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Spend my £900 - now.

Snooble

Snooble

Snooble

Associate
Joined
13 Sep 2008
Posts
660
Location
Central London
Hey,

I need a very portable laptop for use in day to day clinics at the hospital.

Budget: £900

Wants (in priority):
Weight = Needs to be light :)
Size = I'm thinking 14-15.4 inches
Battery = 2.5hours minimum
External Ports = VGA (HDMI a bonus)

I was thinking an i3 processor if possible.

That's about all! It has to be manly! - Think, BLACK.

Don't mind if it stretches to 950 or falls to 800.

Been looking at the Sony laptops and an up to spec one of those would be great.

Thank you,
 
Many choices, but here's a few.

HP dm4-1060ea
Samsung QX410
Samsung QX310
Lenovo Thinkpad
Dell Vostro.
Acer 3820TG.
Sony's I guess, although their battery life ain't great (unless you go for the Vaio Z).

£800+ will get you a i5 at least.
 
Thanks for the feedback!

Last three laptops have been Dells. Want something a little more 'stand-out'. I've bought a fair few Acer's for others too, not so keen on their touchpad's; always seem a little unresponsive; do you think?

So it's the Lenovo, Samsungs or HP.

Tried any of them?

Thanks a lot

S
 
Nope, but I'm looking for one as well, and we have a couple of those laptops at work.

The Lenovos we have at work are very business-like. Feel very sturdy without gimmicks, with good screen, touchpad, ect... We also have some HP business laptops, very similar. Just solid, not exactly thin and light, but feel well designed.

The Samsungs and the dm4 are designed after the Mackbook Pro, more like versatile entertainment / home / work laptops in a compact frame. All metal chassis, and pretty powerful. I still think they are a long way from matching the MBP (battery life, screen quality, sound quality, and even graphics power not quite there).

The HP Envy 14 is another of those, but I would only recommend them once they have the Radiance screen available. Plus, the finish is a bit 'odd'. But it's very powerful, with good CPU and graphics power, backlit keyboard, decent battery life (especially with the slice add-on), but imo too heavy and bulky to be classified as a 'mobile' notebook. If it's to carry from home to office, I don't think that would be too much of a problem.

Someone on this forums has a dm4, and tbh, It looks quite good for the money. The QX410 / QX310 are basically Samsung's answer, and they look very attractive on paper. Samsung makes good laptops anyway, but apparently they will be offering them sub £800, which is attractive for a metal-bodied i5 laptop. I'm expecting good things from them. That is if the UK buyers don't get shafted as per usual (availability, or prices, or both).

The Dell studios look good as well, especially considering the options and customisations. Backlit keyboards, high res-screen, imo more than just gimmicks and real useful on a laptop.

I'm using a UL30A for my mobile needs, and it does the job really well. But the quality in general, and the power is no match. However, it's real nice to know that you never have to worry about battery life on that thing.

I'm listing mostly metal chassis, as that would be my preference. The laptop market is pretty saturated otherwise, and those are the ones that stand out for that kind of money.

Oh yeah I wouldn't bother with a i7 in a notebook. a i5 would be my choice.
 
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Have a look at the HP Pavilion DV6-3056sa which can be purchased from HP for £699. I've just ordered one for my Dad.

Spec can be found here:- http://h40059.www4.hp.com/uk/homelaptops/pdf/dv6-3056sa_ds_ene.pdf

It has an Intel I3-350m @2.26Ghz, 4Gb Ram, 500Gb HD, Bluetooth, Wireless b/g/n, integrated fingerprint reader, Ati Mobile Radeon 5470 512Mb graphics (switchable) Altec Lansing speakers, 39.6 cm (15.6") diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Display @ 1366 x 768, and built in Webcam, oh and the DVD Writer is a Lightscribe drive.

Overall looks a really nice package :)

edit:- Product Demo - http://h41308.www4.hp.com/richmedia...inment_Notebook_PC_series_oth-ot-vi/rma&popup
 
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Do metal-framed laptops tend to be lighter? Or is there little difference?

I think black metal would be more suited in appearence.

I like the look of the HP. But light is the main factor, I'm going to be carrying it throughout the day. Putting it down for only 20minutes a time.

The Samsungs look nice, except they're not available over here (UK) are they? Can't find them.

Thanks a lot for your help,

S
 
We've gone for the HP Pavilion DV6-3056sa. Using a 5% off voucher I found online too. So for £660ish.

Will sub to thread if there are any questions just ask :)
 
5% voucher for that laptop or any HP's? I'm semi interestd in the HP Envy 14.
 
Any hp laptop, I found it by googling their name for voucher, which was something like "redeemable code" followed by hp. Browsed a few sites, it's not the first result so take a look. There's 5% codes.

As for the laptop, arrived, the finish on it is amazing. Very light. Too large really but I'll make do.

ONE THING I HATE:

The touch pad, It is HUGE. The buttons are PART of the touchpad, so I can keep my thumb on the button (ready to click) without it interfering with my finger for moving the cursor.

