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Hey all, im looking for a laptop, which will mostly be used for Illustrator and Photoshop work, but the option for a good graphics card is also something i would be very keen on. Was looking at some Sony VAIO ones but i remember seeing some reviews that didnt turn out to be very good. Fujitsu-Siemens and Acer seem to have some good laptops, but ive never heard of Acer so im worried about their reputation. Not looking to spend over £900, im very open to any cheap shops and good deals, been looking on shoplaptop uk but prices dont seem to be any better than anywhere else. Any help appreciated, thanks (oh and from what ive seen Vaio usually surpass every other make on battery life, so that could be handy although its not totally necessary)

One im interested in : (however its only 1.8ghz, but ive seen others with 3.2ghz so does it being a Turion make up for this, and if so, why? , i know AMD usually dont rely on ghz to measure the speed, im running 3500+ atm and it clocks in at around 2.2 ghz but with very little difference to a pentium 4 with 3 ghz.)

Acer Aspire 5024WLMI

AMD Turion ML34 1.8Ghz Processor
1024MB RAM
100GB Hard Drive
DVD Dual Layer Multi Drive
15.4” WXGA CrystalBrite TFT display
ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128MB
10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet & 802.11g Wireless
6-in-1 card reader
1 Year Collect & Return Warranty (Including International Travellers Warranty)
Microsoft Windows XP Home

price = £879

Acer or Dell are good choices tho might be a bit more expensive imo. Got a Dell myself and it have been working fine the last 3years. All in my class got laptops and Acer and Dell have been the ones with less breakdowns even when there are more of them. Tho had some probs with Dells that used nvidea graph cards. But think they had ATI specified motherboards.

Although Acer is one of the top 3 manufacturers in the world... their build quality sucks and they are under contract to other manufacurers to build machines for them yet remain unable to build top specs as their contractual agreements mean that they cannot use the top speed/spec options as they will be better than what they build under contract for others.

Their repair operation leaves a lot to be desired. (or it used to) and typically their "next day service".... isnt what it says on the tin. I should know... I used to run their European Advance Exchange until they took it back in house.

Stick with Dell IMO.

I'm very happy with the Dell Inspiron which I bought last year, it's fast as hell & I havn't found any game yet which won't play on it. Not had any proplems with it yet at all.
The only things I don't like about it are:-
- the battery runs out after 1 hours gaming
- there isn't an attachment yet to enable you to run it from the car-lighter (they told me it would use too much power )
- it's very thick & heavy compared to any other laptops I've seen recently
- if you used it on your lap (it's called a laptop after all =/) you'd get severe blisters after about 2 minutes.

I guess most of that is model-specific tho & not generally applicable to Dell laptops.

OohhoO wrote: - there isn't an attachment yet to enable you to run it from the car-lighter (they told me it would use too much power )

There is a company making power supplies (marketed as juice or juiced) for lappies upto 90 watts. If 90 watts its not enough (i think it might be tho) it will run anyway just not full powah.

You can get adapters that convert lighter connectors in cars to mains adapter also which lets you use high powered laptops.

If you want to play games in car then get a high spec carputer anyhow

Takitothemacs wrote:Although Acer is one of the top 3 manufacturers in the world... their build quality sucks and they are under contract to other manufacurers to build machines for them yet remain unable to build top specs as their contractual agreements mean that they cannot use the top speed/spec options as they will be better than what they build under contract for others.

Their repair operation leaves a lot to be desired. (or it used to) and typically their "next day service".... isnt what it says on the tin. I should know... I used to run their European Advance Exchange until they took it back in house.

Stick with Dell IMO.

thanks very much for that info - started looking into other brands becuase to get a nice dell its going to cost more than i thought. i.e HP, Fujitsu-Siemens are other brands i might be interested in , but im very wary about buying without fully knowing what they are like and that its going to last 3 or so years.

Yes, Acer really sucks when you have a problem with it, repair times are insane.

i use this company quite a lot in for my pc stuff...i browsed the site and saw this
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/NBrange.html?NTE
check the site the 1 i was thinking of is the 1 at the bottom right of the page..the 2 gig version
blu

Acer truely suck Pikeh, I know from experince I work in the B2B IT market...
Dell offer an even worse after service unless ur a Coperate Customer and spend 10mill a year or summit..

Top Laptops(imo)

Tosh
Sony
HP
Acer
Fuji
IBM

But u will find that you will only get spec 4 ur money on the acers afraid Dell only offer a 90 day warr with all there goods now unless u purchase the upgrade warr.... To be honest it will be fairly hard to find one with a decent gfx card in under £900

try http://www.pcwb.com also there's some nice offers on there from time to time and might give u an idea on who I work 4 :>

Nice spec laptop....http://www.pcwb.com/servlets/Catalogue? ... shop=PCWBD

Pikey

could always push the boat out and get an alienware!