Laptop in UK

[Abramovic]

Need laptop for uni/poker. Looking to spend ~£400. Ive done a fair bit of reading (inc. most of the recent laptop threads), but it's just made me more confused.

What make? (brands like asus appear to provide the best specification for money, but reading other threads here suggest that build quality is poor)

Do I want Vista/XP? (Ive read that vista requires 2GB ram, and doesnt work that well with poker software anyway?)

1GB Ram minimum?

What processor?

Other considerations such as weight?

Where should I buy it? (direct from company eg. dell, from online retailer, from high street retailer, ebay etc? - remember UK)


Thanks!

[Josem]

many people on here value being able to fit 4 standard sized poker tables on a screen. to do this, you need to have a monitor with a 1600x1200 resolution of greater.


realistically, for your price range, you'll only get one like that from dell, and it will be a 17" 1920x1200 screen.

poker is not a particularly demanding application, and you should be right minimising the other stuff to save money. that said, processor speed, ram, and hard disk speed would be the attributes you'd want to maximise to speed up poker.

[Abramovic]

I am trying to choose between the Dell Inspiron 6400 and the Acer Aspire 5633WLMi.

The dell is £480, the Acer is £450.

Acer spec:

* Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz
* Memory: 1GB
* Hard Drive: 160GB
* Optical Drive: DVD-SM Super Multi
* Graphics: Intel GMA 950
* Screen: 15.4" WXGA
* Network: 802.11b/g Wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN
* Card Reader: 5 -in-1 card reader supports SD/MS/MMC/MSPRO multimedia storage cards.
* Web Cam: 1.3MP Orbicam
* Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
* Warranty: 1 Year Manufacturer Warranty



Dell Spec:

-Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core T2130 Processor (1.86GHz,533MHz,1MB L2 cache)
-Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English
-15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display
-Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Up to 256MB shared graphics memory
-1024MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x512]
-120GB (5400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
-Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software
-Dell™ Wireless 1390 802.11b/g Mini-PCI Card (for Dual-Core Processors)
-1 Year Base Warranty - Collect & Return

[ADK]

im in the same situation as you, need one for uni/poker. I have a Dell 2007FP monitor to use.. but I dont want to spend more than £400 on a laptop (but it needs to be good).

Also.. is it hard / expensive to upgrade laptops ? Like if i wanted a faster CPU upgrade after a year etc.

[ADK]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000U...1-1&seller=

what you think of that one?

[Josem]

[ QUOTE ]
Also.. is it hard / expensive to upgrade laptops ? Like if i wanted a faster CPU upgrade after a year etc

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. bloody hard... except for RAM, hard disks and the keyboard, there are virtually no other parts that are replaceable by a user.

So, you can buy more ram, get a new hard disk, or replace the keyboard, but otherwise you're (typically) stuck.