I hope this is the right forum, this place is huge and this forum seems right. I'm looking to buy a laptop. I know next to nothing about them though, i'm fairly experienced with desktop pc's, i built my own last year and know the concepts and what's what, but when it comes to laptops i'm in unknown territory. Straight to it: my budget is £600-700 ($858 (USA), 647euros). I will be using it primarily for work (nothing too intensive, just openoffice applications really) and gaming (i know my limits, i won't be playing crysis on this thing - but HL2 would be nice to pass away the hours). After a a few days of researching laptops, and what's what, i've found a few ideas. I want at LEAST a 15 inch screen, at the very least. After that, i just want the best my money can buy. I will be installing windows xp dual booting ubuntu (for gaming and for work/general use respectively). I want the best for my money, but i'm not well up on laptops at all. I don't care how noisy it is, or how long the battery lasts, assume it will be plugged into the ac power supply at all times. I need NO software, i have all the disks for the o/s's i want. All i require is 1 ethernet, 1 usb, and one dvd-r drive (though i suppose it'd come with a lot more). the best for my money i have found so far are the following: Acer Aspire 6530G Laptop LX.AUS0X.213 - Acer Direct Acer Aspire AS6930G-744G32Mn Laptop LX.AGA0X.002 - Acer Direct Is there anything better? Also, which of those two is best? On a side note question i've a few questions about laptops in general, if you would indulge me: How easy is it to get a second harddrive? (will it fit?), or would i have to buy a new one entirely? (i've heard of PCExpress cards, i'm talking internal (if they even have HD ones?) What kind of screen is "best"? I'm using my friends laptop right now, and when i lean too far to the side the colours go all wonky - but other laptops i've used don't do this. What is that? Which is which? If i buy a laptop from a company such as dell, if i simply reformat with an XP disk is everything the same as if i just bought a brand new hard drive? (seems easier than uninstalling each type of crapware) Thank you for your time, and again - if this isn't the right forum, my apologies. -Clockwork
This reply might be helpful, or might not be My brother wanted a laptop for gaming a couple of months ago, and like you we had all the O/S disks and licences etc, so didn't want to pay for Vista. The best place that I found was PC Specialist, because they supply laptops with no operating system if you wish. His laptop has an Intel Dual Core (mid-range, not sure which), nVidia 9600GT graphics chip, and 2GB of RAM. It was about £550 at the time, so you should be able to get something within your budget that plays games well from there. Stupidly, we paid £5 for insurace which meant if the laptop broke, they would cover all costs of returning it. Then after we'd ordered I looked up where they're based (I know, we forgot to beforehand!), and it's about a 10 minute drive from our house :doh: I should point out that the laptop took longer to build and deliver than they promised, so if you're in a hurry they may not be the best choice! Thomas
