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Geek Culture / Can anyone suggest a laptop?

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SpyDaniel
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 19th Jan 2008 18:35
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I want a laptop for University, some thing that can run graphic and memory demanding programs, but I'm not sure what to get, as I have never bought a laptop before.

I'd like one which has a solid build and doesn't look or feel cheap.

Any suggestions?

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 18:39
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http://www.ibuypower.com

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn

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SpyDaniel
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 18:57
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I said suggest, not point me towards an online shop :/

I want to know from first hand experience.

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Preston C
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 19:39
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There's a pretty big chance that if you do get a laptop for high resource tasks, you might as well buy a desktop, as they are much cheaper for the performance. Or, if you're deadset about a laptop, many batteries, as the laptops with the better graphics chips in em don't have much battery life unless you completely throttle everything when you're on one.

Instead, I'd suggest a nice, small lappy. I own an HP Pavilion TX 1000, it's a 12.1" laptop with rotatable screen, 160 GB HD, 2 GB RAM, Lightscribe DVD Burner, but its graphics chip is only a NVIDIA GeForce 6150, so it's not going to run much (though it runs Half Life 2, EP1, EP2, and Guild Wars well enough). It gets three and a half hours in battery life max, and can be configured to have a touch screen too. It's pretty nice.



AMD Opteron 185 2.6 Ghz | 2 GB RAM | 8800 GTS 640MB | Vista Home Premium
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SpyDaniel
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 20:00
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It's not going to be used for games, but for art packages and 3d modelling. I want some thing small I can carry around. I'll have a look at the HP Pavilion TX 1000.

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 20:18
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Higgins, I sent you the link because ibuypower has the best prices I have ever found for laptops online. I don't totally know what kind of system you want, you gave a very broad category and I can tell you that any system on ibuypower.com should be able to do what you asked. They have base systems you can start with, you can build it up from there. Most of the hardware is pretty similar to desktop hardware anyhow, so if you know a bit about that you should do well.

You didn't specify a price range either. If you know what HP you might want, go build it on ibuypower.com and see if they give you a better price.

Just noticed you are in the UK... check if they ship there before spending too much time on it.

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn

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SpyDaniel
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 20:33
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Dink, they don't ship to the UK, just the USA and Canada.

I wouldn't spend more than £600 on a laptop, but at the same time, it would need to look nice and perform well. Some of the HP's look good, visualy, but the Ghz are quite low.

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Chris K
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Posted: 19th Jan 2008 20:58
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Pick it first on processor.

It has to be a Core 2 Duo.

-= Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals =-
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GatorHex
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Posted: 21st Jan 2008 02:00 Edited at: 21st Jan 2008 02:02
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Core 2 Duo, fast, quiet and cool.

If you can get something with an nVidea or ATI card rather than Intel althought he X3000/3100 chip has improved Intel GPU a fair bit.

I think I read the nVidia Quadro are designed for CAD/3D Modeling.

Try and get a 7200 spin hard drive, many 2.5" laptop drives are only 5400 speed.

Try and get 2 memory chips 2x1Gb would be nice so they can run in fast dual channel mode.

I'd got for a simple 32bit OS like XP home or Vista home so less resources are wasted on fluff and it's more compatible with legacy software.

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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bitJericho
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Posted: 21st Jan 2008 02:10
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Definitely go 64bit with Vista if you are going Vista. There's very little that won't run simply because it's 64bit, most incompatible software is simply due to it being vista.


Want free hosting? Click the sig, go to hosting link on right nav. Password is "tgc".
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Phaelax
DBPro Master
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Posted: 21st Jan 2008 02:14
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Powerbook


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Sinani201
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Posted: 21st Jan 2008 05:17 Edited at: 21st Jan 2008 05:19
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MacBook Air. It's super-thin, fast, 80GB of memory and watch the guided tour for more awesome features.
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/guidedtour/

Seriously, how do you make the little blue text come up below your message?
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SpyDaniel
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Posted: 21st Jan 2008 12:46
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GatorHex, I found this laptop to my liking, it has an ATI Radeon X1250 - 128MB, it also has 2GB of RAM and vista home premium (does that have the same settings as XP Pro, as in you can change system settings and all?).

@Sinani201

Since when could you get 80GB of memory (You mean storage).

//

Only reason I asked for help on picking a laptop, is because I was not sure if the hardware was different, as in it was powered down to save battery life, but still named the same as the desktop version.

I've only ever built desktops, so laptops are new for me.

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GatorHex
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Posted: 21st Jan 2008 13:33 Edited at: 21st Jan 2008 13:53
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Looks okay but there are better if you have more budget.

I'd try this site it's really good for laptop reviews and what spec to choose.. http://www.notebookcheck.net

It lists laptops by class, class 1 being the best and class6 being the worst. The X1250 chipset is only class 5 so I guess there is better out there

My recommendation would be to look in the Dell business section at the Precission range as they are designed for CAD/3D/Designers. Beware the prices exclude VAT so it's gona cost over £500.
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/precn_nb?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

but i found one on ebay for £500, but as it an auction it may end higher.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dell-Precision-M90-Core2-1-83GHz-2gb-120gb-DVDRW-XPx64_W0QQitemZ230214157841QQihZ013QQcategoryZ177QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Processor type: Intel Core2-Duo
Processor speed: 1830 MHz dual core
Memory: 2048 MB dual channel
Hard drive: 120 GB
Optical drive: DVDRW +/-
Floppy drive: None
Graphic card: NVIDIA Quadro FX1500M 256MB <-- a Class 1 GPU says NotebookCheck!!
Display size: 17" wdescreen XGA 1440x900

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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