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Another recommend me a laptop thread

Started by im barry bethel, July 20, 2015, 12:26:14 PM

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im barry bethel

Not for me mind, for a nipper starting secondary school in September who just happens to have a birthday over the summer, so short and sweet £300 tops, none of this reconditioned stuff/built to order (I'm sure there's nowt wrong with them but as its a bday present...) good for doing homework on (that's office isn't it?, or PowerPoint? I don't fucking know I only ever use one for looking at tits and pissing around on here), not gonna be out of date for a couple of years, not gonna get them laughed at by their mates, Intel is better than amd isn't it?, oh and something I can go in Argos or curry's and walk out with (and consequently take back if it goes wrong), I promise to actually take notice of any advise even if I completely ignore it

canadagoose


im barry bethel

This creeps over my £300 mark but am I being blinded by the £449 down to £329 price?,

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3327625.htm

There seems to be a glitch of those HP ones around the £299 mark are they all a much of a muchness?

The HP one that canadagoose suggested has an A8 6410 processor. When I was looking a couple of weeks ago I saw a lot of 6410's available (many of them HP) and it's a decent processor for the money but the 7410 is out now.

In the end I found a cheap i5 on eBum, but that might explain why there's quite a few of those ones for sale: selling off of the older model.

Fry

Quote from: im barry bethel on July 21, 2015, 07:41:53 PM
This creeps over my £300 mark but am I being blinded by the £449 down to £329 price?,

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3327625.htm

There seems to be a glitch of those HP ones around the £299 mark are they all a much of a muchness?

I have the same laptop by the way, only mine is purple.

It's pretty much decent. Sturdy, works well enough. No complaints. Not been bullied by any of the harder lads or anything.

canadagoose

Quote from: im barry bethel on July 21, 2015, 07:41:53 PM
This creeps over my £300 mark but am I being blinded by the £449 down to £329 price?,

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3327625.htm

There seems to be a glitch of those HP ones around the £299 mark are they all a much of a muchness?
I've had a look at cpubenchmark.net and the processor on that one is slightly lower-rated (but not much), and it's got less RAM than the other one, but I doubt you'll notice a difference. The one Too Many Cochranes suggested is a bit of a leap ahead of both, but I doubt you'd get one for ~£300. (£429 seems to be the cheapest.) Maybe on eBay, if you're willing to go for an ex-display model or something?

Yeah, it's worth comparing CPU's on sites like cpubenchmark.net and cpuboss.com when you see an advert that takes your fancy. If you just highlight the CPU code and google it you'll end up with a CPU comparison site.

As a general rule if the CPU is decent the surrounding hardware should be decent.

im barry bethel

just before I shell out £300 on that one that Canadagoose discovered, are these chromebook things worth a look? (with schoolwork in mind)

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3403367.htm

mook

not an expert by any stretch, but it's only got 2gig of ram & a tiny hard drive... get the little shit something he can at least play minecraft on.

The Toshiba Chromebook 2 has 4 GB RAM and a lovely HD screen. Also features an Intel Bay Trail chipset which is nippy as you need. I bought one for the missus (now ex missus) about 4 months ago for 275, so expect to pay about 250. Nice bit of kit and you get 100 GB of Google drive free for a year. It's not a full PC if you want to run custom software on it but it does all the office and Internet stuff with aplomb. Battery lasts ages too.

im barry bethel

Settled on the one CG discovered and which has turned up this morning, fired it up for a quick play to check it's A OK and the bloody thing wants a Microsoft account just to switch on, what the bloody hells that all about?

Robot DeNiro

I would also like someone to recommend me a laptop, seemed pointless starting a new thread.

I'm looking for a PC laptop, primarily to be used for video editing.  I know nothing about laptops, so I need some advice.  I won't be playing games on it, although I guess a machine good for games is probably good for video editing too.  I would like it to last me a long time, and would also like to spend less than £1,000.  Years ago someone told me Asus laptops were good, is that still true?

Thanks.

canadagoose

Quote from: im barry bethel on August 01, 2015, 02:12:18 PM
Settled on the one CG discovered and which has turned up this morning, fired it up for a quick play to check it's A OK and the bloody thing wants a Microsoft account just to switch on, what the bloody hells that all about?
Just noticed this reply - sorry I didn't reply sooner, seeing as it was my recommendation! Yeah, I think Windows 10 insists on a Microsoft account for some reason - I've not tried it without, but there might be a way. I'd sign up for a throwaway Outlook.com account and then sign in if I were you. I realise this is very late and probably useless, so please feel free to ignore.

Robot, I would help out but my budget has never stretched further than £450 (don't laugh), so I'm not the greatest at picking expensive / specialist laptops. Too Many Cochranes sounds like he knows his onions, though.

