Web browsing / office machine

[NathanT]

I've had a look around myself, but I'm just wondering if anybody has any experience with machines of a similar strain of what I'm looking for. From what I have seen there are many laptops that fall in to this category, so any advice would be great as the advice from sites such as reevoo are normally written by people that give a product 10/10 because "it cum wiv solitare and wus pink".

The needs:

• Windows 7 (I can't stand vista)
• Numeric keypad - This is a must, a great deal of the work I am doing involves numerics and figures, this is probably the most important part of this "spec me".
• 15+ screen with a half decent resolution (will probably have to be something of this size due to the size required for the keyboard)
• DVD drive
• Run office 2010 (mostly excel spreadsheets and access databases) and Photoshop
• £400 absolute maximum budget

The "would be nice"

• A black finish, this is a machine being used for a hotel/bar area and is going to take a few knocks, I would like something that does not scuff "too" much. Silver tends to get scabby very quickly (in my limited experience)
• Dual core? I will more than likely be having multiple applications running
• Possibly a little bit of MMO playing, some small scale WoW etc.. not looking at getting any massive fps, but wont be doing anything taxing on it.
• A well spaced keyboard with decent sized keys, I work with a guy who is a bit of a chubber and my eyes are starting to fail me.

Are the toshiba range any good? The c650 range seem to tick most of the boxes and they weigh in at about the right price. I can probably dig out an old laptop somewhere to take advantage of the £50 cashback offer that seems to be going about at the moment.

Cheers for any advice

 

[olivier renault]

Toshiba's have a decent rep. For £400, you gonna have to make concessions in some department anyway, but in the price range, you'll have Toshiba's, Samsungs (R530), HP (G62 / G72). Then you have the Acers and Advent's with more questionable build quality.

The Samsungs are fingerprint magnets if that's a deal breaker. The Toshiba you listed could have slightly dated hardware (T3300 version?), not that it would matter for an office laptop, but I'd try to get an i3 if at all possible. Similarly, a 7,200 rpm hard drive would be a good little extra over a 5,400 rpm hard drive. I'd choose speed over capacity (i.e. 320GB 7,200rpm over a 500GB 5,400rpm).

The HP G62 / G72 look like they would look the same weathered in or brand new. The G62 has no numeric keypad, and the G72 is £500 realistically. You may get some 'deal' that would bring the G72 more in line with your budget.

Don't really expect to find a gaming machine for that price. You'll be stuck with integrated graphics, which are no good for gaming (maybe a bit of Half Life, but WoW would be a stretch). If you go with an AMD dual core athlon version, you may get a 1/2 decent dedicated graphics card (most likely, a HD3200). Will still be a chore for gaming though, but achievable.

As for resolution, I doubt you'll find anything else but the standard res (1366 x 768), even on 17'' screens.

I would think it would be hard not to find a dual core CPU nowadays. Single cores mostly apply netbooks, and some CULV laptops. Most laptops come with dual core (or should anyway).

My $0.02. You may be able to have a hands on experience on some laptops in your local purple store, to check out various manufacturers (screen brightness, keyboard and trackpad, keyboard flex, screen hinges, chassis, noise, heat!). Buying online will save you some money, but you never know, you may find a deal locally, especially with buy-backs.

 

[NathanT]

Thanks very much for the advice Olivier, I'll take a walk down to the purple store and the big T to check some out. Having a look around I see that even places like the Ruby Murray chains have some half decent selections.

Like I say, gaming is a nice but not needed issue, I'd much rather a solid machine to work with. I'll look at getting an i3 with a slightly faster HD.
The g62's would have been perfect but for the lack of the numeric keypad