Laptops!

[RobRoy]

Lo all

Im looking to get a laptop as i do a lot of travelling back up to gods country (scotland) and i need some advice!

to be honest im a bit confused with all the different proccessor speeds and Ms and centrinos etc etc

Basically i have ?1000 to spend on a laptop. Id like a decent sized screen. (preferable 17" but 15" would do) 1 gig or 512mb of ram and a decent gfx card to run games at a decent speed

Has anyone got any recommendations for this?

Thanks

[superkully]

Windows or Mac?

[Dache]

Pentium M - Intel's main line of mobile processors. Actually excellent. They run at lower clock speeds, but they work just as fast as and much cooler than most of the latest desktop processors.

Pentium M Celeron - Intel's budget line of mobile processors. Lacks several features. Not really worth getting, I don't think, unless you're on a mega budget (you're not).

Pentium 4M - a mobile version of the Pentium 4. Avoid avoid avoid unless you want 45 minute battery times.

[RobRoy]

Windows Kully

Thanks for the info Dache

[randombs]

you'll want to make sure you have a dedicated graphics card - radeon x600, say, or a geforce go. most laptops that come with a radeon come with the IGP radeon which uses the laptop's standard ram which makes games slow down loads.

my laptop is a travelmate pentium-M 1.5, 512mb ram, radeon 9700 pro 64mb. handles HL2 just fine at 1024x768 even without toning down the settings much, but i tried the FEAR demo on it and it's horrible.

you'll be wanting something along the lines of a pentium-M 2ghz if you want to play recent games but bear in mind that the heat these newer, faster machines give off is annoying as heck.

i tried a compaq widescreen laptop called nx8220 that has a pentium-M 1.7 ghz, 512mb ddr2 ram (a bit quicker than regular ddr), radeon x600 128mb vram, etc, but i didn't buy it as after around 10 minutes it was boiling hot in the summer - the fan was on all the time, even at low power. my laptop, if run at low-power mode (knocks the cpu down to 600mhz which, even at that speed, handles Counter Strike just fine) the fan never comes on unless i'm using the hard drive constantly (eg. downloading stuff for around 2-3 hours)

[RobRoy]

I have seen this one

http://www.digiuk.com/productdetail.asp?id=4812

what do you think?

[Dache]

I have seen this one

http://www.digiuk.com/productdetail.asp?id=4812

what do you think?

That's pretty decent spec-wise, although Acer aren't known for being the best-built make around. They're not the worst though. Maybe someone around here has a good experience with Acer.

I'm one for the ultra-portable laptops, personally, like like this one and this. Mmm, battery life...

[baad bwoy]

How about this one from ebuyer, same as the Portege in the link above, but quite a bit cheaper, also can upgrade the ram to 512mb for just ?1

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=10574097139&action=c2hvd3N1YmNhdGVnb3J5X3NlYXJjaA==&cat_uid=10&stid=5

[RobRoy]

Ive finally ordered this one with upgraded memory to 1gig

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Fujitsu-Siemens_Amilo_M3438G_LKN:GBR-177200-007/version.asp

thanks for the info peeps