[Navajo]

It's getting near the time of year that loads of students start asking for laptop advice for Uni in September. So sit down take a deep breath grab a piece of paper and a pen and delve into the confusing world of laptops...

I have written this thread to point you confused people in the right direction when you start to look, once you have read this thread don't be afraid to create a thread of your own and ask questions however stupid you think they sound.. ok? Right, here we go!

Oh... and don't be afraid to show your appreciation of this thread..

Questions you should ask yourself before asking for advice

1. What's your budget?
2. What are you going to use it for?
3. Are you going to game with it, if so what games?
4. What warranty?
5. What companies do you want?
6. Any special software (e.g. CAD for engineering)
7. AMD or Intel? etc....etc....


Rough guidelines for prices and what you should get for your money

You must get at least the following if you are spending around £600. If you go by this list then you won't go far wrong:

1.6GHz processor - Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Turion X2
1GB of RAM
80GB Hard Drive
DVD-RW
15" screen
2 hours battery life


List of recommended places to buy a laptop:
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk, www.ebuyer.co.uk, www.dabs.com, www.comet.co.uk, www.sony.co.uk, www.laptopshot.co.uk www.savastore.com etc.....

(note: some people have had bad dealings with some online stores, personally I never have but let the buyer beware, I personally would order anything from the above sites)

Or direct from a manufactuer:
www.acer.co.uk, www.apple.com, www.dell.co.uk, www.meshcomputers.com, www.evesham.co.uk, www.hp.co.uk, www.rockdirect.com, www.alienware.com etc.....

Also a note about PCWorld, when people say "Don't go to PCWorld" listen to them, they talk sense.


Laptop Spec - What does it all mean?

Processor
There are two main processor manufacturers, these are AMD and Intel.

AMD have two ranges of processor which are Turion and Sempron, with the latter being the slower range.
Intel also have more ranges which are Core 2 Duo, Core Duo, Core Solo, Pentium-M and Celeron-M, in order of performance from best to worst.

The most powerful processor for laptops is the Core 2 Duo, then Core Duo, then Turion X2 (these are all Dual-Core processors)
The most powerful single core laptop processor is the Core Solo, followed by the Turion.

L2 Cache

L2 cache stands for level 2 cache, and is on-die memory for the processor. As such, the more of it you have, the better performing your laptop will be. Dual-Core laptops usually have a certain amount of cache shared between the 2 cores, usually 2 or 4 MB, while single core just has Cache for the processor, usually 1MB, although for the Celerons and Semprons it can be as little as 256KB, so beware.

RAM
RAM is memory for your laptop. As such, the more you have, the better your laptop will run. Many laptops come with 1GB, which is fine for most things. A lot of laptops are now coming with 2GB of RAM, which allows more programs, or more RAM-heavy programs, to run simultaneously.

Graphics
Or sometimes called videocards come in two types in laptops. These are either integrated or dedicated. Integrated graphics are usually found in less expensive laptops and are built in to the current chipset. By that I mean that there is no dedicated individual graphics chip inside the laptop. Therefore the graphics power is greatly reduced compared with laptops with a separate processing chip for graphics. These types of laptops are perfectly fine for office type work, i.e. the internet MS Word..

Laptops with their own dedicated graphics chip are used for gaming and faster more rich imaging, they are usually made by two main manufacturers: ATi with their Radeon chips and NVIDIA with GeForce. Both are comparable to each other. It is common to find 128MB graphics cards in laptops however 256MB cards are available. Laptop graphics obviously cannot reach the extremes of desktop graphics power but they are capable, depending on the graphics chip you buy, of playing modern games. You can find many card comparison tables on the internet for the graphics cards. I personally have an ATi Radeon X700 128MB graphics card and it serves me well, I can play Doom3 on med-high with an easily playable frame rate.

Graphics cards will have 2 types of memory, dedicated and shared. A card may have 512MB of memory, but if it's shared, the card may only have 128MB dedicated, and will steal the remaining 384MB from the system RAM. The more dedicated RAM a card has, the better it will be, and so a card with 256MB dedicated will outperform a 512MB with only 128MB dedicated.

Wireless
Most new laptops have wireless built in. Look for 802.11g for Uni networks. If you don't get a laptop with built in wireless g then if the laptop has a PCMCIA port you can get one of these http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl...ch&sa=N&tab=wi which will enable it to work, which are called PCMCIA wireless cards and you can get them off the internet for less than £20. Otherwise you can purchase bluetooth add ons which in my opinion aren't that bad.

