spectrum48k

Sony VAIO ?
IBM Thinkpads ?
Toshiba ?
Asus ?

Need to buy a new one for some work in the states. Might even pick one up out there.

Spec:
1GB RAM
3D acceleration (for 3D Studio Max)
SSE2 (for Adobe Premiere Pro 2)

Thanks in advance

mattbeef

bah get a macbook pro and use Final Cut Pro

Beefy

I would steer clear of Sony if you intend keeping it beyond the warranty period or not getting a warranty. I had to get quotes for repair of an out of warranty Vaio laptop with a broken system board, and it was over £400 because sony are funny about manufacturer of their replacement parts. According to the repair company Sony are the only mainstream laptop manufacturer that control replacement parts in this way which is why its so expensive.

Ive had no problem with my Dell laptop btw. HP are generally pretty good too although guaranteed someone will always have a horror story about pretty much everyone they can tell.

Iain Young

Very pleased with my Dell laptop

Scooby_Dee

If you have channel 5 the Gadget Show has a feature on them, it's on now.

MACH1

Check out www.meshcomputers.com
Best value anywhere, Excellent Service/Warranties etc.
had mine for Years no problems.

kilo_4que

try Mesh computers, ive heard some good stuff about them and they are cheap.

kilo_4que

OMG talk about a jinx eh

Phil

I have toshiba portege

Its great

LegacySTi

iTrader: (13)

i've a HP Pavilion and can't complain

spectrum48k

Any votes for Acer ? Seem good value.

I bloody hate buying laptops. One minute they're the latest and greatest, then 1 year down the line and you have an antique!

Can't get away with ultra-portables - those little laptops with the 12" widescreen displays - you can't seriously tell me you can get any work done on them ?! Email and surfing fair enough, but not serious work, surely ?!?

NotoriousREV

We use Dell's and IBM Thinkpads at work. We give IBM's to the numpties as they hold up well to rough treatment and the ones we trust get the Dells. No horror stories with either. Some of the Directors had VAIO's and we lost the HDD' in all of them in the space of a month

Hanslow

We've got Acer's at work. Seem pretty good. Had one problem with one of them and that was one of the keys coming off the keyboard. Other than that, no complaints.

GaryK

I bought a gateway mx6635b for £699 from staples, 100GB HD, 1GB RAM, 15.4" bright screen TFT dual layer DVD burner 1.7 ghz centrino, very good machine and was on the gadget show last night against a vaio and some other lappy and won on battery life and overall performance, for the money and spec. its a steal!!!

mark.coleman

Just bought an HP Pavilion, I can't complain.

MACH1

still working! your only jealous cause i beat you to the draw
Mesh is best.

Molds

http://www.savrow.co.uk/

KiwiGTI

I don't even need to do the research to know that company is run by some wideboy, just trying too hard.

Saville Row is famous for fine gentlemen's clothing, pathetic that they would have to copy that.

spectrum48k

Whats going on with the scroll bars on the home page ? (IE6)

Molds

I think if you give the savrow laptops a chance you'll be impressed with the spec and the best warranty in the industry. Maybe not the cheapest but quality machines.

As for the scroll bars, I hadn't noticed that before! Weird.

spectrum48k

Which CPU ?

Intel Pentium M 760 2GHz, or Intel Core Duo 1.67GHz ??

(the lower clock speed suggests slower performance from the Core Duo ?)

I fancy this:
http://www.microanvika.com/product.a...702&key=142524

Gillp95

We use and support IBM thinkpads at work. And more recently we have moved to the HP laptops. The ibm's are good, drivers are easy to get and the warranty coverage is good. They seem sturdy and are quite powerfull.
The Hp's so far have been ok. And they come with some extras, they have a built in memory card reader (sd, xd, sony mem, etc) and a dvd re-writer. Screens are big and good quality. Very solid.

spectrum48k

ok, selected a toshiba with dual core, 1GB, Radeon X1400 card

DUAL CORE - very few optimised apps
Checked the benchmarks for dual core 1.66GHz versus single core PentiumM 2GHz and it seems very few apps run opimised code for dual core, resulting in weeker scores.

DUAL CORE - battery hog
Battery life was an hour less at 2.5, compared to 3.5 on the PentiumM

Radeon Graphics X1400
I mistakenly assumed the X1400 would be the more powerful part compared to the Radio X700, but its definitely not the case. Seems All the dual core cpu's have weaker graphics cards in them so's not to drain battery life even more.

Performance Conclusion
For my personal use right now, I'm going for PentiumM 2GHz coupled with Radeon X700 and 2x512MB DDR II

Final Selection
Price-wise, the Acer is by far the cheapest of the pack, but I've yet to see one in the flesh. Aesthetics are important to me, so what I need to do now is go out and find the brands I'm after and pick them up and play with them - so PC World DOES have its uses!