Recommend me a £1000 laptop for business.

[Fraz]

Hi All,

I'm a bit out of touch on the PC laptop scene, as I've got a Macbook Pro for laptop these days. Anyway, my brother has just won a £8000 business prize, of which max £1000 can be spent on any single item... so he wants a new business laptop. I'm presuming that gaming performance is really not a priority, however, he does run a business that makes a lot of 2D/3D media. I would have thought that reasonably fast CPU, good battery life, and plenty of disk space are priorities.

Many thanks!

edit: Oh, and I should add, it's going to have XP Pro as the OS.

[staffsMike]

Get a very highly specced dell Vostro 1500 for that sort of money.

How big would the laptop need to be?

[Fraz]

Originally Posted by staffsMike

Get a very highly specced dell Vostro 1500 for that sort of money.

How big would the laptop need to be?

Thanks - he's currently looking at some insanely heavy 17" 4kg affair from HiGrade... I think a 15" would be a bit more sensible. Just looking through the vostro configuration pages now...

[staffsMike]

Theres also the vostro 1700 if he wants 17"

I've got the xps M1330 myself. Fantastic little laptop if he wanted something nice and portable.

[Fraz]

Cool - will take a butchers at it.

What's its casing made from btw? Is it alloy or plastic?

[usxhe190]

hmm...best thing about business laptops is the case (need alloy) and weight...but then need 3d...hard discussions I think...maybe you can have a look at the HP business series...

i would have recommended a vostro but they are pretty heavy to carry around all the time (especially if it is 17inches)

[staffsMike]

magnesium alloy I believe.

I have so many bad business laptops from HP in the last year or so at work i've given up on them

[Fraz]

I should mention that he's only going to be displaying 3d media on this, not making it, so I don't think the 3d performance is too much of an issue. He's not on the technical side of things, but more a salesman.

[usxhe190]

T61?

[DR]

Dell M1330 /w Biometric, 160GB HDD, 2Ghz Core2Duo, NVIDIA Graphics, LED Screen, and 2GB Ram /w extended battery... under 900!

Great quality, screen, security and battery life

[Fraz]

Thanks guys - that'll do for now. I've passed all your recommendations on

[fuddam]

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[this_is_gav]

Originally Posted by Fraz

Thanks - he's currently looking at some insanely heavy 17" 4kg affair from HiGrade...

Or lord don't. It will lead to him harming himself, and probably others too.

I've set up a 17" Vostro (for someone else) and loved it. It's just a desktop PC in a case. It even has a numberpad. The 15" is good too if you need to keep things a touch more sensible, but you're limiting yourself massively with the desktop area, which I guess would be rather a hindrance given his work?

I was so impressed with the 17" I'm trying to persuade the boss that I need one.

None of the Vostros are light though, but then I don't think any laptop with decent performance will be, certainly not within the budget.

[charleski]

Laptops get heavy when you add multiple HDs and SLI graphics, but there's no reason you can't have power comparable to a mid-range desktop in a laptop that doesn't weigh a ton. The Vostro's are heavy because that's the tradeoff for the low price.

[DR]

Or a Vaio TZ22