Need a second travel laptop/netbook

mip

mip

mip

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11 Jan 2005
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Hey folks,

I am in the market for a new machine. I have a big old beast dell 1730 as my main gaming machine at home but need a second "travel" machine. I was looking at just getting some photo storage when I go to SA later this year, but someone suggested a netbook to be able to do email, facebook etc... as well for actually less than the photo viewers cost.

Then I started looking and caught the bug so:-

I want something small and light to act as a portable photo storage device/backup when on holiday and travelling. 11/12" screen appears to be a good size to keep the system very light and small.

I would like to be able to play a few games on it, something like torchlight or borderlands at low detail would be good.

The only choices so far appear to be netbook based, either the AMD based congo system with ati 3200 such as the :-

Acer Ferrari one
MSI U320 (Coming)

or the forthcoming ION based machines with nvidia 9400 graphics systems:-

Asus 1201n (dual core)
HP mini 311 (Atom)

Have I missed anything? any other choices? I don't mind any manufacturer or chipset if it meets the needs above.

Any suggestions very welcome.. (as long as it doesn't have a cr*ppy intel integrated GPU)

Cheers

MIP
 
I've had a netbook but after a while I realised what I really wanted was a small cheap laptop. Quite a few years ago I used to have an IBM Thinkpad x23. This was very expensive at the time but very small, fast and extremely well made. I'm now looking for a new laptop and am considering various options from a macbook through to big 16" lappy's. But I've recently tried out my x23 again (my daughter now uses it) and have realised that it's exactly what most people buying a laptop want. It's now very old (probably around 6 years old but it quite simply spanks a modern netbook for usability and performance (apart from the very low res screen). So maybe you should be considering something similar. You can get used Thinkpad x series quite cheaply now although new moels are mahooosively expensive.

Maybe take a look at a second hand Thinkpad x41? It could be around £150 to £300 depending wher you look. But be prepared to buy a new battery of course.
 
Hades said:
I've had a netbook but after a while I realised what I really wanted was a small cheap laptop. Quite a few years ago I used to have an IBM Thinkpad x23. This was very expensive at the time but very small, fast and extremely well made. I'm now looking for a new laptop and am considering various options from a macbook through to big 16" lappy's. But I've recently tried out my x23 again (my daughter now uses it) and have realised that it's exactly what most people buying a laptop want. It's now very old (probably around 6 years old but it quite simply spanks a modern netbook for usability and performance (apart from the very low res screen). So maybe you should be considering something similar. You can get used Thinkpad x series quite cheaply now although new moels are mahooosively expensive.

Maybe take a look at a second hand Thinkpad x41? It could be around £150 to £300 depending wher you look. But be prepared to buy a new battery of course.
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Great suggestion.... I guess the key questions for me are:-

What graphics card does the machine have? (needs an ATI or Nvidia)
(the X41 has an integrated intel chipset which wont be anygood for a game)

What size hard drive (really want >160Gig)

I should point out budget isn't the issue here, its more does a small light casual gaming machine exist ?

Thoughts?
 
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Check out the Acer 1810tz. 11inch screen, dual core CULV processor, great keyboard, 320 gig HDD, 3gig RAM, can play 1080p movies no problem (even has HDMI out).

It performs much better than any netbook.
 
CryptKeeper said:
Check out the Acer 1810tz. 11inch screen, dual core CULV processor, great keyboard, 320 gig HDD, 3gig RAM, can play 1080p movies no problem (even has HDMI out).

It performs much better than any netbook.
Click to expand...

It has an integrated Intel graphics chipset....

3D mark scores are not that great....

Laptop mag measure 594 v the HP mini 311 which gets 1,386 or the asus 1201n which gets over 1500

I want a machine that can play at least some 3D stuff...

:(

Not an easy ask I know...
 
olivier renault said:
at the risk of repeating myself, if you have some dough (~£600), keep an eye on the Asus UL30vt-a1. Probably the best compromise for gaming and mobility.
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Olivier,

Thank you good suggestion. It maybe a little on the large size based on what I was looking for, but it looks really interesting.... and yes I can afford one ;)

I am travelling on the 20th March so that may become the deciding factor, but this looks very interesting if it appears in time, anything else along these lines?

Cheers

MIP
 
Acer do laptops which have ATI 4330's in them, I've just bought one - £600, C2D SU9400, 4Gb RAM, 4330, BT/802.11n/ 13.3" screen, 320Gb HD, supposidly an 8.5hr battery life, but read some online reviews and they said that it gets ~5.5hrs of net browsing with wifi. The one which I got is the 8371-944G32N.
 
