Laptop Advice! £500-700

[smile_wars]

Well my current laptop has lasted three and a half years of uni. The battery died long ago and radiates heat whenever turned on, CPU temps: 70-90c idling, 100-111c light gaming, +107c overheat shutdown, despite always sitting atop the Peep Show boxset to aid ventilation. Frankly, the noise it makes is embarrassing in the library at uni.

So it's time for a new one and your advice would be appreciated.

Price range: £500-700 (in the middle unless its a particularly nice one!)
Uses: Office, music, films, light gaming (Legions, AirMech, maybe the new Sim City next year)

Screen Size: Currently got 15.6in
Processor: Intel i5 (think i7 a bit excessive?)
RAM: 4gb would do fine?
Hard drive: no more than 500gb needed
Graphics: Intel or is dedicated a good idea for gaming?
OS: Windows 7/8? I'm happy to try something new..
Brand: quality wise what's best these days? Samsung, ASUS, Levono, Toshiba?
Other stuff: Webcam, min. of 3 USBs, HDMI, wireless. CD drive optional.
Retailer: happy to buy online but don't know which laptop websites are reputable.

Anything that doesn't overheat like my HP laptop will make me happy to be honest, but I'd like something of good build quality that will last the upcoming four years.

If you can critique the above idea for spec, fill in my knowledge on those question marks or suggest any laptops please share! I'd go desktop but portability will be vital for revising in the last semester at uni. Thank you!

 

[WildFire]

Get a tablet, it's all the hype these days.

 

[discord]

I was going to say you can probably snag a fairly nice one on neweggdotcom that can meet all your needs for a few more years in that range, but they don't do anything outside of the US/Puerto Rico excluding US Military stationed overseas.

They are a really good company (I used them for most of my computer/part needs), and if you know someone in the states that can middle man it for you, it might be worth looking into.

Also, get a dedicated GPU if you have that option open. The integrated cards may work, but you will be much better off with a dedicated graphics card in your machine, even doing light gaming. Maybe shoot for 8 GB of ram as well. I think you can get that fairly reasonably, and its always useful to have a little more memory. Give them a little look around, really, and for some reason, I think there might be some kind souls in the Legions community that would be willing to help get it out to you if you don't know anyone here. There might be an equally reputable UK/European online retailer though, so the euros will be able to give you tips on that when they get around to it.

Good luck!

 

[smile_wars]

Get a tablet, it's all the hype these days.

Tablets are so last year, it's all about ultrabook laptops with flippy-twisty-clip-off-touchscreen-tablets now.

Also, get a dedicated GPU if you have that option open. Maybe shoot for 8 GB of ram as well. I think there might be some kind souls in the Legions community. Good luck!

Thanks Discord,

Just out of wonder, I have seen a few GT610 and GT630 graphics cards, the higher model always has only 1GB compared to the lower with 2GB, which is better?

www.laptopsdirect.co.uk and www.saveonlaptops.co.uk seem to be the major online only UK retailers. What with it being after Christmas the home retailer John Lewis has a big discount on this Samsung ultrabook, however I would have to break the budget to go for it, is it worth the extra hundred?

Alternatively, and most promisingly, I'm liking the look of the Sony Vaio E series. They have a small student discount on their Education Store website, customisation (meaning I don't have to pay for a pointlessly large hard drive), and I think are well built.

The options are:

17in LED display, i5-3210M 2.5GHz, Windows 8, Black, Backlit keyboard, 320 HDD, 8GB memory, AMD Radeon HD 7650M 2GB, 3xUSB2.0, 1xUSB3.0, HDMI, Bluetooth 4.0. £650
Options of interest: i7-3632QM 2.2GHz +£60, 6GB memory -£10.

As above with: 14in LED TOUCHSCREEN display, Silver, AMD Radeon HD 7670M 2GB . £642
Options of interest: i7-3632QM 2.2GHz +£120, 6GB memory -£20.

