Which should I go for?

MasterPlan1 · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:15

Ok, I've got 4 choices of laptop\netbook my needs are as follows:

-Portability
-Light gaming, World of Warcraft (not raids, just daily quests\farming\5 mans)\MAME
-Watching divx, possibly x264 rips
-Good battery life, 3hrs+

I've been looking at the following:

HP Mini 311c (from the US so I can upgrade the RAM) - £380 (with some upgrades)

HP DV2, AMD TurionNeo X2 Dual-Core L625 1.6GHz with 512MB ATI Radeon Graphics 3410, 4Gb of RAM, 12.1" Screen - £440

Acer 1810TZ, Intel SU7300 Dual Core 1.3Ghz, 4Gb RAM, GMA X4500HD, 11.6" Screen - £340

Packard Bell RS65-T600, Intel T6400, 3Gb of RAM, Radeon 3470, 13" Screen - £380

Which would you go for out of the above? I have no idea on the packard bell's battery life - but the specs look good, it includes a DVD-RW drive too, it doesn't include a webcam, which would be handy for skype'ing the missus...

Moeks · 14 Oct 2009 at 18:51

The Parckard Bell is the most powerful, and really I think is the only one that is going to give you a 'nice' WoW experience. The HP Dv2 should do ok too, although the cpu is rather weak compared to the T6400 in the PB.

The Acer wont give you a nice WoW experience at all with the X4500HD, trust me, I have one.

MasterPlan1 · 14 Oct 2009 at 18:56

Just looked up the battery life on both the PB and the HP, both have ~2.5hrs... Acceptable, I guess... I'd really like to see how well the HP Mini does at playing WoW.

MasterPlan1 · 14 Oct 2009 at 19:08

Groan. Just found this beaut, making it even tougher:

AMD Athlon™ Neo X2 Dual-Core Processor for Ultrathin Notebooks L335
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
13.3” Diagonal High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1366 x 768) • ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Graphics with 128MB Display Cache Memory AMD M780G with 64MB GDDR2 (sideport memory) with up to 1982MB total graphics memory
4096MB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) • 320GB (7200RPM) Hard Drive (SATA)
HP Webcam with integrated digital microphone • Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n WLAN & Bluetooth
6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery • 1-Year Free Hardware Technical Support

Nymins · 14 Oct 2009 at 19:19

Packard Bell one defo.

MasterPlan1 · 14 Oct 2009 at 19:31

I'll think I'll hold off and wait on some reviews on the DM3, as that looks to be the best out of them all, and seen as though I can pick it up for just over £400 from the states, it looks like that will be the winner for me.

http://www.liliputing.com/2009/09/hp-pavilion-dm3-successor-to-the-pavilion-dv2.html

MaxP779 · 17 Oct 2009 at 04:55

Where did you see the Acer 1810TZ for £340?? Lowest i saw was £449 direct from acer.

anewman · 2 Nov 2009 at 00:13

MaxP779 said:
Where did you see the Acer 1810TZ for £340?? Lowest i saw was £449 direct from acer.

Probably BH photo or whatever it's called (google shopping).

The UK version of the 311 can have the ram upgraded to 3gb DDR3 and the ion le hacked to full ion.