talkmagic.co.uk

Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent laptop for up to around £500.
I need it for work purposes, internet use, with gaming ability as an added bonus if possible.
I've had a look, and I'm just getting lost in a sea of numbers that dont really mean anything to me.
Cheers in advance

Whats sort of games would you play?

Whats sort of games would you play?

Prob the RPG games (such as edler scrolls etc), though I dont know that much about them as I have never looked into them much.

The limiting factor with laptops being able to play games is the built in graphics chips. Most sub £1000 laptops have poor quality graphics hardware and will not run the majority of 3d games (or even some 2d games).

Toshiba however have been well known to use ATI graphics chipsets in their laptops, but finding a laptop in your budget might not provide the results you wish.

When looking at laptops, look at what graphics chipset it has, and then google the chipset and see what people are saying about it.

I paid around £1,500 for a laptop last autumn, it can still play the latest games at pretty good resolution, but I still prefer my desktop for gaming.

Ok forget the gaming, as it would only be an added bonus. Its more for work. Any advice on a laptop for about £500 that is useful for work and using the internet?

I recommend Toshiba's

I reckon any £500 laptop would be fine for work, internet and email. Toshiba and Dell are pretty good.

Personally, I would recommend HP and you can pick up some really nice 17" laptops for under £500.

Buy a copy of a magazine such as Computer Shopper and look at the ads. It may be one of the best £3 or so that you spend (apart from your magic purchases of course)

Never used this place, but this looks a good un.
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshiba_ ... ersion.asp

now shop around!

Andy,

I recently bought a Packard Bell Easy Note SJ51 from Currys to upgrade my old laptop. The main reason being that the old one struggled to cope with the raw image processing from my Canon EOS 400D.

The new one is on Vista instead of XP, has a dual core processor, 2g of ram and a 160g HD. It works like a dream, was easy to set up on wireless with my PC upstairs, and I've just spent 4hrs processing photos.

I have it set up to receive freeview, which I did last week on holiday in Norfolk and am now sat on the tinternet visiting TM while watching TV.

It was just over 400 quid and well worth it.

I think a Dell XPS would work well for you. They range in prices, but I think you could find one for five hundred pounds.

Cheers guys, I'll check them out. The thing I am not sure about is what spec to expect for my money. But those examples give me a rough idea. Cheers.

O.K techies, does this spec look good? I've decided to up my budget a little.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7250 (2.00 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home
17.0" Widescreen WXGA+ (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
nVidia® GeForce™ Go 8600M GT with 256MB DDR2 dedicated graphic memory
3072MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [1x2048+1x1024]
320GB (5.400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including Software
1 Year Base Warranty - Collect & Return

Cost £699

I teach and have been getting into some new e-learning initiatives, so I'm looking for decent spec, and this has the added bonus of (from my limited knowledge) a half decent graphics card.

Any thoughts?

It looks like a very good computer. I just think you might want to try and get a longer warranty.

That seems like good spec, what I would advise though, is see about ditching vista and getting xp pro instead. Vista hogs resources.