laptop recommendation

jak731

jak731

jak731

Soldato
Joined
17 Mar 2007
Posts
5,506
Location
Plymouth
looking for a laptop

Must have
screen size 17"
longish battery life/easy to source additional batteries
supports 4GB or more RAM
XD card and SDHC card support (other memory cards optional)

capable of running games at a decent framerate

and Reliable, laptop will be used at uni

budget up to £1500, but will go over if its worth the extra

if anyone has a story involving an up to date laptop, any mishaps and the laptop surviving post those as well. eg took laptop into bath, dropped laptop into bath, dried it out, it still works today <-that is made up :p

also would it be worth considering an SSD if the laptop could be moved about a lot?
 
Hi mate,

If you want to actually be able to play games from the past 2 years then you need a decent GPU and the 9800M xx cards are starting to look a bit tired now. SLI them and you are offered no battery life, a small boost in performance and potential driver issues...

There is the new ATI 4850M card fitted in a MSI laptop model:
MSI GT275
Can't find any other laptop manufactures using this GPU yet...

Not many reviews about, found this one:
Driver Heaven : MSI GT725 Review
Slightly dodgy display is the main negative issue I picked up on. Lots of pluses - including the graphics power (for the price).

A standard laptop HD is fine for moving around. When the laptop is off most HD's can stand several G's. Even while on they can stand the odd bump - some even have freefall sensors and will park the drive head(s) almost instantly if dropped... However do watch out for your optical drive laser though - bumps can misalign them.

The OCZ Vertex SSD does offer a vast improvement in performance, as a potential upgrade over a regular HD, but check out this faq first:
The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

Bob
 
My fav brands of laptop are Dell, Samsung and Lenovo.

I feel it is virtually impossible to buy a reliable laptop. I would say you can pretty much count on your laptop hard drive failing at some point. With the amount you want to spend, if reliability is mission critical, you could buy two lower spec laptops, and use virtual machine technology from VM ware to create a working copy of your in use laptop, which you could back up to the other one.

Alternatively, if reliability is really important, you could consider Mac.

I recently bought a Samsung X460, it's been fine so far, I don't like the keyboard and the sound isn't great, but only time will tell if it will be reliable. I had to buy it in a hurry when my Toshiba Satellite Pro hard drive went. I will be looking at virtual machine technology for backups but haven't worked it out yet.

Rgds
 
radderfire
thanks for the VM recommendation, but the laptop is for my sister. if it was for me, i would have gone with a very cheap laptop and desktop to back it up on.

bob wya jnr
nice laptop there, she liked the look of it and i quite liked its specs too

if anyone know any major problems with the MSI GT725 please post here
 
radderfire said:
...
I feel it is virtually impossible to buy a reliable laptop. I would say you can pretty much count on your laptop hard drive failing at some point. ...
Click to expand...

Mate that is your personal experience and depends on your usage of said laptop. I bought a Prostar P4 (northwood) laptop a few years ago (2002) and it is still working fine despite being dropped on a pavement!!

Ok I had to replace the optical drive after the fall but that is hardly surprising!! (Also had the power brick blow + replacements from ****** - but then P4 laptops use an insane amount of power - this one uses a 120W PSU abd draws it all :eek:).

Bob
 
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