Is this laptop worth getting

[Strider]

Right guys, i'm planning on getting a laptop and was wondering if either of the following would be worth getting.

I'm not really into pc gaming, and am just planning to play world of world craft and ,magic the gathering online on it. I'm also hoping to get the saturn emu working as mine won't work on my tv. Other than that, it's just going to be for work purposes.

Anyway, here are the specs

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1217090635.1186420248@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdcaddlilhkfelcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=256230&category_oid=-28487

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1217090635.1186420248@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdcaddlilhkfelcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=540731&category_oid=

[Strider]

any help would be really appreciated.
For example would 512mb be adequate or would I be better off getting a gig?

[RLench]

I'd recommend getting at least 2Gb of RAM, especially with a laptop. Both of those laptops have graphics cards that share RAM, rather than having its own. For example my old Windows XP laptop was listed as having 256mb RAM, with a 64mb ATI graphics card. But what I wasn't told is that the 256mb figure includes both RAM and the graphics card...so I only had 196mb of RAM for general use.

Even though you've got more RAM in those laptops, it'll be the same situation. And Vista is extremely resource-hungry. Vista Basic (ie minus the Aero interface) might be ok with 1Gb RAM but I wouldn't try Vista Premium on it

[Hodge]

Don`t bother going for the Packard bell MZ35. I do Laptop repair for the firm that does all Packard bell/Compaq HP refurb laptops for the dixons store group and the MZ35 motherboards are shocking. Pretty much all the MZ35 models we fix are all motherboards, very very unreliable. Go for the Compaq as the build quality is better and are far more reliable.

I agree with Rlench If you are wanting to keep vista on, go for 2GB ram, otherwise stick xp on and make do with 1GB. I`d personally go with xp anyway as it`s far quicker than vista and seems less cluttered imo.

[Strider]

Don`t bother going for the Packard bell MZ35. I do Laptop repair for the firm that does all Packard bell/Compaq HP refurb laptops for the dixons store group and the MZ35 motherboards are shocking. Pretty much all the MZ35 models we fix are all motherboards, very very unreliable. Go for the Compaq as the build quality is better and are far more reliable.

so would you say the compaq's meg of ram is suitable for my needs then?
I'm only intend to use this for world of warcraft and the odd emulator. Otherwise it's just for writing features etc.

[Hodge]

You should be fine with a 1GB of ram with vista if you keep the amount of programs running in startup to a minimal. It`s just that if you are having loads of stuff running in start up like norton internet security, spyware programs, printer software etc, while running multiple applications you might feel it abit memory wise with vista.