Looking for a desktop replacement lappie

[Snapshot]

I'm looking for a good laptop I can use somewhere else in the house than my workroom which is currently around 30C. Basic spec is 17" 1920 x (whatever) screen, i5-520 CPU minimum, 4GB RAM minimum. So far, in the around £1250 range, I've found:

Acer Aspire 8942G
Dell Studio 17
Sony Vaio E series

Downsides of the Acer are size & weight; downsides of the Dell are spongy keyboard, no Blu-ray drive & expensive RAM upgrade from 4GB (but I can handle that myself). Not enough reviews of the 17" version of the Sony to get a full picture but no obvious problems.

Is there anything else I should be considering in the same sort of range? Any preferences between the three I've found? I'm not a gamer so don't need a high-end GPU.

 

[Snapshot]

For £1250 you could hardly call the laptop you'd get a desktop replacement...

Kobalt's 15" G860 comes in just under budget at £1,222.49 exc. delivery, and the 17.3" G870 just over at £1,289 exc. delivery

In honesty the size and weight of a computer shouldn't matter if it's just a desktop replacement and you're not carrying it around

£1250 isn't fixed and I can afford to go a fair bit higher if I need to. The G870 came to about £1500 once I configured it which would be okay but the company seems to be suffering from its recent move si I'd need to wait to see how things go.

HP Pavilion DV8-1110EA

HP DV8-1110ea, ideal desktop replacement.

• Screen size - 18.4 in - 1920 x 1080
• Processor - Intel Core i7 I7-720QM - 1.6 GHz
• RAM - 4 GB
• Hard Drive - 640 GB
• Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition
• Optical Drive - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM / BD-ROM
• Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M

Sony also do some nice 18" screen versions too.

HP now added to the list athough I suspect I'll be better off with a fast dual CPU than a slower quad. A good deal available at the purple shirts at the mo....

Can't find anything larger than 17.3" on Sony's web site.

 

[Snapshot]

It's not going to be a full-time replacement as I'll be keeping my Q9450 and i7-860 PCs. I'm also too used to having dual screens and my ancient Northgate Omnikey keyboard to want a lappie full time. But I don't want to compromise too much on performance and it has to be a good step up from my current Acer 5633 (also three years old). I think the ideal CPU would be an i7-620 and Kobalt's benchmakrs seem to bear this out.

@Tripp: The Mesh doesn't make it as the screen's not 1920 wide and CPU is much more important than GPU for my needs but thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Snapshot]

Which is exactly my original spec....

 

[Snapshot]

Thanks. I hadn't looked into turboboost so didn't know that was how it worked. Seems to re-inforce that a fast dual is better than a slow quad for my needs as the dual's clock speed starts where the quad stops. Still not many lapdogs with full HD 17" screen and an i7-620m though. The Studio 17 seems to be the obvious one although I'm leaning towards the Sony E series at the moment - it's 'only' an i5-520m but there's a free upgrade to a blu-ray writer for the next few days.

 

[Snapshot]

Unfortunately, my local purple shop doesn't stock anything with a 1920 x 1080 screen. (Checks again - oh, there's a cut-down version with an i5-520 instead of the usual i7-720 in stock for only £899. I'll have to see if I can get there after work tomorrow.) I know the F series did well in a recent PC Pro test.

The current E series was only announced in February so probably isn't due for replacement yet, even given the way some manufacturers run their update cycles but I'll keep an eye out.

 

[Snapshot]

If it's just the heat being bad in the office, you could save a little money and just get some cheap AC in there? Portable ones go for as little as a few hundred, and for less than the laptops you are looking at you could probably even get a small split system if you shopped around... plus this way you wouldn't need to compromise on screen size or performance at all: you could use the more powerful PC with dual screens that you prefer.

<snip>
P.S. Nice little rifle... do you use it for targets or pest control? Use a Weihrauch hw97K myself... or the 12gauge when I need a little more oomph.

Not a bad idea but I'm not sure Mrs Snapshot will approve. I might ask when I'm feeling brave.

The MFR is used for everything - HFT mostly but any squirrel in our garden is doomed and we've a ratting session on a chicken farm on Tuesday. I only own airguns but shoot .22RF in the local miniature rifle league plus I handle everything when I'm at work.

The EB and EC 2s are on their way in as the 1s are on their way out:

http://www.sony.co.uk/product/vn-e-series

The 14" EAs are still current. There's new AMD powered EEs and EFs coming too. Getting quite complicated.

Definitely worth comparing an F with an E; there's quite a difference in build quality. The F can also be had with a matte screen (or at least it could before the refresh malarky; not sure now).

Thanks for that. There's so lttle detail at the moment that I can't see a 2 that's better than the '1' I'm looking at; quite the opposite, in fact.

 

[Snapshot]

Interesting... I'd not seen that sport before. We do something that looks similar with the shotguns.... work a course through similated environments (woods, buildings, whatever) taking out predefined targets from various positions. What's HFT stand for? I might be interested if there's anything in my area... the ammo's a lot cheaper.

HFT = Hunter Field Target and there are active clubs at Kibworth & Ilkeston. Email me if you want more details.

 

[Snapshot]

I seem to have bought a Sony E series machine, a VPCEC2X5E to be precise. It appears to be the EC2 version that Outpost262 mentioned and the free Blu-ray writer was too good to turn down. It should be here next week so I'll write a report on it when it arrives.