Whats important for you in a Laptop?

Semtax

Semtax

Semtax

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16 Jul 2009
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124
Ive never owned a laptop before and before I dive in and buy one without giving it enough thought I was wondering what do you find important in a laptop?
And for a complete novice laptop user like me what do you think is easily overlooked in a laptop purchase, size, weight, gaming ability, keyboard, screen etc.

At the moment I have a PC which I use mainly for gaming, music, some rendering and an iMac for work (adobe suite stuff).
The bulk of my work i will do on these machines so the laptop doesn't have to be a powerhouse by any means.

The only main constraints I have is to keep somewhere around the £1000 mark, sub 15inch and have it look somewhat professional.

Any thoughts much appreciated :)
 
Screen, battery life, build quailty and keyboard for me (esp keyboard, hate horrible keyboards)

Also if your looking for a professional looking laptop, the Lenovo X220 (the laptop not tablet version) and X1 are good
 
pertty much what will said, but I also want\need portability, I had a beast of a laptop once, never again. Thin and light for me please! If this comes at the premium of lesser performance, I'd happily take it.
 
Thanks for your thoughts guys. So far I have to agree with the portability trait.

I decided to go on a scouting mission to see a few laptops in person.
I got a lend of 2 laptops (Lenovo thinkpad 15, Dell inspiron 1520) from a friend and checked out the local computer store to see a few more.

First thoughts on the two laptops i got a lend of.
Inspiron = Not for me. Too big and cheap feeling (it was cheap after all). Seems like a family Laptop.
Thinkpad = Much better than the dell. I think the screen is 16:9 which I dont like at all though. Heavy too.

The range of laptops in the shop wasn't great, they seemed to have a lot of sub £600 ones on display and nearly all of them looked/ felt cheap especially typing on them.

Of the Mackbooks I looked at the 13inch Macbook Air really impressed me. Much nicer keyboard and trackpad than any of the Laptops on display and feels solid for such a thin thing.

Havent yet tried any expensive Alienware / Asus / Toshiba Laptop. Would any of those brands hold up against a Macbook feel wise?
 
1. Performance
2. Build Quality
3. Battery Life
4. Reliablity

Hence why I have moved from Windows to Mac, incredible machines.
You do get what you pay for ask any Mac user.
 
Semtax said:
Ive never owned a laptop before and before I dive in and buy one without giving it enough thought I was wondering what do you find important in a laptop?
And for a complete novice laptop user like me what do you think is easily overlooked in a laptop purchase, size, weight, gaming ability, keyboard, screen etc.

At the moment I have a PC which I use mainly for gaming, music, some rendering and an iMac for work (adobe suite stuff).
The bulk of my work i will do on these machines so the laptop doesn't have to be a powerhouse by any means.

The only main constraints I have is to keep somewhere around the £1000 mark, sub 15inch and have it look somewhat professional.

Any thoughts much appreciated :)
Click to expand...


Keyboard
battery life
durability

hence why i have a lenovo T420
25 hour battery life here with the best laptop keyboard out there

really don't see why theres so much mac love around here, theres not a single place where a lenovo laptop doesn't surpass them.
 
The most important thing in a modern laptop is a matte display. Glossy displays are utter trash, and the fact that they have become so popular causes me to despair. After that, the keyboard is next important, followed by the battery life. Weight and screen size are tied together, and so will depend on what you want to do with the laptop. Performance from any dual core Intel or AMD processor paired with 4GB+ RAM is going to be more than plenty for the majority of workloads you'd want to tackle on a laptop, so performance comes last.
 
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Still checking out laptops here :)

The keyboard and screen have become my main gripes with the laptops I have used over the last few days.
Got a lend of a year old Sony Vaio today. Seems a bit geared towards multimedia use and the screen is no where near as sharp as my monitors. Not a bad machine at all but dont think its for me.

The latops i have it down to are either some kind of high end portable Lenovo or Macbook air 13".

Has anyone tried an Alienware m14x?
 
For me,

Battery Life
Screen (As mentioned, matt is better fora portable pc which in theory would be used outdoors aswell)
Size

After owning an HP ZD8369EA 17" laptop, I realise the major faults it had, and my current Dell Inspiron 6400 is 3.5 years old and still has a fantastic battery on it. Of course, with everything pc related, its a case of what do you want it for? Mine is portability, and on the go. That means a good battery life, I would not even condifer a laptop with less than 6 hours of battery now!

Or no consideration to me:
Hard drive speed or size. Everything is stored on my server.
 
Semtax said:
Ive never owned a laptop before and before I dive in and buy one without giving it enough thought I was wondering what do you find important in a laptop?
And for a complete novice laptop user like me what do you think is easily overlooked in a laptop purchase, size, weight, gaming ability, keyboard, screen etc.

At the moment I have a PC which I use mainly for gaming, music, some rendering and an iMac for work (adobe suite stuff).
The bulk of my work i will do on these machines so the laptop doesn't have to be a powerhouse by any means.

The only main constraints I have is to keep somewhere around the £1000 mark, sub 15inch and have it look somewhat professional.

Any thoughts much appreciated :)
Click to expand...

In short, look to the business / corporate machines from Lenovo or HP. I would suggest a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 (NZ33MUK) with intel i5 with ATI 6330 graphics or HP ProBook 4530s (LH282EA#ABU) intel i5 with ATI 6470 graphics. both come in at under £600. no need to spend any more and the only reason to would be if you want to game at hi-res/detaill.

in long

1 Reliability and Quality of Customer Service - it is no good having a laptop which may break or a brand that has a reputation for breaking (see thread here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18287269&highlight=startername_mrk1@1) and if it does break getting it fixed asap without hassle is a must. for this reason, i will only consider Lenovo and HP Corporate Notebooks (so the ProBook or Elitebook) if you are using your laptop for work or it is service / uptime critical. the Lenovo Edge and HP ProBook also make excellent choices for home use unless you need a gaming powerhouse. I will consider a dell business machine (the chunky monkey Vostro or slimmer latitude) or an XPS with next day on site warranty (3 years)

2 Warranty – the quality and the effectiveness of the warranty service is only 2nd to the above. there is no point having an all singing all dancing laptop if it isn’t working and it will take you 2-4 weeks to get it sorted or cost you an absolute fortune in phone calls and time. collect and return warranty is ok, next day on site is better. minimum 2/3 year term.

3 Build Quality & Styling – no shiny plastics and glossy lids for me please, and certainly no fluffy flimsy cuddly curvy wurvy home user laptops for me. I want my laptop to look proper pro, which means straight lines, matte plastic or brushed metal finishes.

4 Portability & Battery Life – always an advantage and I like a minimum battery life of 4 hours. I am happy if achieving this requires the max processor state to be set to 5-10% when unplugged and screen brightness right down. with an Intel i3 upwards this is still plenty powerful enough to run CAD, Creative Suite, Office etc. AMD machines do not fair so well in the throttling stakes when it comes to power management.

5 Features and Performance – Core i3/i5/i7 is the way to go with either an ATI 5470/6470 or Intel HD 3000 graphics, this will get you all the additional features like HDMI, eSATA, USB 3 on the aforementioned HP/Lenovo systems. for power management Intel no question. the only option I don’t need is a drop in underside serial docking port but I have usb docking instead.

6 Size – 13, 15, 17 depends on circumstances, I use a 13.3 ProBook at the moment and it is awesome, full size keyboard, love the smaller screen over my Lenovo 15.6 and you can guarantee that there is space for it on the train, bus etc.
 
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