Laptop for uni - when to buy?

So, I'm going to uni around the end of September and I'll need to get a laptop sometime before then. Should I get one now, and sort out any niggles with it before going, or should I wait for Centrino2 or Puma to filter through? I'm looking at Dell mostly so how long do they usually take to build and ship laptops?

On another note does anyone know how much of an impact discreet graphics cards have on battery life? Some gaming capability would be nice but not if it knocks an hour off the battery life even in 2D mode.:) Is there any difference between ATI/Nvidia cards in this respect?

Thanks. :)

I don't know how fast Dell implements laptop technology but last time I checked they were still using the, lacklustre at launch, 650i motherboards on their desktop systems; that tech is nearly 2 years old!

Do you have to buy from Dell? Because if I were you I would hold out for another month to see if they sell Centrino 2/Puma and if they don't then buy one from another manufacturer. I really like the idea of the detachable GPU on the Puma systems :D should save a lot of battery on the go. If nVidia's hybrid power is available on laptops then that would help a lot too.

Well i have the dell xps M1330 with 2.2GHz C2D and nvidia 8400gs with the less power consuming LED screen. My mum has the 1.6Ghz C2D, integrated with the CCFl screen (still M1330).

With a 9 cell battery in 2D I will get about 4 hours with reasonable brightness on wifi etc.. she can get about 7!!

So it can make a lot of difference.

I would always go with dell due to the reasonably high quality, the great customer service and about the fairest pricing you can get on laptops with decent specs in the UK.

As for PUMA.. there are next to no PUMA laptops in the UK except for one HP tablet as of yet and afaik.

Centrino 2 will no doubt get implemented towards the end of the summer. During one of the slowest periods in laptop production due to the screen shortage last summer mine took about a month I think, perhaps a little more. But my mums came after about 8 days which is fairly typical for dell :)

If I had the cash, I properly get an Apple Mac Book. The battery last longer than any others I have seen. By Sept, Apple should bring out new MB...fingers crossed. As I'm waiting for one too.

Dude, save yourself money, effort and heartache, buy an Asus Eee-PC-901*. A normal laptop will get old quickly and isn't worth lugging around, and mines a lightweight 15'4 inch widescreen with good battery life. A little one Micro laptop is just a million times easier and as soon as I can afford it after my PC, i'll be getting one.

Laptops never work as good as you really want them too for Uni, too many of us found that out last year the hard way, and most of the time you'll be using Paper and Pencil anyway cause laptops are just not fast enough. If you get an Asus Eee-PC get a 2.5" enclosure for a tenner and steal an old 2.5" IDE drive from pretty much anyone for extra storage if you need it. If you want to draw diagrams on it, get a little USB A5 tablet for next to nothing, it'll all fit in a little bag and save you arsing about alot.

Trust someone whos suffered and seen the alternative.

*http://www.kikatek.com/product_info....ducts_id=77862 < Absolute beauty :-)

seriously, try and wait as long as u can until u need it, lol wait until october. cause it will be the same ole case, u buy one, and then they bring out another after 2 weeks and ur one would of become cheaper etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by richieuk

Dude, save yourself money, effort and heartache, buy an Asus Eee-PC-901*. A normal laptop will get old quickly and isn't worth lugging around, and mines a lightweight 15'4 inch widescreen with good battery life. A little one Micro laptop is just a million times easier and as soon as I can afford it after my PC, i'll be getting one.

Laptops never work as good as you really want them too for Uni, too many of us found that out last year the hard way, and most of the time you'll be using Paper and Pencil anyway cause laptops are just not fast enough.

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Thing is, I won't have a desktop at uni so the laptop needs to facilitate all my pc needs and I just don't see the Eee doing that, especially where typing is concerned.

I never considered using the laptop to take all my notes, I'll be doing physics and there's no way I could take laptop notes for that even with a graphics tablet. :P However, I do want it to be comfortable to type on for writing stuff up, general use, and I wouldn't mind the option of a few oldish games now and then.:rolleyes:

From what StaffsMike said about the battery life, the gaming bit may have to go unless Centrino 2/Puma significantly improves this. What are modern integrated graphics like for fairly old games?...I'm thinking Star Wars: Battlefront or Half Life 2 at low resolutions or is that over optimistic?

My main worry is that if I do wait for Centrino 2/Puma there will be a mad rush when they finally do become available and I wont get it in time. I will then be at uni with no computer.:surprised::crazy::surrender:

Half life 2 and CSS can run quite happily on integrated. Puma doesn't do a great job with battery life from what I've seen so far. Better than dedicated but worse than most other integrated solutions.

will you actually be using it on the move much?

when I was at uni people with laptops spent their time on msn messenger didn't see many taking notes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cougarslam

when I was at uni people with laptops spent their time on msn messenger didn't see many taking notes.

