Laptop for my dad

strumpusplunket · 15 Dec 2011 at 15:05

My dad has been collecting vouchers for a high street electronics chain (I know, I know, but he'd already started collecting them before I found out). He'll have a few hundred quid after Christmas and wants to put them towards a laptop to replace the ageing desktop PCs in his house (he has several, I built most of them; they're an ancient collection of P4 and Athlon XP relics).

I've lost track of where things are with the laptop market (truth be told, I never really had much of a handle on it compared to the desktop market) so help would be appreciated.

He'll use it primarily for general browsing, but also will want to use it to watch HD films (I'm going to be networking their house next year and connecting SSF HTPCs to their two flatscreen TVs, pulling media from NAS drives; the laptop will connect wirelessly to the home network).

My kids also go there quite a lot and the eldest will want to play some basic games as well. Nothing too demanding graphically as he's only 5 (well, almost), but it would be nice if he could install Lego Batman/Star Wars games for instance without worrying about them running smoothly.

I was thinking ideally an IB laptop would work well with its fairly useful IGP, but are they out yet? Still expensive if so?

I (think) I've hearing decent things about Llano laptops as well, with their combination of reasonable CPU power with passable IGP grunt?

Budget... not entirely sure, but £500ish as a rough upper limit. Will be somewhat flexible, but I don't want to spec him something needlessly expensive.

Guess no one will be able to spec specific machines without mentioning competitors, but in terms of knowing the kind of thing I'd be best off looking for, any guidance/suggestions most appreciated.

Prazynothh · 16 Dec 2011 at 11:55

Go for Acer Aspire 5755. It offers a complete multimedia solution for watching HD videos, play games using Nvidia graphics card, even choose Inter core i3 or i5 processor on a decent budget.

Behemoth · 16 Dec 2011 at 21:40

The Sony Laptop a certain big name store has on offer at the moment looks pretty decent, should nbe more than man enough to cope with what your Dad wants. Not sure what the Intel HD 3000 series graphics will be like for playing games on though.

strumpusplunket · 17 Dec 2011 at 16:41

Hmm... the 5755G is £800 at the place my dad has his vouchers. I think that's a bit steep. It's the 8GB version, and unfortunately it's the only version of the 5755 I can find there. The cheaper 6GB version isn't sold there, it seems.

There is the 5745DG, which has an i3-380M, 4GB RAM, and a GeForce GT425M for around £600.

This is clearly a bit behind the 5755 (with its i7-2670QM, 6GB RAM and GT540M), but it should be enough for my dad's needs. Is it worth the money, though? That's the question....

I also found the HP Pavilion g6-1220sa there for £500, which has a Llano CPU (the AMD A8-3500M) and 6GB RAM.

Any ideas how these two stack up against each other? Is the IGP on the A8-3500M better/close to the GT425M? And how much slower is the AMD processor than the i3-380M?

I think I'd like to avoid Intel HD3000 graphics because that will quite clearly limit what my dad and my lad can use the PC for, but feeling a bit stuck between the two above... and not even sure they're the best potential value for the money.

strumpusplunket · 20 Dec 2011 at 11:01

So... hopeful bump before I see my dad this evening and talk over his laptop choice.

Think I'm leaning towards suggesting the HP Pavilion g6-1220sa (AMD A8-3500M, 6GB RAM) for £500ish. I'm thinking the graphics performance will be better with the IGP of the A8-3500M, and it's £100 cheaper.

Any reason that might not be a decent suggestion?