Hard to explain, but other than that (trying to get used to it) it's amazing. Fingerprint scanner is a nice gimmick :s, can use it to autocomplete forms etc too. But the HP software is completely BLOATWARE. And removing it is a ridiculous task! Reformat ***. But without the disk, (OEM WIN 7) I'm struggling to sort out. Perhaps an iso download and burn with the serial on the sticker.

Any comments/help greatly appreciated.

S
 
Nice Laptop isn't it. The one I ordered for my Dad arrived a week or so ago.

Touchpad is a rather clever piece of kit. It does gestures like the Macbook's, read the manual and you'll see what I mean.

You can also disable it completely by double tapping a finger on that little circle in the top right of the touchpad. If you do this an orange light comes on and the touchpad is then disabled. My Dad uses a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse that is paired with the laptop so he rarely uses the pad.

I will agree there are quite a few programs installed by HP. One of them however is quite useful, its the Recovery Manager. If you look under Start / HP / Recovery Manager, you will find a tool called Recovery Media Creation.

This program will allow you to create restoration discs to put your computer as it was from the factory. Takes about 5 DVD media.

As for the HP Software being bloatware. Well it depends. Quite clearly they've taken a bit of time trying to help out novice users. The HP Support Assistant program is a great centralised Maintainance / Trouble shooter / Learning and tool to get direct assistance from HP.

Try using the Software update part of that tool, it downloaded drivers direct from HP as well as a Bios update. Everything went smoothly, its a bit like Windows Update but from HP.

HP Media Smart is HP's take on a set of programs for watching DVD's, Internet TV, Music, Photos, Videos and using the built in webcam. Again I can see how they're trying to help novice users but if you don't like them just use the Uninstall program icon under the Control Panel.

HP Quickweb is a quickloading front end that can be set up to load before Windows - it allows you to browse the Internet and do all sorts of multimedia things without the Windows environment. It can be disabled or uninstalled if you don't want to use it.

One thing I really do like about the machine is the fact that it will swap from the Ati graphics chip to the lower power graphics chip when on battery power etc.,

Overall build quality is nice and it seems to be a very capable
 
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Another new Envy 14 owner here. First thing I did was completely format the C: drive and used the various guides on notebookreview forum to get things going again.

Spent ages deciding whether to get a smallish laptop or a huge gaming brick and pretty glad I went for the 14.5" in the end. It plays World of Tanks and Starcraft 2 nicely on medium so that's 99% of my gaming taken care of. Plus on power saving I should be able to get 4 hours of web surfing so it's a good compromise laptop.

Not overawed by the 1366x768 BrightView display but it's not bad either. Only real issue is that I can see some shimmering on certain colours (greys mostly). Although one time I switched up to the 5650 there was a lot of residual pixelation on screen which was a bit worrying, switched back to the intel graphics and it was gone but will have to watch out for that.

It's a shame about the display because all the reviews that I read were raving about the 1600x900 radiance display. Never had the option for that so I suppose I can't miss what I never had. On the bright side the performance at native will be better.

Temps are really good so should be some scope for overclocking.
 
Thanks for the overview Andy90.

I agree it's a very well built laptop, really neat LED lights on the HP logo on the front when you turn it on too :)

And the fingerprint reader is awesome. Can use it to autocomplete forms or just to log in. Great gimmick and very responsive. I'll be re-installing that after the reformat.

I just can't stand the dell-ish tool bars and stuff. Why use those things when windows has the capability? Regardless, small peeve. After a reformat (doing it tonight) all will be well and good. I'll pull down all the updated drivers from the HP site. And PICK and CHOOSE which to install ;) how it should be IMO.

I read all about the touchpad. It's fancy, lots of frolicks.. pinch zoom, gestures, on-off tap, invis scrolling.. I just wish it'd let me CLICK the button instead of gently tapping the screen. As you said, your dad doesn't use it. And neither will I I think :)

Thanks

S
 
Snooble,

the Dell like bar at the top of the screen can simply be closed with the Cross at top right. Unless you click on the icon to fire it up again it will remain closed.

As for the touchpad, it can actually be clicked although it is in one piece press the area over the where the left and right butons would be and you will find that it actively clicks (the top third of the pad doesn't click but from 2/3rds to the bottom it does).

It takes about the same amount of pressure to click as you would take on a real button.

In effect you have two ways to left/right/double click - either by gently tapping or physically causing it to click. Hold click can also be done by causing it to click and holding it down if that makes sense!

Every setting for tht Touchpad can be altered, just go into Control Panel / Hardware and Sound / Mouse.
 
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I find it takes a little more pressure, but that's not the problem I have.

The problem is that the buttons themselves are part of the touch pad.

Therefore, if I leave my thumb on the click button, use my index to move the touchpad, it doesn't respond well at all.

If there's a way of disabling the touchpad where those two buttons are. That'd be perfect. Any ideas?
 
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