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QFT

I always had a laptop with me while living at uniersity but never took it to class. Had a bulky 15" that sat in my room. Only in my last year did I go more portable with the xps M1330 because I needed it for travelling a lot more.

I'm not planning on taking notes with it, but I would like to carry it around fairly comfortably and type things up outside for instance.

From the posts so far I guess I could wait a bit longer and see if Centrino 2 gets a move on. I don't really want to sacrifice processing power and get Puma unless there's a good reason to do so. Is there anything significant in Centrino 2 that I really should wait for? And if I decide to go down the discreet graphics route is there still reason to avoid Nvidia or have they fixed that midrange fiasco?:rolleyes:

New nvidia cards will be the 9000 series and so nothing to worry about :) ATi cards are good too.

What sort of budget do you have? Although I'd hate to have another one due to them being a pig to upgrade and next to non existant customer service the new sony vaio SR or Z could be right up your street.

The Z has a beautiful 13.1" screen with a 1600 x 900 resolution. Centrino 2 and switchable graphics bewtween a nvidia 9300gs (like the 8400gs but cooler running) and integrated for power saving.

SR is much the same with a 13.3" 1280 x 800 screen and an ATi HD3450 gfx card still switchable with integrated and a fair bit cheaper than the Z.

They are built really well and tend to last the test of time. It's just if things go wrong like HDD faliure outside of warranty (like my old one has) because you literally have to take them to pieces to change it (unless they have had a change of heart).

Budget is flexible...I was planning around £500 but if less then great, if it's worth paying a couple of hundred more then so be it. I really don't like paying for brand names though so whatever I get it'll have to be reasonably priced for the specs. :)

Oh ignore the sony's then :laugh: ..value for money they are not.

The dell studio 15 is very nice. Some lovely options on it like the 1440 x 900 WLED screen :) In august you will probably start to find very nice back to school deals on them :)

I'm planning on an Acer Aspire One (1GB RAM version) combined with full keyboard and monitor for at home, and on its own for travel.

I did consider getting a cheap laptop to be portable and a desktop for main use but I think that would stretch my budget a little far atm, especially including monitor etc. I might get myself a desktop next summer when nehalem has arrived...:drool:

Is there a huge difference in how portable a 15.4" Studio or a 13.3" Vostro or XPS would be?

3Kg (typical for 15") isn't bad to lug around but if it's all day then it does become a burden. I don't notice the xps at all :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

Half life 2 and CSS can run quite happily on integrated. Puma doesn't do a great job with battery life from what I've seen so far. Better than dedicated but worse than most other integrated solutions.

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please show my how, i got Intel GMA x3100 on mine, i cant get it to pork, a Pr600 from MSI with 2 gb of ram :P

On the lowest of the low settings I've seen it working.. looked ugly as hell though.

PUMA laptops should be getting an external graphics solution but news of it seems to have gone a bit cold.

haha man you dont even want to imagine the load-times either haha. CS-Original is only 20fps. COD2 is like 10... its horrific man, scary bad.

If you want gaming, you need a little bit of onboard graphics, The ATI 3450 is on laptops atm and that would be great on these games were talking about.

My laptop even hates settlers FFS... :(

The asus eee arent bad for typing on actually, takes a little getting used to, but i mean with the &#163;500 you got, you could put &#163;200 toward a desktop and build it yourself, using a couple of hundred from your loans too you could have a nice budget PC there (night need to scavenge a monitor but thats easily done)

Qty Link No. Description Ex VAT Inc VAT
LN15073

Gigabyte GA M57SLI-S4 NF570 SLI, S AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 400/533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX &#163;38.79 &#163;45.58
LN8233

Scan 2013 Black Silver ATX Midi Tower Case 400W pFC PSU &#163;22.49 &#163;26.43
LN23630

AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5000+ AM2 , Brisbane Core, Dual Core 2600GHz, Retail &#163;34.99 &#163;41.11
LN12200

2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 &#163;24.78 &#163;29.12
LN20493

LG GSA-H55LBL 20x DVD&#177;R, 16xDVD&#177;DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, PATA,Lightscribe, Black, OEM &#163;14.16 &#163;16.64
LN23286

400GB Hitachi HDT725040VLA360 Deskstar T7K500, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ &#163;30.09 &#163;35.36
LN21876

