New laptop needed advice please

coolsouthern · 26 Aug 2009 at 21:16

I'm looking to get my mum a laptop as hers is on it's last legs.

It will be used purely for for the net (internet banking, shopping etc) and some VERY light games. (Bookworm, Tetris and Bejeweled off the top of my head)

I had a budget of £400 in mind and after being pleased with the PC I bought for myself from here Overclockers was obviously my first port of call.

For my budget, I was very impressed with the reviews left by several people for the Samsung Netbook - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-043-SA

With the specs it has ( - Processor: Intel Atom N270 1.60GHz
- Memory: 1GB DDR2 RAM) I'm not entirely sure how people are doing some of the things they are claiming like playing Unreal Tournament and Age of Empires????

Would love some feedback on how people rate these things as due to it's size,portability and supposedly excellent battery life this seems absolutely ideal. However, the CPU and memory specs really put me off.

Thanks in advance everyone!!

tuppers360 · 26 Aug 2009 at 21:20

I fiond laptops personally are better fromt he COLOURED variety on TV are better 17" is a steal!!!!!

coolsouthern · 26 Aug 2009 at 21:23

JonJ678 · 26 Aug 2009 at 21:24

The nc10 is excellent. The evolutions of it will be likewise excellent, since they're largely the same with a better battery/different case. If the 10" screen isn't a dealbreaker it is highly recommended.

I played Morrowind on mine. Perfectly well too, it didn't like shadows much but then it does have an intel graphics card. I did however run it with an ssd which I think made a difference, but the end result was a laptop which did anything I asked of it very quickly. Don't go encoding video on it though.

However, £400 will net you a 2ghz c2d/2gb ram box with a 15.4" screen if this appeals more. I'll get another samsung in a few weeks I think.

coolsouthern · 26 Aug 2009 at 21:36

Thanks Jon the screen is a sufficient size and this at least helps me to understand the longer battery life compared to other laptops.

What I'm still failing to understand is how such a low clocked processor machine with only 1gb of memory can even remotely handle any sort of games? I know the things that my mum plays ( mentioned in original post) could theoretically be run by hampsters on wheels so she should be ok with this but how it plays dome of the games being played is beyond me?

People also say they can be online while using word and listening to music at the same time. How can it do it? Have I missed something with Netbooks? Do they somehow only require a shadow of the specs of other laptops to give the same performance?

This is starting o baffle me more than that magic trick my Grandad showed me when I was 12!

JonJ678 · 26 Aug 2009 at 21:52

Its just not a very difficult thing for a computer to do I think. 1.6ghz hyperthreaded is quite capable of office tasks, especially if you're patient with loading times. For games I believe its the low resolution which saves it. In fairness I've run both my netbooks with 2gb of ram, so am unsure how they perform at stock. The 630mhz celeron on the eee 701 was still quite adequate for music + word + firefox.

Its more that the bigger laptops are over-specified for office work. At some point the ion is going to make it to netbooks (overdue I think), at which point processing will be split between an atom and a 9400, so hd video and the like is suddenly no problem at all. Carries a price increase and battery life decrease, but may be worth the trade off.

Obviously if you push an nc10 hard it'll fall. No 3D cad work on one, that's for sure. It also wont run crisis at anything approaching playable. Red alert, AOE, morrowind... no worries. They're really rather good

coolsouthern · 26 Aug 2009 at 23:44

JonJ678 said:
Its just not a very difficult thing for a computer to do I think. 1.6ghz hyperthreaded is quite capable of office tasks, especially if you're patient with loading times. For games I believe its the low resolution which saves it. In fairness I've run both my netbooks with 2gb of ram, so am unsure how they perform at stock. The 630mhz celeron on the eee 701 was still quite adequate for music + word + firefox.

Its more that the bigger laptops are over-specified for office work. At some point the ion is going to make it to netbooks (overdue I think), at which point processing will be split between an atom and a 9400, so hd video and the like is suddenly no problem at all. Carries a price increase and battery life decrease, but may be worth the trade off.

Obviously if you push an nc10 hard it'll fall. No 3D cad work on one, that's for sure. It also wont run crisis at anything approaching playable. Red alert, AOE, morrowind... no worries. They're really rather good

Great thanks for clearing that up for me mate. Think I will give this a go then cheers for tthe advice!