Which is the best laptop? (Under 400 quid)

[MicroJak]

I am now in the fateful position of deciding what laptop to buy for Home Usage. I am not a business person nor am I a traveller. I am going to decide what laptop to buy (HP/Compaq/Acer etc.), but I don't know wether to get one with...


Windows XP SP2

or...

Windows Vista Home Basic/Home Premium


A lot of you grown up ones are very clever and often provide an intriguing argument. So, the question is.. which one?

[linux666]

Neither... use Linux

[MicroJak]

I can't use Linux or the one with the devil. It is a pity I'm not as into computers as the rest of you. I just like to surf the internet and play games and do my homework on the Laptop too. .

[Dinskydude]

Short answer: *Waves hand around* You do not buy a laptop.

Long Answer: Laptops are for weak people who can't lift weights in a desktop form, and aren't able to carry car batteries along for power. You don't wanna be looking handicapped and weak like fucking Steven Hawking, right?

Buy a desktop, like a MAN. Carry it around if you must, portability is for LOSERS and p*ssies. (No offense Senor)

If you were to be a pussy, but male anyway, buy a laptop with no fans or cooling, and an overclocked CPU+GPU, and burns your nuts off. You don't deserve them.

Serious Answer: Entirely dependent on your videocard. If it's anything that has an 8 and an M in it, and is NVidia branded, go with Vista. Otherwise, keep XP, or install a piece of sh*t Ubuntu distro on it.
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[Noxus]

Vista is better depending on your hardware. no body likes it for the fact its new and "slow". its only slow if you get the bare minimum running hardware. And theres options where you can turn some unnecessary stuff off such as the gadget bar. I recently got a laptop with a gig of ram and it ran not too bad, upgraded to 4 gigs and its a bit better. processing unit is more important though when it comes to speed.


Overall, Vista may get some getting used to, but its not as bad as you think it is.
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-==Frag the Weak, Hurdle the Dead.==-

[Holy KNight]

Man this topic hear, way over my head.lol all i know is the diffence between a Mac an a PC, nything else is way to technically advanced for me...

[MicroJak]

I don't mind Vista.. infact I think it looks quite cool. But I'm not a Technical person, which stuff determines how fast vista works or how slow something works?

[Robert Roy]

Mac ain't more expensive, it runs Vista too. So you like the design or not.
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Nulla poena sine lege..

[linux666]

blahblahblah....sorry, but vista is crap....in fact, MS is crap....but if i had to choose, i would go with xp
btw....someone was saying something about laptops being for pussys, well, let's just say that with a laptop you have a choice...you can take it to the park, to another country, to the toilet if you must ....with a desktop...errr ....be smart, be mobile

[Dinskydude]

As i said, the only thing you need is some strenght, and car batteries. Oh, and Robert, i'm anti-apple cos they stole my favourite fruit and took a goddamn bit out of it.
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[MicroJak]

My favourite fruit is lemon.


Anyway, I'm definitely going to get a laptop because it can be used all around the house. I'll probably get Windows Vista.. just cos it's new...


So.. the question is...


Which laptop?

[Dinskydude]

Problem with laptops in your price class is: The don't have a dedicated GFX card. The one i would reccomend would be this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115411
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115446

Work well with vista, have enough RAM, and a dedicated GFX card. Now you only have to hope they ship to the UK.
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[linux666]

or....

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?seg=HHO&poid=403664

and you can do the same as when you order a pizza...choose the components(keeping in mind that the harman/kardon speakers are a must, no other laptop provides such good sound...)

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetland.to?seg=HHO&poid=387322&fgpn=PSPB3U-0W000U

[Dinskydude]

I severely disreccomend ATI graphics. I do reccomend people who have them to go have a nice rest with your neck on one of Japan's bullettrain railroads. It's okay if you fall asleep. No one will miss you.
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[colinthecorgi]

OK, here's my two cents worth:

1. Laptops are normally weaker in graphics. That's just the way it is. I basically agree with dinskydude here. If you want to run anything with serious 3D graphics (new games etc) you will be very dissapointed if the computer does not have a graphics card with a powerful geometry processing unit and not just a bunch of texture memory. This is actually the biggest thing in home computer graphics the last ten years: the advanced cards for home computer use actually have a powerful GPU that does stuff previously only available for the CAD workstation market and at more or less reasonable prices.
When you look at a graphics card called "go" or "mobile" etc, be critical.

