Advice required: Buying a 17" laptop ~£500

[mycarsavw]

I've been asked to help a mate buy a new laptop.

It'll be used for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and general office applications.

There are no specific requirements other than the display must be at least 17" and if it all possible, it must come with XP (or at least a downgrade option). Budget is around the £500 mark with more available for the obligatory extended warranty (+3yrs is ideal)

Contenders so far;

Toshiba P300-14s
Dell Studio 17
Compaq Presario A900
HP Pavillion dv6820ea

What would Hexus do?

Thanks in advance

[staffsMike]

Dell Studio is what I was going to recommend.

Slightly biased of course in that I hate HP and their "warranty". Had nothing but bad expereinces with them with around 20 of 40 laptops bought (for work) failing within the first couple of years.. and the average turnaround of an upgraded warranty being between 18 - 30 days because they just can't help but lose the things.

Toshiba are OK, dodgy HDD's in my experience.

Compaq is just HP afaik so same applies.

[mycarsavw]

Thanks Mike, I knew you'd recommend the Dell

I have an HP nx9105 which I've had for about 4 years. I bought a 3yr care pack and I've used the warranty on the HDD, the screen, the keyboard and the plastics. Every single time has been a farce to speak to someone who both speaks English and understands what it is I want replacing.

All the parts come from Holland, why they can't have the warranty team there as well is beyond me.

Compaq is HP, you're right.

Toshiba, looks nice, but ever since I had one of those old Toshiba laptop bricks, I've hated them. It's the one he's singled out though.

I'll see if there's more replies...

[mycarsavw]

I'll see if there's more replies...

Oh well

Mike, as you're the only one here, any particular Dell or are they all much the same?

I'm thinking of going for a base Studio 17

• Pentium Dual Core Processor 2390
• Vista SP1™ Home Premium
• 17 Widescreen WXGA+ CCFL (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
• 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
• 160GB (5400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
• IntelJ Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100

And just adding on

• 3Yr In-Home Warranty Support, including evenings and Saturdays

Comes to around £570 all in.

My old HP runs P/S and dreamweaver fine with its onboard GPU so I'm assuming the above is more than up to the job.

[staffsMike]

Yeah that will be a nice laptop

You do get a lot for your money with the vostro's though

This for example
http://configure.euro.dell.com/dells...N0717008&s=bsd

2.4GHz C2D, 2GB RAm, 250GB HDD, geforce 8400gs.

Adding true life screen, and 3 year warranty it comes to about £610 delivered.

This is the older 17" vostro, the 1700 as opposed to the 1710.

The 1710's are worth a look too. Watch out for the anti glare screen though, they are ****!

[mycarsavw]

Didn't think to look at business - especially considering there's no drill-down option for a 17" screen -doh!

How does Vista Business compare to Vista Home Premium. XP home vs XP Pro or more severe?

[staffsMike]

You gain certain features I've never used (encyption stuff i think) and lose the media centre stuff. It's not the end of the world tbh.

[Betty_Swallocks]

If you work from home then buying from Dell is fine, but if it was my money I'd buy something I could get over the counter rather than online. Home warranty is all very well if there's someone at home all the time but there's very little in this life that is as frustrating as taking a day off to wait for an engineer to turn up.
Having said that I believe that PC World is going to be stocking Dell in the near future.

[staffsMike]

Having said that I believe that PC World is going to be stocking Dell in the near future.

They do already With a premium of course..

[mycarsavw]

PC World - Dell Inspiron 1720 - £499.99

Looks to be the lowest of the base models though

[staffsMike]

Not a bad spec, it does have the 8600GT if thats important to you. It's the warranty that concerns me because I like my extended dell warranties and I can't see how you get that?

[mycarsavw]

^ that's my only worry too.

Having a PCW warranty scares the poop out of me.

[vicar]

Go Dell & get the extra warranty if you need to.