Laptop purchase advice, Please.

david357

david357

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I am looking to replace my Dell Inspiron 1300 with something a bit faster and more capable, and am considering some Dell outlet store refurbs. I have the following three in mind, all 15", and I want it mainly to run LR3 and CS5, plus office, etc.

Dell Vostro, I5 2 x 2.26, 4Gb ram, 320gb hdd, 1.7gb shared graphics, Win 7 Pro 64bit.

Dell Studio, I7 Quad 1.6, 4Gb ram, 320gb hdd, 1gb ATI Graphics, Win 7 Home premium.

Dell Studio, Core 2 duo P7450, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, ATI 512 graphics, Win 7 Home premium.

I have a Dell 2209 wa monitor for post work, so no issues there. I don't want to go the mbp route, but any other suggestions or advice on the above three would be appreciated. They can all be found in the £400 - £500ish range.

Thanks for any advice, it will be appreciated. :)
 
Looking at that, although the i5 appears faster, I'd probably go with the "slower" i7 as it seems faster from benchmarks and it has dedicated graphics. If you look here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html you get a "one figure fits all" view of the CPUs in question. This can only be indicative, but the 3 appear to be:

i5 2.26GHz (230M): 2350
i7 1.6GHz (720QM): 3257
Core 2: 1572 (from here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+P7450+@+2.13GHz)

Yup... definitely i7 (assuming the part numbers are correct and it comes with Win 7 64bit) ;)
 
Thanks, Guys, are there any others that I should be looking at?
 
Battery life (if important) and does it have the right connectors for you (I'd prefer DVI/HDMI out for the external monitor) and enough USB ports.
 
Thanks, Andy, I was thinking more about makes other than Dell as alternatives. Also, am I better off with win 7 than vista, and is 64 bit an issue?
 
david357 said:
Thanks, Andy, I was thinking more about makes other than Dell as alternatives. Also, am I better off with win 7 than vista, and is 64 bit an issue?
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I would say so, Windows 7 is miles better than Vista IMHO, 64 bit shouldn't give any issues at all, even 32 bit programs will install and run
 
Don't go near Vista. Period. I haven't found anything that doesn't work well on Win7 (but I do have fairly new hardware...).
 
arad85 said:
Don't go near Vista. Period. I haven't found anything that doesn't work well on Win7 (but I do have fairly new hardware...).
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Screen profiling can be a problem on both Win7 and Vista platforms. Especialy with onboard graphics cards. It's not the end of the world, as it can be worked around if your machine has a problem (mine does/did - Acer 5810T). Once set up to work, it's not realy a problem :)

It is easy to upgrade from Vista to Win7, and oh so worth while.
 
Right Guys, thanks to everyone for the advice, I have ordered one, due to be delivered today or tomorrow. :thumbs:

Dell Studio 15 1558 Laptop, 2.8Gb i7 4GB ram, 1GB ATI graphics, win 7 premium 64 bit, with Office 2010 Home and Student full version pre-loaded. Hope it does the job.

This is the processor: "Intel Core i7-720QM (1.6GHz, turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB Cache) QUAD CORE", so not sure if it's a 2.8 or a 1.6, but will be hugely faster that my present laptop.

There was some software available to remove all the crap from Dell computers, does it still exist? Also suggestions welcome as to how I set everything up as I want it, then save a copy (image??) of the set-up ready to re-load in the event of a disaster.

Thanks again.
 
david357 said:
This is the processor: "Intel Core i7-720QM (1.6GHz, turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB Cache) QUAD CORE", so not sure if it's a 2.8 or a 1.6,
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That i7 processor will run at 1.6Ghz unless the cpu is full loaded and then it will increase its speed to 2.8Ghz in "Turbo" mode. Turbo mode is dependant on heat so if the CPU is running hot then it will not allow the processor to run that fast.

This is handy as it will help to improve battery life and keep the laptop running cooler when the extra performance is not needed.

Hope that makes things a bit clearer.

Paul
 
neil_g said:
um.. neither is driver support, software compatibility, usability... err what else is there? ;)
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General resource hogging. Vista takes more memory and runs slower than Win7 on equivalent laptops here...

BTW, nice spec machine :)
 
david357 said:
then save a copy (image??) of the set-up ready to re-load in the event of a disaster.
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Assuming you have an external drive of some sort, I'd recommend drive snapshot. Brilliant program.
 
Thanks for the replies again, I've changed my mind!

When I looked again, I saw that the display on the machine I ordered is only a 1366 x 768, and I wanted the higher-res screen like I have now.

I bought the machine from ecomputers on Ebay yesterday at about 4-45pm. I telephoned them this morning and spoke to Billy, and he told me to refuse the delivery from UPS, and they will send out a different one when the other arrives back (or buy another and get a refund for the first). I refused delivery this morning at 11 am, less than 24 hours from order!

So now, I am going to get a similar machine but with 6gb of ram, and a high-definition 1920 x 1080 screen, but unfortunately a chopped down version of Office (Starter edition).

The customer service at ecomputers is amazing, a real person answers the phone promptly and the exchange was totally trouble-free.
 
arad85 said:
Assuming you have an external drive of some sort, I'd recommend drive snapshot. Brilliant program.
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Thanks Andy, I had a look at the site and Drive Snapshot does not seem to be an operating system that is supported, perhaps you know differently?
 
david357 said:
Thanks Andy, I had a look at the site and Drive Snapshot does not seem to be an operating system that is supported, perhaps you know differently?
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Huh.. It takes an image of your hard drive and then allows you to restore it should a problem happen at a later date. Not sure what you mean by OS that is supported. I run it on Win 7, Vista and XP....
 
OK Andy, I will give it a try, is it easy to configure?
 
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