USB ports on the sides (both sides) or the back? It can be annoying to have to few ports or ports only on one side. Display output? HDMI can be convenient these days. eSata is useful, though rare. Does it have USB3?

What about a DVD drive? There are still uses for this, for example for creating and using a recovery disk.

It may seem like overkill, but don't settle for less than 8 GB of memory. Nothing slows a machine down more than running out of memory.

[ddavidebor]

Well... I have an imac so i don't care about all this thing.

Now i'm in third year of  hight school, i only need a portable pc that will last me for 3 year or so... With medium performance.l.

[Razor512]

If you don't plan on gaming, then focus purely on the CPU.

you can always upgrade the memory, but with many of the latest gen CPU's you end up with a crappy BGA, making it hard or impossible to upgrade the CPU.

based on the currency conversion

400.00 GBP    =    606.860 USD

this laptop has a decent balance of specs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312430

lenovo G780 Metal (59359249) Notebook Intel Core i5 3230M(2.60GHz) 17.3" (1600x900), 6GB Memory DDR3 1600 1TB HDD 5400rpm
(crappy GPU so don't expect to run crysis or battlefield 3 )

[TimNJ]

I'd look for a "business-class" notebook instead of a consumer-class notebook. Notebooks like Lenovo Thinkpad, HP Probook, and Dell Latitude.

[ddavidebor]

This seems to me a gooooood idea! Thanks!

[TimNJ]

And Acer Travelmate. I'm planning on buying a Travelmate for college.

The reason I suggest business notebooks is because they tend to be more durable and better in a few areas, like keyboard and screen.

[ddavidebor]

And in fact, i need it for "work"... Not for games...

[Simon]

I have a good old hp nc4200 that came with xp and just put 7 on it. still works adequately 6 years later even with 2 screens but new it was 1300 GBP. it was sold as for business use. as for keyboards nothing beats a real one.

[Falcon69]

I good screen is one thing I'm glad I bought.

This laptop (I'm on now) has a 17.3" screen with 1920x1280 resolution.  I look at my 24" desktop screen now, and it hurts my eyes, the resolution is not as good.

So, buying a laptop with HD resolution should be at the top of anyone's list when purchasing a laptop.

Also, one thing you may want to consider is Ram.  I wish this laptop had more ram.  It's only 8gb and when I try and render the 3d images in SolidWorks, it TAKES FOREVER.  More ram would solve that problem. Currently, i think the most ram you can get is 32GB in a laptop.  8GB is pretty much standard now, and 16GB is idea premium.  32GB i just extreme and probably need to build your own laptop for that, which you can do here at www.XoticPC.com .

[Dave]

This laptop (I'm on now) has a 17.3" screen with 1920x1280 resolution.

1920x1080 here. It's absolutely wonderful for programs that require a large workspace (like Altium and Solidworks).
The advantage od 17" laptops is also the keyboard. The numpad is invaluable for punching in numbers.

Not to mention watching 1080p movies.

[ddavidebor]

I don't care about ram.

I've an imac with 8gb, i can do the hard work here.

[Simon]

Also, one thing you may want to consider is Ram.  I wish this laptop had more ram.  It's only 8gb and when I try and render the 3d images in SolidWorks, it TAKES FOREVER.  More ram would solve that problem. Currently, i think the most ram you can get is 32GB in a laptop.  8GB is pretty much standard now, and 16GB is idea premium.  32GB i just extreme and probably need to build your own laptop for that, which you can do here at www.XoticPC.com .

are you sure about the ram ? I use the "wonders" of solid edge at work on a wasted i7 core processor because the stupid think can only use one core

[Smokey]

Sorry for the diversion, but it might be relevant to some other people around here....
Is there any good way to hook up 3+ monitors to a laptop these days?  USB2 adapters really aren't good enough.  USB 3.0 maybe?
Anyone know of a laptop that can take at least 3 HD monitors natively?

[Simon]

Even a pc that supports 3+ HD monitors "natively" is hard to come by. What are you doing on these monitors ? USB3 adapters sound like the best to me, USB2 only has an effective speed of 30MB/s. You also need to find out if the usb adapters do any graphics computing because if not your CPU will and that sounds like a bad move when you consider that graphics cards have highly specialized processors and the VRAM is generally one or two steps ahead of the main memory technology.

Another not very mobile approach is use the expansion slot (the new version of the PMCIA) that is effectively a PCIe slot to plug in a standard graphics card. This has been done with some sort of custom adapter but is a lot of work as you'd also need to provide power.

[Falcon69]

are you sure about the ram ? I use the "wonders" of solid edge at work on a wasted i7 core processor because the stupid think can only use one core

Ya, pretty sure.  I have an i7 core extreme 940 on this laptop.  I should be able to render the files fine.

From my understanding, for game playing you want a fast cpu and graphics card.  You can get by with 4gb of ram for game playing. But when it comes to programs the use video rendering, 3d rendering, and other business type applications, you need a fast cpu and lot of ram.

I fairly confident that if I could somehow upgrade my ram, I'd then have no problem with the rendering.  From my understanding, the ram is bottle necking the cpu and video card.  Either that, I just need faster ram.


My laptop supports 3 screens.  The main screen for the laptop itself, a screen connected to the HDMI output, and a screen connected to the DVI output.  I can show 3 different applications on 3 different screens at once.

I have a usb 3.0 output as well, and a eSata connection.  I could probably connect another 2 screens, but have not tried yet.