Glebe

My laptop is a Lenovo G500, 8GB/1TB with an Intel Core i3 processor, which I've had about a year and a half. Did a bit of shopping around online/instore, discovered it in PC World here in Dublin. It's pretty solid, only drawback is the rather low screen brightness - always have to turn the battery saver off and make sure brightness is 100%.



Quote from: canadagoose on August 23, 2015, 10:03:45 PMToo Many Cochranes sounds like he knows his onions, though.

Thanks. I'm more clued up about mid range stuff, tbh. I think video editing is best done with a high performance PC. You'd need a computationally fast CPU and RAM, and I'd imagine a solid state drive is a must. I'm wondering if there's video editing software that'll use a graphics core to process data or even heterogeneous computing but I'm in work on my phone right now. I might have a look later.

Robot DeNiro

The idea of getting a laptop is sort of idle speculation at the moment, so don't go to any trouble on my account.  The sort of video editing I do is not terribly demanding I don't think - my source material and final end product is never very high resolution, and I've managed to scrape by on pretty bad desktop PCs in the past.  I would also probably still use my desktop to do all the final rendering.  I'm just thinking about being able to do some of the boring prep work on a laptop, so I don't always have to work at home. 

checkoutgirl

Quote from: im barry bethel on July 20, 2015, 12:26:14 PM
Not for me mind, for a nipper starting secondary school in September who just happens to have a birthday over the summer, so short and sweet £300 tops,

Excuse me? £300 pounds English sterling notes for a birthday present for a 12 year old kid? Does that include Christmas and the next birthday too? When I was that age I couldn't hope to break the 100 quid barrier. Honestly, what the fuck are parents playing at these days? I spoke to a guy a few months ago who bought his 4 year old son an iPad and a mini quad bike. Okay so he was divorced and compensating with this largesse but still and all. A fucking iPad and quad bike for a fucking 4 year old? Madness. And now a laptop computer for a 12 year old. It's the end of days.

And I thought I was spoilt with my skateboard and cup and ball. Fuck me.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: im barry bethel on July 21, 2015, 07:41:53 PM
This creeps over my £300 mark but am I being blinded by the £449 down to £329 price?

Fuck it. The kid's ruined anyway. You might as well push the boat out completely if you're breaking the 300 quid barrier so nonchalantly. You could get a macbook air for under a grand. Face it, you're divorced and the kid needs some compensation. Also homework or something. I mean I got by with a paper and pen but what do I know?

buntyman

I'm looking to get a laptop to replace my shite current one.

This one looks pretty nifty http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-zenbook-ux305-13-3-laptop-white-10132414-pdt.html and I can get it for £400 when I trade in my current one.

I had a look at it in the shop and it looks pretty much exactly the same spec as the macbook air for less than half the price. I'm mainly wanting one that's nippy to start up and browse the web but can also handle a few more intensive programs open at the same time. I have CS4 so I'd like to continue using that on it which, looking at Adobe's system requirements, shouldn't be a problem. I like that it's nice and lightweight and the battery lasts ages. Reviews seem pretty positive too.

I reckon I'll buy it tonight before it sells out everywhere (and the £100 cashback offer disappears) or does someone here know of a better deal or a better laptop for around the same price?

Funny that this thread gets resurrected just after I saw this, earlier:

m.hexus.net/tech/reviews/laptop/87641-pc-specialist-lafite-ii/

If you can stretch your budget a bit it looks an absolute belter. I think there's a link from Hexus to get it £100 cheaper in the high spec that they've reviewed. The build quality might be slightly less than one of the big brands but the components in it make it a bloody beast.

Not sure about that ASUS. I really like ASUS laptops but that one's a core M, which may possibly stand for 'meh'.

Gavin M

#20
Glebe mentioned the G50 a while back, I was thinking of getting this:

http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-g50-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-ram-1tb-15-6-black/p1947932?sku=234391570&kpid=234391570&s_kenid=ab860ba9-e610-4f1a-a25d-09b374c5f577&s_kwcid=402x366589&tmad=c&tmcampid=73

I mainly tend to play indie games with the odd triple A title now and again - do you think it would cope with most modern indie games on a mid/low graphics setting?  My other idea is spending another £250 and getting an Alienware Alpha instead.

Glebe

Quote from: Gavin M on November 15, 2015, 06:46:45 PMGlebe mentioned the G50 a while back

I fricking love it, have to say - only drawback is the low brightness setting, but I just whack it. Here's a review from a while back - specifications may not be exactly the same as mine:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-G500s-59367693-Notebook.97599.0.html