several pc related questions and buying advice wanted

[eastyy]

well the gf's computer is frankly knackered now ....built her one using old components ..pentium 4 1.6hz and 1gb of ram ...but its rubbish for windows xp

so basically getting some ideas for a new one so have a few questions

1.What are netbooks like ? never actually used them always thought they were like the equivalent of the old palm pilots made bigger
2.Since she has a monitor keyboard and mouse (and even a old x800 graphics card pci express i could use and a bought disc windows xp) where is the cheapest i could get a case/motherboard/processor/ram bundle)
3.laptops she was toying with the idea of a laptop but i know she likes to play some games (pre 2003 stuff i think) so any ideas for a cheap laptop with a half decent graphics card would be appreciated

[NW2013]

1. Netbooks are actually pretty good I think. I'm biased obviously as I'm using a Dell Mini 9 as my main computer. I've had it for about 2/3 years and if all you need is to surf the net and do the occasional word processing/spreadsheets it'll be fine.

Main downside is probably the processor is not that great but does the job and most netbooks only have a screen resolution on 1024*600 when a lot of websites seem to get in a huff if you don't have 1024*768 for some reason. Also you'll be struggling to play games on most of them, with a few notable exceptions.

I'm actually considering upgrading myself but I'm struggling to decide whether to just add Win 7 and more RAM to my machine or buy something new.

2. Overclockers and ebuyer, etc are good places if you're going to go the desktop build route. Building should be relatively cheap and you'll get a far, far more capable machine than either a netbook or a laptop and you should be able to upgrade in the future if required.

3. With regards to laptops (and I'm doing this myself) I'd wait until January as Intel are releasing a new series of 'core i' processors codenamed 'Sandy Bridge' (if you want to read up). These will have integrated graphics on the chip itself which should be capable of playing older games (and possibly some newer ones too) and doing HD video, etc.

[eastyy]

cheers well the self build route not to sure about at the moment looking to see if i can buy a ready built base unit (processor/motherboard/memory/) but the gf has her heart set on a laptop

do you know the price range of these new laptops ?

[NW2013]

Well, I can't know for sure however the chip prices are going to be similar to the ones they're replacing so laptop prices should be similar to the equivalent now.

[dragonfly10]

With netbooks you often don't even have an optical drive. If your GF likes to play games (even if they are old) I would go for an entry level regular laptop. Otherwise you need to buy an external DVD/BR drive with USB connection to play most games if you are not completely switching to digital distribution services like Steam. Thing is, those stores mostly have newer games available which still might be too demanding even for a modern netbook.

Also if possible I would try to get a dedicated graphics card with it's own RAM in the laptop/netbook. Some games just don't support integrated graphic chipsets, even if the chipset itself has enough power to run the games.

That being said it's still the case that you pay more money to get an equal amount of computing power in a netbook or laptop compared to a regular home PC. If you GF doesn't need the mobility a netbook/laptop provides, I would stick to a regular PC.

[abigsmurf]

For a entry level gaming laptop (330m or 55xx graphics chip ideally), expect to pay at least £525. Anything with an intel graphics chip will not play any games. GPU is more important than CPU for gaming.

If it's not urgent, waiting for the Sandy Bridge intel architecture may be best. They've promised graphics chips that aren't utter garbage before and failed to deliver but it looks as if they will finally deliver.

Intel releasing a competitive graphics chip will have a massive effect on the <&#163;500 laptop market.

*edit*

Looking at the stuff announced so far for sandy bridge laptops, it looks like they're concentrating on the high end now. Could be a while before they start releasing i3 sandy bridge stuff.