17" laptop for £600 ish please!

[edY]

Hi,

I'm looking for a laptop for around £600 - I'll be using it for Adobe's creative suite and want it to be reasonable for some games too. Ideally need a 17" for this stuff.

So far I'm considering the new Dell studio 17:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T6600 (2.2GHz, 800MHz, 2MB)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
320GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
17.3” High Definition+ (1600x900) LED with TL
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
£599

What other laptops are similar to this?

Also, how is it possible to add student discount to these Dell laptops?

Thanks, appreciate the help!

Ed

 

[cmndr_andi]

If you can strech to it, the £679 Dell Studio 15 is a bit of a monster.

It uses an Intel Core i7-720QM processor, which will seriously outperform that Core 2 Duo. This will definitely be a major benefit in CS4.

Here is a review of the new clarksfield platform (mobile i7). Bear in mind that this review mainly tests the slightly faster i7-920XQM, but the perfomance is startling - even if you knock off 20% to account for the difference in clockspeeds.

However, it does cost more and use a smaller screen. But bearing in mind that the CPU holds its own with desktop quad cores - its is a bit of a deal.

Edit: Looks like the dell student discount is 6% on machines costing £600-1200. Look for Dell SCI.

 

[edY]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm sure that Dell 15 is great, but I'm still keen on going for the 17" - 15 just isn't enough for designing, also, I'm quite happy with the core 2 duo as I've got i7 on my desktop.

Ed