Operating Systems
Windows Vista is now available for laptops, and comes in more variants than XP - Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate.
Home Premium is my recommendation, as Home Basic lack some of the features of it, and Business and Ultimate are unnecessary. Vista is also a more laptop-friendly Operating System, as it offers more advanced memory management and techniques to keep your battery alive.
If you really want, some companies will allow you to buy XP instead of Vista, though this is quite rare now.

The Future
The future is now. Sorry to use a corny phrase, but Windows Vista has already been released, and Direct X 10 are on the market for desktops and laptops (look for the nVidia 8 series in laptops)
Later this year, the prototype Wireless N networking method will be released, if the schedule doesn't change, and currently, it boasts a much longer range and faster transfer rate than wireless A/B/G. But the current adapters on the market may not support the fully released version, and of course the router needs to be wireless N to take advantage, so if you're happy to wait, do so, or just get Wireless G now, and if you need Wireless N in the future, buy a USB or PCMCIA card.

CD/DVD
CD-RW drives will read and write CDs; CD-R will just play CDs; DVD-RW will read and write DVDs and CDs; DVD-R will just play DVDs and CDs; Combos drives are CD-RW and DVD-R, meaning they can play any DVDs and CDs but only write to CD. Lightscribe and LabelFlash drives allow their respective special discs to have labels burned directly onto the disc using the drive. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Drives are now available for laptops, but they are very expensive and not recommended.

Screen Sizes
There are many different sizes of screens for notebooks. Also companies now do crystalbright, X-black, Xbright there are many names but they all refer to a type of high quality screen which in my opinion is far superior to many laptop panels, these are commonly found in Sony and Evesham laptops. Laptop screens sizes are defined below.

"Standard" Screens

Abbreviation / Resolution / Aspect Ratio

* XGA / 1024x768 / 4:3
* SXGA / 1280x1024 / 5:4
* SXGA+ / 1400x1050 / 4:3
* UXGA / 1600x1200 / 4:3

"Widescreen" Screens

Abbreviation / Resolution / Aspect Ratio

* WXGA / 1280x768 / 5:3
* WXGA / 1280x800 / 8:5 (16:10)
* WXGA+ / 1440x900 / 8:5 (16:10)
* WSXGA+ / 1680x1050 / 8:5 (16:10)
* WUXGA / 1920x1200 / 8:5 (16:10)

General Advice
If you are looking for a laptop then decide what you want from it before you start looking. More often than not you can save up to £200 just by buying from the internet and not a shop. Don't get sucked into advertising and pretty looking laptops. For example Sony Vaio notebooks. You can get a lot better spec laptops which look good for far less money. There is no need to buy a high spec laptop if all you are going to use it for is word processing.

Just do as much research into the topic as you can. Use Google to find explanations on websites and once you have found a couple you are interested in then post them in the mobile Computing sub forum and people will comment on it and give you good advice on it.


And that's all I can think of at the moment.



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Right kimi3013 has kindly written a piece on Apple Macs for this thread, and here it is...

Buying an Apple laptop.

Apple produce two ranges of notebooks the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. As you can probably guess from their names the MacBook Pro is the more powerful machine where as the MacBook is the more cost effective.

Determining which machine is for you can be done by considering:
1. Purpose
2. Finance

Purpose
It is important to decide what your going to be using your notebook for and how you are going to be using it to avoid over spending on a machine that far outstrips your requirments or, worse, a machine that can't meet your requirments.

Firstly I would urge you to consider mobility, how often your going to be moving the laptop. if you intend to move it around a lot you need to consider size, weight and battery life; but this very well may be a moot point in deciding between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Battery life times or both machines are quite similar and there are rumors that soon an ultra portable MacBook Pro will be released. So for now I would recommend patience. If however you don't care about mobility then you may want to consider the bulkier MacBook Pros for their larger screens (which could make your experience more enjoyable) and their greater performance.

Speaking of performance, if you intend to play any modern games or do any serious photoshop or video work you really need to get a MacBook Pro. The integrated graphics in the MacBook just isn't going to cut it. On the other side of things if you are just going to use the laptop to browse the internet, send email, type essays, listen to music and watch DVDs, then you don't need as much power. The MacBook will be a far better pick and you will save a lot of money.

Finance
Finance is also important, you can only buy what you can afford. The MacBook Pro starts about at £1349 (£1147 HE), and the MacBook at £749 (£637 HE). This is before any extras, like RAM, a bigger HDD and the like (and extra RAM is recommended).