MasterPlan1 said:
Acer do laptops which have ATI 4330's in them, I've just bought one - £600, C2D SU9400, 4Gb RAM, 4330, BT/802.11n/ 13.3" screen, 320Gb HD, supposidly an 8.5hr battery life, but read some online reviews and they said that it gets ~5.5hrs of net browsing with wifi. The one which I got is the 8371-944G32N.
Click to expand...

That looks pretty interesting...

It is a little bigger than I was looking at, but not so bad I guess.

Struggling to find any benchmarks, but it looks like it will outperform a netbook even if it won't really be a great performer (but certainly good enough)

I wonder if anybody sells this in a store so I can get a look at it.

Cheers
 
I believe a indian named dish high street retailer sells them, but not the models with the better, switchable graphics.

But I'll take some real life™ photos of it tomorrow when I get it and do a mini review.

It also depends on what you're looking for, you're certainly not going to find something in the levels of your current laptop in a 10-13" variety. But they'll certainly do HD videos, light gaming (WoW, any source based game, and probably some newer ones on low\med graphcis) and browsing the net with ease.
 
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MasterPlan1 said:
I believe a indian named dish high street retailer sells them, but not the models with the better, switchable graphics.

But I'll take some real life™ photos of it tomorrow when I get it and do a mini review.

It also depends on what you're looking for, you're certainly not going to find something in the levels of your current laptop in a 10-13" variety. But they'll certainly do HD videos, light gaming (WoW, any source based game, and probably some newer ones on low\med graphcis) and browsing the net with ease.
Click to expand...

That would be brilliant, thanks very much.

I know it won't touch my current rig, happy to play some simple stuff while on holiday... Torchlight, ut3 maybe? or maybe even something like CIV 4 maybe :-) as well as web, email, youtube etc....

Cheers

MIP
 
MasterPlan1 said:
UL30Vt is nice, but I didn't like the (physical) looks of it, nor how long it was taking to come out... I'm impatient :p
Click to expand...

LOL

my deadline is March, trying to find the lightest smallest solution I can...

:-) but generally have no patience either ...

Cheers

MIP
 
seldNofSparta said:
surely an nvidia ion based netbook will do you fine. about 320 ish for the compaq one, which imo is great bang for buck.
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I looked at this..... I got a lot of feedback that netbook performance is not great overall, so I started looking at the ULV type systems.

I can easily afford something a little better so something like the HP DV 2 looks interesting as it weights similar to a netbook but at 2GB memory, 320 Gig HD, ATI 512Mb dedicated graphics and comes with an external writer and an upgrade to win 7 for 500 v 320 doesn't feel like too much of a stretch for the extra performance.

Thoughts ?

Cheers

MIP
 
MasterPlan1 said:
DV2 has the battery life of a "normal" laptop - so you're looking at 2-4hrs tops battery life.
Click to expand...

I realise it is horsepower v battery life.... I am ok with that...

my criteria are really:-

1) Small weight and size, I want something under 2kg, 11/12 inch screen is fine (will be in the same bag as my camera kit (dSLR, 2-3 lenses, flash etc..) as I travel hence weight and size is number 1

2) Enough disk space to store / back up my RAW photo's whilst on holidays (This was the initial reason I started looking)

3) Enough oomph to play some games on the go, Torchlight, Civ maybe, simple shooters (lets be honest, the badder the better here as far as I am concerned)

4) The usual watch a vid, web, youtube, facebook, forums etc...

5) I Need it by middle of March :-)

6) Budget is not a major factor compared to 1 above...

Cheers
 
I've given you a very good suggestion, albeit, I didn't post the review I said I would, but heyho. Little rundown of the findings I've had so far with my acer.

Battery life, great - when I got it home I was installing stuff on battery power, lasted 3hrs before I was at 17% warning. This was going through wifi, yesterday I was using it on battery power, used it for about an hour at work, went home browsed the net for a bit, then fell asleep whilst it was streaming a film from sky player, only just got a warning about battery power when I turned it on just now.

Graphics, pretty awesome I've yet to install steam on my laptop to play l4d2, but I've installed WoW, getting 40fps on "good" graphics settings at native res, which is more than adiquate. This graphics card is better than the DV2's one.

Build quality, weight, keyboard layout. All very impressive, I love the keys they're just nice and flat they don't feel filmsy at all, track pad is responsive, the fingerprint reader is in a slightly annoying place as I sometimes catch my finger on it whilst clicking. It's also light as a feather, my backpack doesn't feel that much heavier with it in there, a vast improvement from my IBM Thinkpad t60.
 
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