sidneysmut
Banned
+13|7057
going to be in the market for a new laptop in the next few months. i was thinking of just getting a standard dell - nice and straight forward website, order it and it turns up, plug it in and you're good to go.

however, i then thought, well why not ask any techies out there for some advice. now, all i need it to do is turn on, have word processing, and connect to the internet. although not essential, it would be good to have some kind of game playing capability. i'm not talkin top end games like bf2, more like age of empires games, stuff like that. so, maybe a 256mb graphics card, perhaps.

my budget, and the top of my budget, is 700 english pounds.

if someone would be so kind to post me a good spec for around this price so i know what to look for.

an example, that i have seen on dell's website it:

Intel® CoreTM  2 Duo Processor T5200 (1.60 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB

1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2 x 512MB)

80GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive

256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 7300 Turbocache graphics card

this would cost around 700 english pounds. is this a good spec, or bad?

any advice would be greatly received. thanks in advance.

p.s. i wouldn't be playing bf2 on this, i've got a desktop for that. thanks again.
The#1Spot
Member
+105|7005|byah
If this is not for major gaming then you should get one with a cheaper graphics card like a 6series and a 7200rpm 80gig hd. 5400rpm is too slow now.
heggs
Spamalamadingdong
+581|6854|New York
^^ He's got a good point, unless you want to run vista or something, get a weaker graphics card. you can make the lappy faster elsewhere with the money saved.
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jaymz9350
Member
+54|7043

The#1Spot wrote:

If this is not for major gaming then you should get one with a cheaper graphics card like a 6series and a 7200rpm 80gig hd. 5400rpm is too slow now.
well if battery life is an issue the slower hdd will be better.  also my lappy has a 4200rpm drive and i use mine similarly to what he stated and i don't notice much a performance problem considering it's a laptop.  for websurfing and office apps it's not much slower than my desktop. and that's comparing a turion running @ 800mhz cpu (underclocked when on battery) 512 ram and 4200rpm hdd   vs  a opty running @ 2.6ghz 2 gig ram and a 10,000rpm hdd.
joker3327
=IBF2=
+305|7064|Cheshire. UK
Dell XPS-2 P M 770 2.13GHz 2MB 1GB RAM 100GB HDD DVD+/-RW 256MB Video 17 WUXGA 1920 x 1200 Screen 1 Only Ex Demo      Dell XPS-2 P M 770 2.13GHz 2MB 1GB RAM 100GB HDD DVD+/-RW 256MB Video 17 WUXGA 1920 x 1200 Screen 1 Only Ex Demo

http://www.itcsales.co.uk/acatalog/Seco … ptops.html
Toxicseagull
Member
+10|6711|York
never buy turbocache graphics cards. simple as. i would keep looking if i were you.
kylef
Gone
+1,352|6959|N. Ireland
That's not a bad system. I see no point in changing the graphics because that is probably what it is like at default. 5400RPM is fine, also.
sidneysmut
Banned
+13|7057

Toxicseagull wrote:

never buy turbocache graphics cards. simple as. i would keep looking if i were you.
why not?
sidneysmut
Banned
+13|7057
thanks for everyone's input. anymore thoughts?
heggs
Spamalamadingdong
+581|6854|New York
turbocache means that the video card is running off of the system memory (partly, if not all of it). it doesn't have a full set of it's own memory, which could be a problem if you're running low on resources.
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