If you are a student you qualify for the Higher Education Discount, which means you save 15% on all purchases. These discounted prices are shown in brackets in the previous paragraph. If you are still trying to decide between a MacBook and a notebook it may intrest you to know also that students get a free three year warranty and can obtain further coverage through the AppleCare Protection Plan at an extremely reduced price. A final bonus is that last year during the back to school season Apple offered £100 of iPods with purchases (that's equivalent to a free iPod Nano).

Apple do offer financing which allows you to space payments out for your MacBook over 24 or 36 months. At time of writing the APR seems to be around 15%.

Finally it's worth mentioning the Apple Developer Connection, if you are a programmer you may be interested in joining. It costs £65 for a student to join and allows you to save around 20% on one system purchase. Factoring in the £65 that means you'll save money on all of the MacBook Pros (but lose money on most MacBooks) compared with the Higher Education discounts (but not a lot on the cheaper models). However it does mean you'll miss out on the other benefits mentioned above.

So you've decided between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro but now you don't know which specific model to get.

MacBook
This should be an easy choice, if you can afford it go for the 2.0GHz 13" White MacBook. You may remember me mentioning that memory is important earlier and the 2.0GHz model has twice as much as the 1.83GHz model. Of course you could upgrade the memory of the 1.83GHz model but then the price difference between the two is only £80 (£68 HE) and there are other advantages to be had. Immediately obvious is the faster CPU (0.17GHz faster to be exact). There is also a larger L2 cache though (twice as big) which should make a noticeable performance difference. You also get the 6x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) instead of the 24x Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW). As for the Black MacBook your paying for the paint job and nothing more shall be said of it.

MacBook Pro
Again, this should be quite an easy choice, the primary difference between the first model and the latter two is graphics performance. The latter two models have twice the video memory as the first. Where as the primary difference between the first two models and the latter is screen size (15" and 17" respectively). Deciding on which model to get is as simple as choosing which combination of graphics performance and screen size you want.


If you're looking for a laptop of this power, I will assume that you know what to need to look for as far as specs. Pick what you needed.

Other things
There are other things that you may want to think about when getting the laptop.

MS Office for Mac - Like it or not, Microsoft make the best office pack out there. You'll be wanting. There are alternates out there, OpenOffice, but these are not a good on the Mac side. MS Office will be good. A new version should be coming out in 2007, so wait for that is you can. It will set you back about £90 for a student version, for something you will use a lot, it is no much.

A keyboard, mouse and stand - Some people find using a laptop a lot hard due to the set up. You can get stands to put your laptop on to raise the screen to that of a normal level. Plugging in a normal keyboard and mouse will let you use it as a normal machine when you're in your dorm.

External hard drive - Most laptops have small drives, If you want to keeps music, video and the odd game about, the it's going to fill very quick. And external drive is great for keeping things that you don't use too often on, all you videos and photos to. This keeps space on your internal drive for when it's needed. You should always have at least 10GB free. Drives cost more depending on how much space your looking for. A small 40GB drive may cost £25-30, and a larger 300GB drive costs about £120.

Cases - You'll need something to keep you laptop in. Many companies make these and will state the size laptop they're designed for (there are companies that note which Apple laptops are the correct size). These can be expansive, but you'll regret not getting on if you drop your bag and you brake your laptop.

There are two kinds of cases; bags which have compartments for the laptop, or a padded wallet/sleeve that you put your computer into before you put in into your normal bag.

Apple Care - This is Apple's cover plan. It's expensive, but it really does cover everything that happens to your machine (within reason, i.e. no mods or hacks or what have you). For a lop of people it's a waste of money as they'll never need it, but if you have the cash it could be worth it. Others don't get it as individual repairs can be less than the cost of the program. I would recommend it if you get a power book, more expensive machines.

Where to buy - The best place is the Apple online store, or an Apple Store that you can walk into if you are close to one. The online store will offer a discount of about 15% if you order from your university network. All the customization options will be available to you and you'll not be limited to what they have in a store.

Web sites - Here's a list of useful websites that will be of use:
Mac Rumours - This place has a great forums that are get a great place to get recommendations and help.
Version Tracker - Find updates for programs and the programs them selves.
No Think Manuals A list of great free applications for the Mac OS
Open Source Mac - A simple list of the best open source programs.
The Mac Review Cast - A pod cast the review free/opensource and shareware programs for the Mac. A personal favorite of mine.

[giraffe_goat]

thanku!

[Navajo]

(Original post by giraffe_goat)
thanku!

Anything that you are still wondering so I can add to it?

[escapea]

thanks this is really helpful. what about the graphics though.
i am looking to buy a laptop and will need it for 'solid works' a 3D product design programme and digital photography... do i need to be careful about what graphics I go for or is that mainly for gaming?
also do you know if www.laptopshop.co.uk is any good?

