Hi, I need a wireless laptop, which will support WIN XP, Photosuite, MSN/Trillian, excessive internet use and WIN media players etc simultaneously.
I currently run a desktop P3 which does all the above and more on broadband.
I want a competitive price and any recommendations for good service/equipment.
I've spent some time looking at Dell but all the spec just ends up sending me off to la la land.
What do I need and where should I get it from?

I recently bought a laptop with the same sort of things in mind, I bought a Acer Aspire 1362WLMI from ebuyer and its fantastic and copes with everything I've thrown at it so far.
Karl

Originally posted by cha00kaw
I recently bought a laptop with the same sort of things in mind, I bought a Acer Aspire 1362WLMI from ebuyer and its fantastic and copes with everything I've thrown at it so far.
Karl

Hey,

How much is it? And does it have a reasonable battery life?

:)

acer are a good brand, i'd also suggest looking at dell, rockdirect and maybe hi-grade.
Don't go for something from pc world, packard bell, time or tiny.

Originally posted by Cyclone
acer are a good brand, i'd also suggest looking at dell, rockdirect and maybe hi-grade.
Don't go for something from pc world, packard bell, time or tiny.

Indeed, PB/NEC are poor, and served to people by n00bs.

:)

Asus are meant to be half-reasonable - they mainly produce motherboards, but do they make decent notebooks?

:)

It cost me about £600 in january, it looks like ebuyer have discontinued the 1362 model for some reason.

As I said, I have no complaints at all. Decent battery life (about 3 hours i think, I usually take the charger with me) and takes games like trackmania sunrise no probs! decent graphics, wireless networking built in and 512mb ram is pretty good for the price.

I think that acer are a good brand if you aren't wanting to break the bank, equivalent spec systems from Dell for example are about £100 more, my GF bopught a Dell laptop for £400 and has had no problems with that but it was nowhere near as high spec.

Having seen your other post about wireless networking your planned setup would be identical to mine, I bought a Belkin wireless router from ebuyer and it fits the bill perfectly and is damn easy to set up!

A note on ebuyer, i highly reccomend them for decent prices - just dont buy their own brand budget stuff, its a bit of a lottery!

Thanks for that, I had a quick look on ebuyer and saw something I liked.
Plus I found this:
http://www.studentcomputers.co.uk/packard-bell-laptops/cheap-laptops-uk.htm
No idea if they have a decent rep or anything but the laptops look pretty good.

Never heard of them, for the coupla quid you may save you may as well use someone that people know are good.

Ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com), Scan (http://www.scan.co.uk), Insight (http://uk.insight.com/index.php) or Micro Direct (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/) should be all about the same price...

Originally posted by steev
Never heard of them, for the coupla quid you may save you may as well use someone that people know are good.

I would agree with that, what are you looking at on ebuyer?

BTW that site you mention sells packard bells which someone above said to avoid, I dont know about that myself but might be worth thinking about...

Originally posted by cha00kaw
...that site you mention sells packard bells which someone above said to avoid, I dont know about that myself...

Trust us, avoid them...

Originally posted by amhudson119
Indeed, PB/NEC are poor, and served to people by n00bs...

By n00bs for n00bs, but strangely I've never had a problem with an NEC machine, & all the ones I've seen have been solid...

These are all the ones which look semi possible for me. Money is an issue (due to twins being due soon) and ability to cope with a womans neverending demands upon it would help.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=79588


http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&kc=305&l=en&oc=N06225&s=dhs&sbc=inspn_2200

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/notebooks_Q2_W6_inspn_510m_N065M5?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

The prices are great at this place but I don't know about it's reputation at all.
http://www.studentcomputers.co.uk/packard-bell-laptops/cheap-laptops-uk.htm

http://www.studentcomputers.co.uk/packard-bell-laptops/easynote-e2-310.htm

http://www.studentcomputers.co.uk/packard-bell-laptops/easynote-f7-305.htm

These are the guys I'm planning to but my next PC off, just noticed they do a customised laptop option, don't know how good the build will be but they have been recommended to me for a desktop.
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/index.php?page=affordablelaptops2
Apparently they are also fairly local and will let you pick up saving you the cost of delivery.

Steev, what would you reccomend processor wise for my PC? I want to get the most cost effective from these:
3200+ Winchester
3500+ Clawhammer or
3700+ San Diego
I cant find benchmark comparisons for the San Diego on Toms Hardware and have read some negative comments, any ideas?
Also is low latency RAM worth the extra cost, Its for gaming and possibly compiling, providing I get onto my PhD!

Cheers!
Karl

I just bought a Packard Bell laptop from PC World @ Meadowhell Retail Park.

And mine and the missus home pc's are both Packard Bells and nothing has gone wrong with them ever.. why have PB got such bad press then?

I got this rather s****y Dell Inspirion 510m delivered yesterday. I actually ordered the 6000 but they sent me the next model up by mistake! Wahey!

Anyway. RPG recommended this to me and it's where I got this from: the Dell Outlet website. They put all the surplus stock on there and flog it cheap, but it's exactly the same quality product as on their main site. www.dell.co.uk/outlet

The 6000 that I ordered was meant to be roughly £1200 inc. P&& and VAT, and the same package (the price I paid) from the outlet was about £600!!!

Anyway I've been told not to rub this in too much as BrainThrust bought the same model at full whack price from the main site :hihi:

Edit: They bleeped out the word s w a n k y because its got w*nk in the middle of it! But I love that word!

Originally posted by ANGELUS
I just bought a Packard Bell laptop from PC World @ Meadowhell Retail Park.

And mine and the missus home pc's are both Packard Bells and nothing has gone wrong with them ever.. why have PB got such bad press then?

because they are unreliable badly built rubbish.
Not every single one of the falls to bits, just 90%.

I have a Samsung x05 centrino laptop i bought from www.laptopshop.co.uk, I think they are about 900 from ebuyer.com now, if not less, but, they are thing, light, powerful, lots of features, and loks the dogs do da's, the best laptop i've owned, and this is my 4th.

Joel

Anyway I've been told not to rub this in too much as BrainThrust bought the same model at full whack price from the main site :hihi:


I just found this, and yes, while I did pay full price, mine lappy has several customisations that yours doesn't ( 17" widescreen, RAM and various other bits.

I'm not as stupid as i look. :P

Wilf