My current laptop (a few year old Acer laptop with 512MB RAM) is getting a little sluggish. It's fine for basic web surfing and document editing but it falls short when I try and do desktop activities (say image editing in photoshop or HD video playback). I'm looking to resolve this with an upgrade if possible. The new laptop would be used mostly for movie playback and graphics / web page editing (so able to have something like photoshop, dreamweaver, firefox, a FTP client and a few other applications open at once).
I've been happy with the Acer (it seems to strike a good balance between price and specs) so was considering just getting another for the replacement. Looking at the available Acer laptops the 6920G looks reasonable (around £680: CPU - T5750, Graphics - Nvidia GeForce 9500M GS, Memory - 4GB DDR2, Hard Disk - 250GB).
There are a few issues though which are making me hesitate. I'm not going to be gaming on it really so I think I can do without such a high end graphics card. The resolution (1366 x 768 which is in contrast to my current old laptop which offers 1400x900) isn't particularity convincing (the vertical height lost through widescreen is enough without more being taken away).
From searching the OCUK forums it looks like a possible alternative is a Dell? The XPS's look reasonable (at around £620 you get a similar CPU and disk drive, 3GB's ram and a 8600M GT graphics card). Is it a good alternative to the acer (from the looks of things the Dell alleviates some of the resolution issues) even if you're paying more for a little less?
Is it worth looking at other brands like Sony for alternatives? Is Dell the only place you can buy their laptops from (or can you buy them cheaper from third parties?)?
Also is it worth saving for the higher end XPS (the £900 XPS 1530 seems to be the only one offering 1440x900 resolution which is coupled with 4GB Ram, a 400GB hard drive and a T9300 CPU)? Through the customise options it looks like you can bolster the cheaper model's specs (you can bump the base £620 model to 4GB ram and 1400x900 resolution which comes to £708). This seems to differ only with regards to disk space (320GB instead of 400GB) and CPU (T5800 instead of T9300) so would it be a better choice?
I've been happy with the Acer (it seems to strike a good balance between price and specs) so was considering just getting another for the replacement. Looking at the available Acer laptops the 6920G looks reasonable (around £680: CPU - T5750, Graphics - Nvidia GeForce 9500M GS, Memory - 4GB DDR2, Hard Disk - 250GB).
There are a few issues though which are making me hesitate. I'm not going to be gaming on it really so I think I can do without such a high end graphics card. The resolution (1366 x 768 which is in contrast to my current old laptop which offers 1400x900) isn't particularity convincing (the vertical height lost through widescreen is enough without more being taken away).
From searching the OCUK forums it looks like a possible alternative is a Dell? The XPS's look reasonable (at around £620 you get a similar CPU and disk drive, 3GB's ram and a 8600M GT graphics card). Is it a good alternative to the acer (from the looks of things the Dell alleviates some of the resolution issues) even if you're paying more for a little less?
Is it worth looking at other brands like Sony for alternatives? Is Dell the only place you can buy their laptops from (or can you buy them cheaper from third parties?)?
Also is it worth saving for the higher end XPS (the £900 XPS 1530 seems to be the only one offering 1440x900 resolution which is coupled with 4GB Ram, a 400GB hard drive and a T9300 CPU)? Through the customise options it looks like you can bolster the cheaper model's specs (you can bump the base £620 model to 4GB ram and 1400x900 resolution which comes to £708). This seems to differ only with regards to disk space (320GB instead of 400GB) and CPU (T5800 instead of T9300) so would it be a better choice?