[Navajo]

Escapea check the edit in the top post ^ for graphics.

It's a difficult one, I personally would go with a seperate video card as they produce better quality/rich images on the screen if your budget allows.

Havn't bought off laptopshop but it looks legit so it's in the list

[slugonamission]

(Original post by Navajo)
Escapea check the edit in the top post ^ for graphics.

It's a difficult one, I personally would go with a seperate video card as they produce better quality/rich images on the screen if your budget allows.

Havn't bought off laptopshop but it looks legit so it's in the list

TBH, i think a dedicated graphics processor would help in that case, but dont hold me to it

[Navajo]

(Original post by slugonamission)
TBH, i think a dedicated graphics processor would help in that case, but dont hold me to it

That's what I said and meant

[xeonman9000]

Great guide, but lose the link to E-buyer, me and my friends have used them quite a bit because their prices are resonable, but the service is absolutely terrible, the packaging is shoddy at best and many items are sent faulty. I've just recieved my fourth replacement hard-drive.

[Navajo]

(Original post by xeonman9000)
Great guide, but lose the link to E-buyer, me and my friends have used them quite a bit because their prices are resonable, but the service is absolutely terrible, the packaging is shoddy at best and many items are sent faulty. I've just recieved my fourth replacement hard-drive.

Hummm tough one..

I've ordered about 5 different laptops off eBuyer and they have all been great and the service was perfect, even sent one back. But my mate had a right fuss with them over a £12 memory stick.

I think i'll keep it for now as the number of good cases greatly outweighs the number of bad stuff I have heard. On that note I've heard terrible things about savastore and dabs as well, I think there all as bad as each other

But I put a warning note in there

[Surfer_Dan]

www.autdirect.co.uk and www.scan.co.uk and www.novatech.co.uk and www.overclockers.co.uk

are very good sites for buying stuff - although more on the build it DIY side of things.

very very good prices on overclocker i.e.
Amd San Diego 3700+ for £128

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...aCP_2d150_2dAM

[posterpreviouslyknownascoss:D]

Have you had many thoughts about the new dual core processors?

[dhokes]

(Original post by coss)
Have you had many thoughts about the new dual core processors?

Also, what bout 64bit processors? Can you get 64bit dual-core processors?

[xeonman9000]

Yep, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 line are all 64 bit dual cores, and very nice, my dads mate just got himself a 4400+ and it is fantastic, blows my 3500+ (64 bit single core) out of the water for multitasking and they are the same processor (obviously one is dual core). Intel suck.

[Sam2k]

(Original post by coss)
Have you had many thoughts about the new dual core processors?

Core Duo is the way to go for a new laptop. Increased performance, better battery life, and less heat. <---Everything you need in a laptop.

[dhokes]

Can you get 64bit dual-core processors in the likes of Acers, Dells and Sony's?

[Sam2k]

(Original post by dhokes)
Can you get 64bit dual-core processors in the likes of Acers, Dells and Sony's?

Not that I've seen. For a laptop you're choices are either Athlon64 or Turion which are 64bit, or CoreDUO which is dual core but not really 64 bit. However, CoreDUO is closer to 64bit than the Athlon64 or Turion are to dual-core because the dual core processor is almost like 2 32-bit processors.

[Morgoth]

Yep, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 line are all 64 bit dual cores, and very nice, my dads mate just got himself a 4400+ and it is fantastic, blows my 3500+ (64 bit single core) out of the water for multitasking and they are the same processor (obviously one is dual core). Intel suck.

wooot ive one of them its so quick i have to turn one core off for EQII cuz i run faster than the server XD

[dhokes]

(Original post by Moncal)
Not that I've seen. For a laptop you're choices are either Athlon64 or Turion which are 64bit, or CoreDUO which is dual core but not really 64 bit. However, CoreDUO is closer to 64bit than the Athlon64 or Turion are to dual-core because the dual core processor is almost like 2 32-bit processors.

Ah rite thanks. Anyone know if there are plans for the future to get both in-one for the future, possible before september as I start uni then?

[Sam2k]

(Original post by dhokes)
Ah rite thanks. Anyone know if there are plans for the future to get both in-one for the future, possible before september as I start uni then?

It would be a great bet that both AMD and Intel have plans for such, but I wouldn't hold my breath on September.

[Kimi3013]

Note:

My bit about Apple laptop's needs to be updated some what with the newly released MacBook. I'll write up a new mini guide on Thursday (I've got an exam Wed. that I need to work for).