19" Hanns-G HW191DP Silver/Black Widescreen LCD, 1440x900, 700:1, 300 cd/m&#178;, 5 ms, Speakers, VESA &#163;84.49 &#163;99.28
LN10713

Colours IT UN-9800 3 in 1 Office Desk Manager 2 + Speakers Wired Keyboard, PS2, 400dpi Optical Mouse &#163;9.99 &#163;11.74
LN16395

AKASA AK-860SF AMD S754/939/AM2, Low Noise Aluminium Heatsink with AM2 retention clips and 92mm fan &#163;3.98 &#163;4.68
LN17168

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic SP1* 64Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) &#163;45.89 &#163;53.92
LN20310

256MB HiS HD2600 PRO IceQ Turbo, PCI-E (x16), 1400MHz GDDR3, 700MHz GPU, 120 Cores, 2xDLDVI/ HDTV &#163;34.00 &#163;39.95


&#163;400 build including a &#163;100 monitor, if you didnt need it and got a cheaper one, then your sorted. If youwere interested that is. Also, i'm sure staffs mike could make that alot better :)

I would go for the laptop lol

But If I were to do a build,

Antec NSK3480 + 380W earthwatts ~&#163;55
2GB PC6400 ~&#163;30
Asus M2A-VM ~&#163;35
AMD X2 ~&#163;50
320GB Western Digital AAKS ~&#163;35
Optical ~&#163;15
8800GT ~&#163;90
19 - 20" montor ~&#163;100

Thats &#163;400, but no OS or keyboard etc..

Thanks for the ideas, but if I go for a desktop I'll do it properly when nehalem arrives I think.:)

It sounds as though if I want any gaming performance I will have to sacrifice battery life for a discreet card. At the moment I'm wavering between a Studio and a smaller Vostro but I think I'll wait a couple of weeks to see what crops up. Mid-August should be a safe enough time to buy shouldn't it - even with a lot of demand it shouldn't take more than 6 weeks or so to be delivered?

Just a thought, are refurbished laptops like these worth buying or not?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lanky123

Just a thought, are refurbished laptops like these worth buying or not?

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You do get some good deals from MCS but of course you will be getting old stock all the way past september so no nice new CPU's.

Note that prices are all ex VAT and del as well :)

For your budget, i'd personally go for

DLV030 Vostro 1500 Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2.0GHz 2048 160 DVD-RW 15.4" WXGA 256mb GeForce 8600M GT Vista Home 1 &#163;420.00 with 3 years on site dell warranty.

Yeah definatley, its within budget and would do everything you need it to :)

Bump. I had decided to wait a bit and see what happens with back to school deals etc. However, I had another look at the 13.3" Vostro and the 15.4" Studio and I was wondering if the current deals are likely to get any better - there's about £50 off each atm (and I just don't like waiting :mrgreen:).

For similar prices I could get either but the main difference would be an 8400gs vs hd3450. Anyone know if either is significantly better or significantly more power efficient? Also, I'm still a little worried about the Nvidia 8 series midrange parts failing - is this still the case?:undecided

The battery in the Studio can be upgraded to the 9-cell one for free. Is this worth it - can it still fit in laptop cases and be carried around easily with the 3cm sticking out or whatever it is? Also, from experience is this deal likely to stick around for very long?

Sorry for the longish post, any answers much appreciated.:)

At this time of the year you get a new deal each month pretty much. You win some/lose some on which deal you get when you are ready to buy.

It generally amounts to the same money off in the end though. You say you get a free 9 cell which is about &#163;100 upgrade usually so next month it would be 6 Cell with &#163;100 off etc..

So do you not think there would be much to gain in waiting a couple of weeks? I won't hold it against you if they knock £200 off the day after I buy.;)

If the 9-cell really doesn't cause a problem as far as aesthitics/fitting laptop case goes (?) then I may just buy now.:) I've had a google and there are conflicting reports regarding the relative performance of the 8400gs and the hd3450. Any help here would be great but if you don't know I'll probably just err on the side of caution and steer clear of the 8400gs.

Well since I actually have 8400gs I can tell you I have had no problems thus far but i do always use my notebook cooler so that might be why lol

I'd probably do with the studio tbh. Although the form factor of the 1310 is more appealing the studio seems to be the best package with it's HDMI out etc.. which coupled to a blu ray drive will give you a nice little HD setup later :)

Ok, I may just take the plunge tomorrow then.:) (well, later today, whatever)

Thanks for your help, loads of informative posts as always.:bowdown: