Is my laptop dying?
Having got some money from santa, I am looking into buying a netbook or laptop. On the netbook front I am pretty convinced by the HP Mini 311 with Ion (perfect for bringing to the uni library and some gaming), but I am not sure if I should just spend more on a capable laptop.
I have a 17" desktop replacement at the moment, 3 and a half years old, which is dying slowly and horribly. Sometimes it stops working, and the CPU has a brain fart and does nothing for 30 secs, then catches up. The GPU (ATI mobility radeon x1800) died a long time ago as a result of now notorious overheating in this Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1546 (a perfect example of too-good-to-be-true specs for the money). It can't handle intensive 3D anymore (Total Annihilation works, Fallout Tactics crashes within a minute...all on a laptop that could run TF2 on high settings at high resolution in its first year and a half...sigh) without going mad and crashing, VPU recovery is a fairly common occurance. The DVD drive is now temperamental also. But it can still play HD, surf, rip CDs, Matlab and C programming fairly competently, which is why i am stuck. It still does the job.
It could die completely at any time though, I think the CPU stalling weirdness is particularly worrying, as is the occasional RGB dots that appear on the screen when it gets a bit hot or trys to play any 3D game.
A netbook would be handy for the library due to its good battery life, and handy if I ever go travelling, and easy to carry about. Its also much cheaper and could handle light gaming, which I would be interested in as I have been unable to play PC games for 2 years now despite being brought up on them. I have a 360 now though which I am happy gaming on. I would use my 17" for the main stuff if I got the netbook, which would be for gaming and uni use.
If I spent a bit more, would a 15" laptop be massively better? What sort of GFX card could I get and how would it handle modern games, for £500 max (ex VAT though as I can get it ex VAT, so around £600 VAT included)?
Please give me wisdom and help me decide!!
Having got some money from santa, I am looking into buying a netbook or laptop. On the netbook front I am pretty convinced by the HP Mini 311 with Ion (perfect for bringing to the uni library and some gaming), but I am not sure if I should just spend more on a capable laptop.
I have a 17" desktop replacement at the moment, 3 and a half years old, which is dying slowly and horribly. Sometimes it stops working, and the CPU has a brain fart and does nothing for 30 secs, then catches up. The GPU (ATI mobility radeon x1800) died a long time ago as a result of now notorious overheating in this Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1546 (a perfect example of too-good-to-be-true specs for the money). It can't handle intensive 3D anymore (Total Annihilation works, Fallout Tactics crashes within a minute...all on a laptop that could run TF2 on high settings at high resolution in its first year and a half...sigh) without going mad and crashing, VPU recovery is a fairly common occurance. The DVD drive is now temperamental also. But it can still play HD, surf, rip CDs, Matlab and C programming fairly competently, which is why i am stuck. It still does the job.
It could die completely at any time though, I think the CPU stalling weirdness is particularly worrying, as is the occasional RGB dots that appear on the screen when it gets a bit hot or trys to play any 3D game.
A netbook would be handy for the library due to its good battery life, and handy if I ever go travelling, and easy to carry about. Its also much cheaper and could handle light gaming, which I would be interested in as I have been unable to play PC games for 2 years now despite being brought up on them. I have a 360 now though which I am happy gaming on. I would use my 17" for the main stuff if I got the netbook, which would be for gaming and uni use.
If I spent a bit more, would a 15" laptop be massively better? What sort of GFX card could I get and how would it handle modern games, for £500 max (ex VAT though as I can get it ex VAT, so around £600 VAT included)?
Please give me wisdom and help me decide!!
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