Purchasing a new laptop - thoughts please! :)

[Kirano]

Hello Hexus!

So, I've decided it's about time to retire my 7 year old Laptop. I have fond memories of it. I played the entirity of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Halo, Tomb Raider etc on that laptop. Sadly though, it just doesn't quite meet my needs anymore and, having some spare cash, I've decided to invest in my mobile future.

To begin, here is a Dell XPS laptop I found (link below, also specs for quick reference)

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-l502x-p...l502x-proc-mod

Specs....
2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5-2450M processor (2.50 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.10 GHz)
English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
15.6"(40 cm) HD WLED TL (1366x768) 720p with 2.0 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M Graphics Card
8x DVD+/-RW, & Blu-ray Disc™ combo drive (reads Blu-ray Disc™ & writes to CD/DVD
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 (EUR)
McAfee® SecurityCenter 3 Year Subscription
6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion battery
1 yr Next Day In-Home Hardware Support

Price for the base Spec is £590.99 (down from £932.99)

My first question is, for the price is it worth it? Is it a good buy? I think there are some optional extras in the bundle link Adobe Photoshop Elements. What is this by the way? What might I ever need it for?

My second question is; will it suit my needs? Is this Spec insuficient or is it a bit overkill? I'm looking for an office/work laptop that has a screen suitable for work directly from but that I can also comfortably plug into one (maybe two) external monitors. I'll predominantly be using it for browsing the web, reading lots of pdfs (preferrably multiple documents/pdfs open at a time.) Maybe some data processing (I suspect nothing more advanced than things I can do in Excel or similar programs, though it could become computationally demanding!) Graphics wise; I don't intend to use it as a gaming machine. If I do, I probably shouldn't be so it doesn't matter if the graphics are no good! At any rate, I suspect I'd only use it to play older games (Fable, one of the early Civ's, nothing from within the last 3-4 years!) I wil probably use it watch films (maybe watch them on an attached larger screen) and maybe use it to play back captures of 3D Simulations/Models I have developed on my desktop (my PhD is mainly computationally based)

My third questions; are any of the upgrades worth while? For instance, will 4Gb of RAM be enough, or should I consider 6Gb? The hard drive will absolutely be fine, I'll struggle to get anywhere close to half filling it I'm sure. What about the processor though? In the customize section, for an additional £40, it says I could go up to a 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM processor (2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.10 GHz). Would this be worth the extra money? (Note that, really, my uppermost budget on the Laptop itself woutl be £650!)

My fourth and final question; can I get a better deal elsewhere?

Also perhaps, are Dell any good?

If you want any further details just let me know!

Looking forward to hearing from you all!

Kirano

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

For the sort of work you are doing,even an older dual core with enough RAM and an IGP which can decode video will be enough.

Any modern laptop within the last three years will be significantly faster than a 7 year one for such tasks.

These laptops look very good for the price:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ASUS-X53TK...item3f189f7298

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...mtid=824&kw=lg

Both use Euro keyboards and require a copy of Windows. OTH,you probably have MSDNAA access I suspect.

They have an HD7670M which is rated higher than the GT540M. Also,AFAIK the AMD IGP can be run in Crossfire with the HD7670M giving more performance in newer titles.

They have a quad core CPU running at between 1.5GHZ to 2.4GHZ,which means it will be fine for general usage and multi-tasking.

I knew someone who had the older mobile Phenom II triple core in their laptop, and it was more than speedy enough for general usage and their PhD related work.

[Kirano]

Thanks for the links Cat. (I don't think I ever thanked you for the advice you gave me on my new desktop build sometime ago - the core i5 2500K worked out great as did the mobo!) The 17'' one looks particularly interesting

The euro keyboard doesn't bother me too much (a quick google search suggests theres not a massive difference from uk ones, right?) but the lack of Windows 7 could be a problem. As far as I can tell, I can't access a copy of Windows 7 through my University via MSDNAA - which is now Dreamscape I believe? I signed up and it verified my student status but a download of Windows 7 was no where to be found!

As I assume I would have to buy a full retail version (an upgrade version wouldn't work on a clean install, right?) that's going to add another £124.99 to the cost (for Home Premium, Pro comes in at £219.99) . It's pricey but I was going to spend that much on a laptop anyway, but I just wonder if I would then still be getting a good deal on this...

