Recommend a new laptop?

[george1979]

Hi Hexites,

Well I'm finally getting round to looking for a laptop (windows only) for the start of Uni and was hoping to use your not inconsiderable knowledge in such matters

I'd say my maximum budget would be around £700.

I'm looking for something that is fairly portable, decent screen and enough processing grunt to run applications like photoshop and premiere pro on the occasions where I can't use my desktop.
If I can find one that has dedicated graphics to allow some light gaming then that would be a nice bonus but its not a deal breaker if it doesn't have it.

Oh and decent battery life. I realise waiting for Haswell laptops would be advisable but god knows when we will see more Haswell options available. So far I've only seen the custom builders like Scan etc use them.

So far my eye has been caught by this:

http://www.johnlewis.com/samsung-np7...afcid=af_78888

Seems like a great deal - 1080p IPS touchscreen, 6Gb ram, i5 3337U and AMD 8570M graphics (not great for gaming but better than nothing). Not to mention the nice metal chassis and 2 year warranty and free phone.

My only issue with this is the 128Gb SSD which would mean having to take an external drive everywhere just in case. But for the money I suppose its not a big deal.

Now I'm wondering if you guys have any better recommendations or have seen any good deals I've missed?

Thanks

[preed]

I was in the same boat mate years ago, studied Digital Media, the only thing I can advise is looking at second hand laptops rather than getting a brand new one. I bought a £700 Sony Vaio, I used it for 2 years at University, I could have got an amazing second hand lappy of the same specifications for around 400/500. Once I finished University I found myself wanting a proper rig again and only using the lappy for lazy in bed, lucky I managed to flog it for 400 and made some money back.

[RichieLee]

I'm in a similar predicament too. I'm done with uni, but I'm currently on a TEFL course looking to do a bit of travelling and teaching next year.
I want to bring along a portable workstation and wacom with me.

Assuming that you already have a desktop of some sort, I think the most logical route is that these aren't going to be full on replacements for powerful desktops because if you did want that I very much doubt £700 would even touch the sides when it comes to laptops that perform as well as a sorted desktop.

So my criteria would be as long as it's cheap enough to get along, but enough grunt to use the graphics intensive programs like photoshop then we're all good. I've got my eye on the Amd A8 15.6" lenovo z585. It comes in at £380, 1tb hdd, 8gb RAM and the A8 processor, which is a 'quad' core and has better graphical grunt than the intel HD4000 stuff so the odd game at low-mid settings would be possible.

Sure, an intel with dedicated graphics would be much better but I think for the price you can't beat the lenovo.

I cant really say what's best for you, I'm not the most clued up on these things, but if it were me I'd rather spend £380 on a laptop and (if you dont have a desktop) probably save up the rest and a bit more and build a mid range small form factor desktop that would kill any 'gaming' laptop. I baulk when I see these high performance laptops go for around £1000-£2000+ when a £500-600 desktop could match and probably trounce them.

[george1979]

Thanks guys. Yeah the Sammy I posted is out of stock now so I won't be getting that one.
Looking at some lower priced Dell ones now but the main stumbling block for me is the lower res/quality screens.

Gonna wait till September now for more Haswell options as I'm not in desperate need. I may just spend less on the laptop and put the money into upgrading the CPU and mobo in my desktop. I agree that I'm probably more likely to wait and do serious work on that so perhaps the extra power and expense would be wasted.