Another "What laptop" Thread...

The23rdman

The23rdman

Messages
13,582
Name
Dean
Edit My Images
No
My Wife has about 800 quid to spend on a decent spec laptop for work. She needs a fast processor for her Dragon Software and would like it to be pretty light with good battery life. Screen size around 15"?

Any ideas?
 
looked at the XPS myself but then saw and compared to Sony Vaio FW50 series with Xblack 1080p screen and I preferred this to the XPS screen for photo editing.
Picked up an FW56 with 4 gig ram, 500 meg hd 1080p screen and bluray currently £200 off at comet at £699. had it for a week now and found it excellent. Only downside is some of the bloatware on it however bonus is it has Adobe premier and photoshop elements.
Another reason I didnt go for the Dell was that it was to replace an Inspiron which has not proved very reliable and the poor support from Dell.
 
sorry but sony laptops are over priced and use cheap shoddy parts.

if youve got 800 ish look at the lattitude range from dell, magnesium chassis so built to last and good specs for the cash.
 
I got a good spec XPS16 from dell

White
16" 1920x1080 RGB Led Screen
4gb DDR2
500Gb freefall HDD (7200rpm)
Core2Duo 2.4ghz
1gb ATI 4670 GFX
 
Ah, now I'm just confused. ;) The laptop she's been offered from work is this.
 
Just on me way to Romford to pick up a Lenovo W500 rrp £1650.

Found it on Ebay for £999.

There are others starting from around £600.

Another alternative to the W500 is the T500 which is basically the same
model but doesnt come with capability certificates.

Great spec machines at reaonable prices if you are prepared to look.
 
snoop69 said:
Just on me way to Romford to pick up a Lenovo W500 rrp £1650.

Found it on Ebay for £999.

There are others starting from around £600.

Another alternative to the W500 is the T500 which is basically the same
model but doesnt come with capability certificates.

Great spec machines at reaonable prices if you are prepared to look.
Click to expand...

Had a look. All the decent ones in our price range are in the US.
 
neil_g said:
sorry but sony laptops are over priced and use cheap shoddy parts.

if youve got 800 ish look at the lattitude range from dell, magnesium chassis so built to last and good specs for the cash.
Click to expand...

this is a bit out of date, yes some of the sony vaios are a bit gimicky and cheap but the one I reccomend is a more rugged machine with magnesium chassis (the same as the Dell). I have experience of quite a few Dell as we have 200 of them at work mainly Latitudes and we have found the quality on these have declined over the past few years with failure rates increasing on the more recent purchases. The XPS is a consumer model and with the ones we have tried it has about the same build quality as the Sony FW50 series. Usually the Sonys are more expensive but as I pointed out this one is on special at £700 instead of the list of £900 to 1100 so is a good deal. If you want rugged we have found IBM are pretty good and when you see the state some of our laptops get into on site it looks like they are used as body armour.
My reason for going for the Sony was that the build quality was "good enough" BUT the display quality is very good. The only one that came close was the Dell XPS 16 with the high def 16" RGBled display but that put the price through the roof.
I suppose time will tell
 
Chrisbie said:
this is a bit out of date, yes some of the sony vaios are a bit gimicky and cheap but the one I reccomend is a more rugged machine with magnesium chassis (the same as the Dell). I have experience of quite a few Dell as we have 200 of them at work mainly Latitudes and we have found the quality on these have declined over the past few years with failure rates increasing on the more recent purchases. The XPS is a consumer model and with the ones we have tried it has about the same build quality as the Sony FW50 series. Usually the Sonys are more expensive but as I pointed out this one is on special at £700 instead of the list of £900 to 1100 so is a good deal. If you want rugged we have found IBM are pretty good and when you see the state some of our laptops get into on site it looks like they are used as body armour.
My reason for going for the Sony was that the build quality was "good enough" BUT the display quality is very good. The only one that came close was the Dell XPS 16 with the high def 16" RGBled display but that put the price through the roof.
I suppose time will tell
Click to expand...

Thank you. Great info.
 
Actually just found out the budget is 850 plus VAT, so nearer 950.
 