Edit: Quick check on Amazon reveals copies of Pro (which would probably be useful for the compatibility modes) at £150, so not that huge an extra expense...

[Kirano]

So last night I decided to 'man-up' and just buy the laptop - the number available dropping from 'over 10' to '6' in half an hour helped in that regard.
Asked with the computer people in my Department and they definitely don't have editions of Windows 7 freely available in the department - the ones that they can get at a reduced price come with institutional licenses that have to talk to central university licensing server apparently! Thusly, I went for a copy through Amazon (seemed to be the cheapest place for it) and went Ultimate - same price as pro and some of the extra features could be useful!

Thanks again for your help!

[Hicks12]

Kirano, your a student at a university that is signed up to MSDNAA? What course? I know for me at uni we only have access to MSDNAA if we are part of the computing side and i can assure you Win7 (even win8) is on there, basically everything apart from MS Office is available .

I ordered that 17" when it popped up for my dad, cant comment on the speed of the system but it truely did feel like a laptop of the high end, very solid and lovely textures/design solid throughout, unfortunately mine arrived with a massive cracked screen, so waiting a replacement (they collected next day and new one should be with me friday). Really did seem like a bargain though and it may actually have 2 year warranty as it say on the packaging .

EDIT: Right i finally found the link, go here : https://www.dreamspark.com/Instituti...scription.aspx and top right theres a search thing (just below "Is Your School Enrolled?") search for your uni and it will give you a link, then you should login using your University login and should have access to it all, that is if your uni is paying for the premium option which gives higher software to computing/science. Suggest you check there before and if you're on it then simply return the win7 to amazon (dont open it ).

[Kirano]

Hey Hicks!

So, I have been to that site previously and registered on it (that happened with Raven, the university's access/verification thingy) but I couldn't find Windows 7 on the store page...

However, searching for my institution in the place you indicated suggests that my department (Engineering) is registered on DreamSpark Premium and I'm then taken to a page where Windows 7 Pro is listed. That's as far as I get however! When I attempt to purchase anything it tells me to log on, my university id and password does not work, the user name and password I setup on the part of the site I'd been to previously doesn't work and whenever I try to register it tells me that "An account has been created for you by an administrator. You must complete the registration of your account by providing the account identifier given to you by the administrator." which is just a lie! :S

Now, this may be because I am attempting to access this site external from my department at the moment. If I get the chance I'll go into today and check it out. However, I had been told previously that the Department doesn't have access to Windows 7 through MSDNAA and the only copies of Windows they can get have to go through (and be in continuous contact with) the internal licensing servers, which would be no good for me!

There's no harm in me continuing to try however, at the least because I had no intention of trying to set up the new laptop until the weekend anyway but also because a free copy of windows is a free copy of windows!

Thank you for your advice Hicks - I hope I can get it to work somehow. I'm sorry to hear about the problems you had with your own order! I hope you do get your replacement by friday. Having searched around more online, it did look like a pretty good laptop for the price.

[Kirano]

So, I'm currently sat in my office and have had no further luck with this whole DreamSpark/MSDNAA thing! While it says that my University and Department are registered, I don't see any real evidence of that. There is nothing on my departments website, my divisions computer administrator knows nothing about it and a search of the external and internal university pages only suggests that limited downloads are available for the Clinical School of Medicine and full downloads are available for the Computing Lab (but strictly no other Departments or Faculties!) More importantly, every attempt by me to log in or obtain a log in, have failed!

I've tried sending a message through the contact page on the DreamSpark website to enqurie as to how I'm supposed to get a Username, which. had. Username. as. a. MANDATORY. field.
...
....
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I sent one anyway (with the Username as N/A) but frankly, I don't have much hope for it!

It looks like I'll be spending most of the weekend now helping my gf finish her first year report so won't have anytime to play around with the new laptop (other than check the screen hasn't been cracked!) so maybe I'll find something out in the interim!

Again though, thank you for taking the time to offer my some advice Hicks! You too Cat! I'll post with how I get on with the new laptop soon....

[Hicks12]

Im sorry you havent been able to get any success with it , what are you studying?.

Must admit the guys at my uni didnt even know about it... i was the one who pointed it out to the stage tutor and the it dept . MIght be setup differently at other uni but i simply stumbled upon msdnaa and put my uni in and got a link that brought up a login screen like my uni and logged in with the same login np .

[peterb]

As the last post was over six months ago - it is likely that the issue has been resolved.