Right guys, I'm thinking of getting a new laptop, mainly for web browsing but it would be a plus if I can run some of the adobe suite on it. Gaming's not a priority. I'm basically looking for decent battery life and something that doesn't weigh a ton. Probably looking to spend around £500-700. Any suggestions?
I still am in love with my Hewlett Packard DV1z there is no more efficient method for basic web browsing. With updated drivers it can handle all but a few Netflix high def videos (we're talking MKV/ AVI 1080p, Youtube, most Silverlight media, and certainly DVDs) and never gets hot at all really. We're talking 3+ hour battery life in the TOUGHEST conditions. I just finished the three initial Prince of Persia Sands of Time games on it without a problem. Perfect for long flights... though honestly the screen is a little bit small... If games were a priority I'd go Lano, but since it's not save a bit of money and find a deal on an HP DV1z.... unfortunately the deals are pretty crappy out there in unamericaland but... It's still likely your best choice! Mine is still pristene after 6 months! At it's bargain basement price that's all one can ask for really!
This is in your price range. Not sure where you buy computers in Britain though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146848 Lenovo ideapad Y560: Core i7 740QM, 4GB DDR3, Radeon 5730
I have one of those. Mine has SSD/Rapid Drive to speed things up. It's pretty nice. I use it every day during the week for work. It can also do some gaming. I think the Y560 should cover everything you need. The only downside I've seen from buying one is that it's a battery hog, but I tend to keep them plugged into the nearest outlet anyway. So no worries for me in that regard.
The Lenova think pad is a bit more heavy duty and is usually similarly priced. It typically has a faster hard drive, spill proof keyboard, and hard drive airbag or what ever they call it. Basically it locks the hard drive when it feels a free fall. I could be wrong but I think it also comes with a matte screen and the ideapads come with gloss.
White? All them that I have seen have been in black. Mine looks like this: The battery life of course depends greatly on what you're doing with it. I typically use the least compromising settings, and so I would typically get maybe a couple of hours of battery life at most if I didn't plut the thing in. Activities like gaming really chew up the power as you would expect. I'd keep it plugged in for that type of use. If you altered the power consumption settings to a more conservative setting and were just doing web browsing, I'd imagine you get more battery life than what I do. I also have Blu-ray drive for movies and an i7 that gets a similar WEI score as my desktop CPU. Those things gobble up extra battery juice, but that isn't a problem for my style of use. I really haven't tried using sensible energy consumption settings because I use it in an office plugged in or for very brief periods at remote sites (like at a school to use a program to score a test, which usually only takes a few minutes).
You can do what I did. Get a netbook and an external DVD drive. That will probably give you your best battery life.
I'd rather not have to lug about an extra bit of equipment. I remember back in the day when my laptop had a swappable floppy/CD drive. The amount of times I'd leave it behind when I needed to use a floppy have bitten me hard. A couple of hours at reasonable performance levels sounds ok, I can always dial back when i'm web browsing.
Thinkpads are excellent notebooks, but the really good ones (the T-series) would be out of your price range or nearly out of your price range. The specs would also be worse. You'd probably get an i5 and integrated video or maybe a low end nvidia card. They're primarily meant for business people who do a lot of traveling and need something sturdy that can take a beating on a daily basis. The Ideapad is probably better suited to your needs, especially if this is going to be your primary computer. With an i7 and a 5730, I don't think you'll be disappointed with the performance. You could even play games if you wanted.
your image is rather scewed in today's world though, nobody uses floppy's any more, media in particular is goin the way of the dodo. I'd just rough it and see if I was you >.< you might rather like saving the 5 watts of battery juice when your just surfin with no need for an optical drive. I mean even for your desktop! how often do you use an optical drive nowadays. For me the answer is maybe a few times a week... and that's my desktop! for my laptop it's like once a month. OFC I live in America where streaming and cloud (steam) services are prevalent. In the end it is up to you... Regardless, you should buy a case. I always suggest a case for any mobile device! Also a driveless laptop will way at least a pound less than one with a drive built in.
Yeah that was what I was getting at. The external drive is just for the few times you need it. We're getting to the point of not even needing them anymore. Mine is still in the box. Haven't even used it yet.
i bought an external drive for mine since for some reason this alienware has no recovery partition data. the partition is there but no recovery img. it's a refurb so it prob got wiped somehow. dell gave me a recovery disc so i'll need it if something goes wrong in the future. haven't needed it since i got it.
I bought mine for a vacation (netflix dvds) that's about the only use it got in the half a year since lol.
This won't be my primary computer but will probably see the most use as I'm loafing about the house. I haven't kept up to date with the tech so I wanted to see what to look for. All I've been seeing so far at i3/5/7 thingies. What are the graphics cards like? I see geforce (insert random number) ABQX or something or other
i3 = dual core with hyperthreading (4 threads) i5 = quad core without hyperthreading or faster dual core with hyperthreading (4 threads) i7 = quad core with hyperthreading (8 threads) Basically i3 is low end, i5 is midrange, and i7 is high end. For graphics: Geforce = nvidia Radeon = ATI (now owned by AMD) Intel = total crap, avoid Try to go with a dedicated card from nvidia or AMD/ATI. If you think you might ever play games on this laptop, you'll be regretting going with intel integrated video later. Also, if you plan to hang onto the laptop for awhile, you'll regret going with intel integrated video. I still remember the whole fiasco with the intel gma 900 crippling laptops that were otherwise Vista/Win7 capable. Basically going with intel integrated video means you won't be able to play 3D games, and you may not be able to upgrade when new operating systems come out. A lot of people are stuck on XP right now because of intel integrated video.