Spec me a netbook/notebook

Tute

Tute

Tute

Soldato
Joined
24 Jul 2004
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Devon, UK
Hey all, looking for some advice.

The girlfriend wants to get herself a laptop for University work. As it's primarily for this (we have PCs for gaming), the most important thing is portability and battery life. It does need to be as quick as possible though, minimum 1GB RAM but 2GB preferred, and hopefully dual core (Atom N550/Intel SU).

However, if there's something in the budget with dedicated graphics, and said graphics don't impact battery life too much, then by all means suggest it.

Would like 11-13" screen, but not at the sacrifice of battery/portability.

Budget is circa £300.

What do you suggest?
 
Was looking at those, are people really getting the best part of 8hrs out of the battery, even with a dedicated GPU? :)
 
Tute said:
Was looking at those, are people really getting the best part of 8hrs out of the battery, even with a dedicated GPU? :)
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the beauty with these is that they have both dedicated and on board so that when you use ther battery it can switch to on board and save power

ive not long had mine and had a chance to test out the battery yet but from what i have read you can get between 5-8 hours depending on what your doing, screen settings etc
 
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I've been trying out my Acer 8371 and from experience the battery life will improve after a few battery cycles so based on having it 3 days I'd only ever seen 8+ hours battery life with the screen off while I've left it downloading Dragon Ago from the EA Store so thats with Wifi on also.

I'd imagine for normal usage we'd be looking at 5-6 normally.
 
Fair enough. I've been seeing some that claim to just have Intel Integrated graphics, do some come without the ATI chip on them?
 
Tute said:
Fair enough. I've been seeing some that claim to just have Intel Integrated graphics, do some come without the ATI chip on them?
Click to expand...

The model you need to look for is LX.TTK0Z.001
This has the ATi 4330, SU9400 and all the other bits :)

Have dropped a mail to your Trust with more details....
 
Got it, thanks. She's very interested in this, although she's worried that she's gonna end up installing The Sims on it if the graphics are any good.

LOL, women. :D
 
Auderved. :)

Two questions.

1. External optical drive - any of you bothered with one?

2. Laptop cases - anything to recommend? I use a Neoprene 13.3" sleeve for my Macbook, is there something similar for non-Macs or would one of those fit fine?
 
Tute said:
Auderved. :)

Two questions.

1. External optical drive - any of you bothered with one?

2. Laptop cases - anything to recommend? I use a Neoprene 13.3" sleeve for my Macbook, is there something similar for non-Macs or would one of those fit fine?
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1. I grabbed the Samsung one that the 8371 vendor had as a bundle (think it worked out about £25 on top; nice and slim; USB powered and all formats supported)

2. Hehe, snagged a 15" sleeve from Poundland (guess how much it cost :rolleyes:) .....
 
Hey all, got some more questions. Hope you don't mind me putting them here but i'm worried they'd get snowed under in the main thread. (arf arf)

The laptop arrived and we fired it up to find the usual array of crap pre-installed. Also we don't want to keep Vista either.

So what's the best direction to take? Windows 7 or XP? If W7, which version? Do either come in the box with it? What about drivers for either OS? Or do I just take the latest ones off the individual sites?

Thanks.
 
Umm well it's up to you really in terms of os choice.

I have been trying to find out which OS is best in terms of battery life but so far on balance it is roughly the same (15-20 min difference between xp and vista for example although I am not sure if this is accurate). As far as I know you are only allowed to downgrade to Windows XP from a Vista license (vista to 7 will cost you) but you have to follow these instructions etc from Microsoft:Understanding Downgrade Rights I personally think it is a pain in the ass and I can imagine me keeping vista although I would have preferred 7

I am not sure with drivers etc as I have not done this yet (mine should come tomorrow) but I would imagine the latest ones (chipset, audio, network etc.) should be fine from the Acer website and I would download the latest graphics drives from the respective places i.e. intel and ati websites and also the fingerprint thing I think they were having problems in the other thread but as far as I know someone posted a link where they got a working ver. so just look there.
 
Personally, would go Win7 if you can....
There are drivers for the nor esoteric bits (e.g. Fingerprint reader) on Acer's support pages for Win7, but I believe that most stuff installs itself :)
 
Culinia said:
Umm well it's up to you really in terms of os choice.

I have been trying to find out which OS is best in terms of battery life but so far on balance it is roughly the same (15-20 min difference between xp and vista for example although I am not sure if this is accurate). As far as I know you are only allowed to downgrade to Windows XP from a Vista license (vista to 7 will cost you) but you have to follow these instructions etc from Microsoft:Understanding Downgrade Rights I personally think it is a pain in the ass and I can imagine me keeping vista although I would have preferred 7

I am not sure with drivers etc as I have not done this yet (mine should come tomorrow) but I would imagine the latest ones (chipset, audio, network etc.) should be fine from the Acer website and I would download the latest graphics drives from the respective places i.e. intel and ati websites and also the fingerprint thing I think they were having problems in the other thread but as far as I know someone posted a link where they got a working ver. so just look there.
Click to expand...

And what sort of battery life are you getting with Linux?
 
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