As above with: 15in LED display, Black, 6GB memory, AMD Radeon 7650M 2GB. £547
Options of interest: i7-3632QM 2.2GHz +£140, 8GB memory +£50

Do you think any of these three or their options make a good deal?

 

[WildFire]

Tablets are so last year, it's all about ultrabook laptops with flippy-twisty-clip-off-touchscreen-tablets now.

Ah so true!

Just out of wonder, I have seen a few GT610 and GT630 graphics cards, the higher model always has only 1GB compared to the lower with 2GB, which is better?

You only need the extra memory if you're gaming over mulitple screens, which you probably won't be, so take the largest number you can.

www.laptopsdirect.co.uk and www.saveonlaptops.co.uk seem to be the major online only UK retailers. What with it being after Christmas the home retailer John Lewis has a big discount on this Samsung ultrabook, however I would have to break the budget to go for it, is it worth the extra hundred?

Try looking at scan.co.uk , amazon.co.uk (obviously) ebuyer.com dabs.co.uk overclocker.co.uk

Really, you need the best gpu you can get and a i5 ivy bridge, hdd space will be fine at 500gb (harddisks are very expensive at the moment) and RAM is probably going to be okay at 4GB but you may want to consider adding 6 or 8 if there is any possibilty of doing high workload tasks like video editing or running loads of applications at once.

For gpu's I really recommend going the AMD route as they are much better for budget laptop gpu's, take the highest number you can get on your price point as the better the performance will be.

 

[smile_wars]

Got the Sony Vaio E series (E1512C5E) in the end for £548 off the Sony and Education Store, had free student delivery, a free RAM upgrade (Sale offer) and 10% student discount. Decided another £100 was a bit much for +2in display and +2GB RAM.

Screen size : 15in
Processor : Intel® CoreTM i5-3210M, 2.5GHz
RAM : 6GB
Hard drive : 320GB
Graphics : AMD Radeon HD 7650M 2GB
Battery : 8 hour battery
Backlight keyboard, Standard DVD drive, wireless, Windows 8.

Thank you for the advice *Fireblasto* and Discord!

 

[discord]

Glad you found something!

As for video cards, there's a lot of factors that go into determing what is optimal, but usually the higher series number is better as a rule of thumb when dealing with the same series. The flagship model of a last gen card is usually comparable to the low-mid range of the next series (not always and the comparison is usually quite 'loose', but depends on overclocking abilities of both and a handful of other factors. For the most part though, as an average gamer, you will look at series number, model in that series, and how much memory its got on the card. Lots of good things come when you get into looking at how they benchmark, and what the suggested and minimums are for the game they were benchmarked on.

Good luck with the new laptop man, sounds like you will be all set for your needs!

 

[Jordahan]

Windows 8.

You may want to invest in W7 if you plan on playing any games.

 

[WildFire]

You may want to invest in W7 if you plan on playing any games.

Valve would be very stupid to pull complete support for their platform on windows 8. It's fair enough that they want to support linux instead of windows and I think it's great, exactly what they need to do to finally make linux a great gaming platform (something that many people are still reliant for windows on) but from a business standpoint it would be very stupid as they are cutting themselves off from big consumer market.

 

[Jordahan]

Valve would be very stupid to pull complete support for their platform on windows 8. It's fair enough that they want to support linux instead of windows and I think it's great, exactly what they need to do to finally make linux a great gaming platform (something that many people are still reliant for windows on) but from a business standpoint it would be very stupid as they are cutting themselves off from big consumer market.

I didn't even mention Valve. W8 is just not currently supported by many games, plus it's ugly.

 

[WildFire]

I didn't even mention Valve. W8 is just not currently supported by many games, plus it's ugly.

That's what I thought you were referring to (Reference: "Windows 8 will be a catastrophe") and support for those games will probably come soon if not already supported. Just as a note, everything that does run on windows 7 'should' technically run on windows 8.