I am looking into buying a Laptop for my wife; she suffers with spinal problems and ideally needs one so that it makes it a little easier for her to access emails, internet, word, music, pictures and watching dvd’s where she is most comfortable at any given time (bed, couch, kitchen etc) instead of having to be stuck on the desktop PC in one place and one position. It would rarely be used outdoors so the weight is not to much of an issue. I was thinking along the lines of something that does not get too hot (although I would imagine using one on a bed duvet will not help matters...) and has a half descent size screen (15 to 16"). I am not sure whether to go wide or standard size on the screen considering it is relatively small compared to our PC one (Dell 24” WS). I use a router that connects my and my two kids PC’s to the net/ LAN directly through Cat45 cabling; the router also has a wireless connectivity option so getting online should hopefully be no problem with the laptop. Most of our walls inside the house are partitioned (not solid) and our layout is on two floors. Game play is a not an issue for this laptop so a fast GPU is not required My initial research is pointing me towards the Dell Inspiron 6400…From my experience with Dell, they show good support/customer care and tend to have good bang for buck. What do you think of something like this to meet my wife’s needs ?: InspironTM 6400 Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology with Intel® CoreT Duo Processor T 2300 (1.66GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB) Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition 56K Data Fax Modem 15.4" Widescreen WXGA (1280x800) 60GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM) Memory - Now 1024MB (Was 512MB) FREE DELL COLOUR PRINTER Any advice would be very much apreciated, thank you. S!ap
OcUK do the Inspiron 6400 at £528.69 inc. VAT. Not a bad price. Sometimes they're cheaper than Dell, which makes no sense to me, but worth checking out. Although that's without the extra memory or printer (but to be fair I'd imagine the fre printer is a pile of crap).
Thx chaps, at the moment the buying direct seems to be a better deal(free shipping/higher spec/cheaper all-round), but perhaps there might be a special on them this week at OCUK...Please I am also pondering whether to spend a few more sovs and go for the 17" Wide Screen XGA (1440x900) 6400 model for that extra screen space. Is that built-in Intel GMA 950 Shared Graphics Card with up to 128MB good enough to run DVD's? What about those cooling mats that plug into the USB port of your laptop, just a gimmick or do they actually work? I am off with the wife later on to go look at some laptops at Dixons (no Dells though) so that we can compare various screen sizes and layouts etc before I re-mortgage the house...=)
They do work, but the one I heard had annoying buzz though it may not annoy you. (this is an Antec) I suppose if anything they stop people putting laptops down and blocking ventilation holes. That Centrino cheap doesn't run that hot anyway compared to some chips. By going to 17 inch, you add weight / size and get much less battery life, but hey you can't have it all. That should easily play DVDs.
check out the hp pavilion dv5157eu i have one i got for 680, amd ml34 turion 1.8ghz 1mb cache 1024gb ram 100gb hdd ati x200m chipset 128mb dedicated graphics mem, plays wow fine at 1280x800 15.4" xblack widescreen 1200x800 dual layer dvd burner I am really pleased with the laptop, plus it doesnt feel as cheap as the dells, we have alot of dells here at work i have to keep running lol. All the dell users comment on how better the screen is on my machine and so on lol edit see your off to looks at lappys later, google this one mate, and go see it in the flesh, it really is very nice
lol it was in there but i didnt put a £ infront of it. £680. look online and price match it. it really is a wicked laptop, also comes with a media remote which is cool and dvd playback looks stunning.
Yeah.. They have them in basic macbooks and Punky_Munky said that he got Half Life 2 running on it Dvd's don't use the gfx card much I don't think? It'll run them anyways no problems It'll be better than my GF3 ti 200 and I can with that
just bought the wife an Acer Aspire 6522 core duo 2300 1.66 667mhz fsb 1gig Ram 80 gig HD DVD burner wireless very nice 15.4 widescreen ATI x1300 128mb dedicated but can take additional system me if you want it too(which so far seems pretty good so far) 699 quid seems a decent all rounder for the cash
hmm it might be classed as a competitor? pic wise i was trying out far cry..to errr...check her new toy was running ok
online shop of a high street store... 50 quid cheaper than the store price and about 15 quid cheaper than i could find from the usual online direct places
it made a nice change really...when I bought it most laptop direct places were selling it at 770-799 so to see it at a major retailer for 699 was big suprise a couple have them in their sale now with the next cheapest price 714.99 from a direct laptop supplier...but I still have not seen it cheaper than 699.99 which was nice as the wife said I couldnt spend more than 700 quid
acer looks nice, but i didnt like the build quality, again it had to me what is the same problems as the dells the plastics on it just felt cheap. Very nice spec's though My 2p's worth, Im not a hp fan boy or nowt but the build quality on the pavilion is ace.
What's the battery life in the HP like? The centrinos are excellent with that, just wondered how the AMD Turion 64 Mobile Processor ML-34 performs.