Chrisbie said:
this is a bit out of date, yes some of the sony vaios are a bit gimicky and cheap but the one I reccomend is a more rugged machine with magnesium chassis (the same as the Dell). I have experience of quite a few Dell as we have 200 of them at work mainly Latitudes and we have found the quality on these have declined over the past few years with failure rates increasing on the more recent purchases. The XPS is a consumer model and with the ones we have tried it has about the same build quality as the Sony FW50 series. Usually the Sonys are more expensive but as I pointed out this one is on special at £700 instead of the list of £900 to 1100 so is a good deal. If you want rugged we have found IBM are pretty good and when you see the state some of our laptops get into on site it looks like they are used as body armour.
My reason for going for the Sony was that the build quality was "good enough" BUT the display quality is very good. The only one that came close was the Dell XPS 16 with the high def 16" RGBled display but that put the price through the roof.
I suppose time will tell
Click to expand...

like you we have a couple hundred lattitudes, however we've found them extremely robust. we have D600's still in service all the way through to new E6500s. we havent had a hardware failure (that wasnt an insurance claim) for as long as i can remember on any of our dell kit to be honest..
 
neil_g said:
like you we have a couple hundred lattitudes, however we've found them extremely robust. we have D600's still in service all the way through to new E6500s. we havent had a hardware failure (that wasnt an insurance claim) for as long as i can remember on any of our dell kit to be honest..
Click to expand...

d600s are great, the failures we get on those are hard drives mainly (I use one and its on its fourth HD averaging 1 per year ) More recent ones include d630s where other failures occur are much more random possibly down to the amount of time they spend suffering vibration in boots of cars etc. The earlier versions seemed to suffer this type of failure less. I have seen scuffing of the screen by the keyboard which seems to imply the case itself is flexing more.
 
Ok, so bearing in mind my budget is now 950ish...?
 
Chrisbie said:
d600s are great, the failures we get on those are hard drives mainly (I use one and its on its fourth HD averaging 1 per year ) More recent ones include d630s where other failures occur are much more random possibly down to the amount of time they spend suffering vibration in boots of cars etc. The earlier versions seemed to suffer this type of failure less. I have seen scuffing of the screen by the keyboard which seems to imply the case itself is flexing more.
Click to expand...

never seen any of those issues to be honest, we get a few issues from droppages and spillages but wear wise theyve always proved exceptional for us..
 
Guy's, I don't mean to butt into your techy conversation, but can I get some advice here, please? My wife is having a mini-breakdown. ;)
 
The23rdman said:
Hehe, thanks. What about customer service? I've heard so many horror stories about Dell.
Click to expand...

to be honest it looks like every make someone has had experience of problems. If that is of big concern look at extended warranty options, sometimes Dell will do specials where the extra warranty is included or at reduced cost. Warrnty claims I have found OK with Dell the problems seem to start after....
 
I'd agree with Neal. We use Dell exclusively at work - over 1000 laptops/desktops globally. Very few issues and good support. Take a look at the Latitude range for solid performance.
 
I'm looking at the E6500 with T9600 at the mo.
 
The23rdman said:
I'm looking at the E6500 with T9600 at the mo.
Click to expand...

Solid machine - same as I use. Make sure you take the 3 year on site warranty for extra peace of mind.
 
LemmingLover said:
Solid machine - same as I use. Make sure you take the 3 year on site warranty for extra peace of mind.
Click to expand...

found a place that does that thrown in. I'm probably going to go for the 6400 though as Ali wants something lighter. How many usbs does it have? Can't find that info?
 
nice, ive got the E6500 with the P8600 centrino, with 4gb and windows 7 64bit and its a flyer :)

re dell support - personally id upgrade to the next day support level. ive never had any issues with their business grade support. had engineers/parts out very quickly for those mentioned insurance jobs :)

HP business support sucks ass though, so i hate to think what their consumer support is like.
 
Not sure about the 6400 but the 6500 has 3 USB's plus one eSATA and an HDMI port.
 
Thanks, got it. It's the three USBs she needs.:)
 
LemmingLover said:
All RTB warranties. Not a great idea for a work laptop.
Click to expand...

Where does it say that :shrug:

Quality brand, new, warranty dont see a problem personally.
 
I've dealt with IBM/Lenovo in the past. Even buying from the corporately (not ebay) they were only offering an RTB warranty. So the support process goes like this. Phone support day one, day two, an empty box arrives. Put laptop in box and send back. Wait a week or more. Dell's next business day on site support beats that by a long way and the quality is just as good as Lenovo.
 
We've decided on the Dell now. Just haggling over processors. Thanks for all your help and suggestions. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top