Laptop

[kena]

Looking for recommendations. What do people on here use ??? Companies/suppliers etc.
The graphics chip has packed up on my Dell Vostro so it's a new motherboard etc...
Quite fancy an apple laptop but not at the price they charge.
Needs to be a high res screen. i.e 1900x1080 as I use it for a lot of cad work.
Looking to spend around £600 t0 £800.

Anyone any suggestions. Have looked at a few so have a couple of options in the pipeline.
Using a very old and slow laptop at moment that keeps crashing and it's extremely painfull

cheers all

[pvr]

Whatever you decide on, ping me in the end as I have wholesale accounts with all major suppliers as I buy a few hundred machines a year.

[X5Sport]

Acer are a good brand, and currently No1 I think. Whatever you do go for I recommend you look to be buying a box with Windows7 in 64-bit build as the way of IT now seems to be going that way. I would not advise looking at anything with less than an Intel I5 processor either. The I3 is a bit too lower powered performance wise. There's also a new Packard-Bell (easyNote TS11) that seems to be getting good writeups too. It has the latest Mk2 Intel Sandy Bridge tech in it and an I7 CPU which gives good performance. John Lewis do it for just over £720 if you can go that far.

You might struggle to get a 1920x1080 display at your price bracket though. Most are only 1280x768 at that price.

The Macbooks are lovely machines but over priced and their software tends to be more pricy too. I'd still like one though.

We bought a Sony S11 series a year back (now the S13) and it's very good but above your budget again. It includes bluray which can be handy.

If you are worried about 64-bit not working with you existing hardware like printers, everything I have works fine. I've just rebuilt a Vista32 machine as a Win7-64 box and it works with all our other harware, not to mention being more stable and allowing all of the hardware in that machine to now work properly at last.

[NewX5]

Always hard when purchasing a new machine, I recently purchased a mac book pro with a high spec but do believe you get far more for your money with a pc. The mac is great but I have to use various browsers as safari is ok but not great and does not support all sites I use and other various compatibility issues that I am currently noticing slowly. The thing that does my head in most Mac user dont discuss the issues but go to the apple forum and you can see for yourself. I would say try to get the best processor you can as most other parts upgradeable but check this 1st with what ever machine your choose.

[Waka]

I've just bought one of these:
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/ASUS_N73 ... 48691.html

to replace my ancient old Dell XPS, very happy with it.

[kena]

Anyone know anything about the refurbished ones from the company factory outlets.
i.e. Dell outlet. etc

[Jalf]

[quote=""NewX5""]Always hard when purchasing a new machine, I recently purchased a mac book pro with a high spec but do believe you get far more for your money with a pc. The mac is great but I have to use various browsers as safari is ok but not great and does not support all sites I use and other various compatibility issues that I am currently noticing slowly. The thing that does my head in most Mac user dont discuss the issues but go to the apple forum and you can see for yourself. I would say try to get the best processor you can as most other parts upgradeable but check this 1st with what ever machine your choose.[/quote]
What are you struggling with?
I've been mac for years now, just ask if you need a hand.

[X5Sport]

[quote=""kena""]Anyone know anything about the refurbished ones from the company factory outlets.
i.e. Dell outlet. etc[/quote]

In practice they are units that have been returned under warranty, or are ex-corporate machines (we used to use Dell and they were replaced every three years) that are end of lease. Ex-corporate lease hardware will have been used almost every day and will have hard a hard life. The manufacturer tests them and replaces certain components, cleans them up and sells them. Sometimes they are current models (remanufactured warranty failures) but often they are previous generation hardware and it saves the manufacturer having to pay to recycle the parts. My employer used to change out a few thousand machines a year all of which were sent to a refurb centre.

Always check the model numbers to see how 'current' the machine is and check the warranty terms carefully. You can get a bargain if you find the right machine though..

[NewX5]

[quote=""Jalf""][quote=""NewX5""]Always hard when purchasing a new machine, I recently purchased a mac book pro with a high spec but do believe you get far more for your money with a pc. The mac is great but I have to use various browsers as safari is ok but not great and does not support all sites I use and other various compatibility issues that I am currently noticing slowly. The thing that does my head in most Mac user dont discuss the issues but go to the apple forum and you can see for yourself. I would say try to get the best processor you can as most other parts upgradeable but check this 1st with what ever machine your choose.[/quote]
What are you struggling with?
I've been mac for years now, just ask if you need a hand.[/quote]

I am having loads of little niggly problems like for instant yesterday my computer just stopped processing any documents I sent for printing not matter what I done just could not rectify. Needed to shutdown and restart and worked perfectly fine after which is just puzzling and also irritating.
Sorry for the Hi Jack

[kena]

Got my eye on this one, what do you guys think....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWAX:IT

[NewX5]

The spec is awesome really like that.

[Waka]

looks good...or this...
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-xp ... car/935916

[edit] ah, not 1080, but bargain for £515 if you use quidco

[kena]

[quote=""kena""]Got my eye on this one, what do you guys think....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWAX:IT[/quote]

Took the plunge and purchased this one.
Put it through my Ltd company to save on VAT etc....

[shaunos]

Hi,

I work as an IT manager for a telecoms company and we purchased 6 entry level Acer laptops about 18 months ago for sales reps.
Within 2-3 months of 12 month warranty expiring 2 are dead with the same motherboard power issue and 1 suffers intermittantly from the same problem (so is essentially useless)

Contacted Acer and they said that as they are out of warranty we would be responsible for the cost of repair which was approaching original cost of laptops and that there was no known issue woth the laptops (despite it being mentioned all over google)..

So in short I would never touch an acer again....

My $0.02

~S.

[pvr]

12 months warranty? I thought that the European directive of durable goods overrode that insofar as that they have to provide 24 months.

Fortunately, I have only ever bought IBM / Lenovo and Apple Macs and have never had a single unit go down (from about 300 bought in total over the years).