2. You will want to not have Vista. This will hardly be possible, since MS has made sure that Vista is shipped with all new machines, and that an XP professional license costs enough to hurt (otherwise you buy a Vista machine and tell the computer salesman to install XP on it). I think you will simply not find a cool laptop with powerful graphics that runs Vista.
Vista really does suck speedwise. We made some tests at my company, comparing the newest and coolest laptop running Vista with standard settings to my at least 1.5 years old laptop running XP. My machine easily won the graphics tests and .avi or .wmv files actually had messed up audio and visual lagging on the Vista machine. So you will have to go in and turn off all the visual junk that actually makes Vista Vista, then it will maybe run 95% as fast as XP.
If you have the money, buy a machine with 2GB RAM, one of the fastest CPUs (you don't have to have the absolutely highest clock rate, that just costs) and a graphics card that actually has a good GPU. Then install XP professional SP2 on it.

3. MAC computers are very very cool and slick in design. I don't know about processing power, but my experience is this:
- They almost never crash
- When they do crash, you need help, because they are not made for messing with in the same way that Microsoft Windows is
- They actually do run Microsoft OS if you want to do that



Well, that's about it. Oh, one more thing:
Decide if you are going to actually be mobile. In that case I recommend not going for the ones with largest screens, they are just a pain to drag around, instead go for minimum size and plug in a flat screen and real keyboard+mouse when you are at home.
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Running the P since 2007

[Dinskydude]

Every Mac (exept for the Mac Pro) uses ATI... I still say get a desktop PC with Nvidia GFX. Good chance that none of those lappies will run even Driv3r ( ) smoothly...
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[zenachi]

[Robert Roy]

[MicroJak]

By the way, I did get a Vista Premium laptop, and personally I think Vista is 10x better than XP (contrary to many of your opinions).

Reasons-

-It looks nicer
-It has cooler effects
-It has better memory (laptop)
-It has nicer 'We had to close this program' messages
-It's faster
-It is easier to use
-It takes less time to start up
-The colours are better
-I can check what year, date, hour and second it is on a little clock, meaning I don't have to stand up and look at the clock in the dining room, which is a exhausting 3 tiring metres away.
-I can play a decent game of chess, against a rather crappy computer chess player (even if I have left it on lvl 1 difficulty).

The only thing that I am against is that SimCity doesn't run as fast as on XP. Plus the internet thing doesn't work atm.

So, I encourage all of you to get Vista!!!






Now I must run away.. your tomatoes and various other pieces of dietary supplements will surely pelt me between the teeth - and I went to the dentist only yesterday.
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[RenéeAB]

Too late but:
Do not buy your laptop due to the op system on it. If you get Windows Vista on one plan on obtaining / installing XP asap. This is crutial if your new notebook (or desktop for that matter) comes with < 1 GB RAM.
Very few actually like Vista (even with 320+ GB HD and 4 GB RAM ).

Want to see just how slow Vista is? Try XP on your NEW system. Vista is faster for you only due to the increase in processor speed (from you old system?). On a dual core (AMD64) @ 2 GHZ XP load time is under 5 seconds, maybe 1-2 seconds faster for Win 2000 !!!

Any faster and it will load before I switch my pc on

I also use a multi-boot system myself (Win2000, WinXP, an "n-lighted" Vista that actually does little and gets even less use, and 2 linux releases...Ubuntu and Freespire...most reliable, consistant, and eq compatible are Win 2000 and XP. Linux is great for it's HD formatting and repair capacities and will format/fix almost anything )
BTW-Microsoft WILL NOT be dropping XP support this summer and will continue with XP until 2011 as they note people are dropping Vista all over. Vista may get a total change in the meantime.
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"Hello, my friends, are you visible today? I never knew it could be so strange......shouldn't talk about the weather....shouldn't talk about the government...."

REM - Pop Song 89