The 2010 Laptop Thread

As some of you know, my (beloved) Tecra M4 died in March after 3 years and 8 months service, so I'm window-shopping for a replacement.

My requirements are:

• 1440x900 or larger display
• Discrete GPU
• No larger than 15.6"
• No more than £1800 incl. VAT/Delivery
• 3 years warranty

I've compiled a shortlist of models from the Tier 1 OEMs. The Tier 2 offerings are all ugly as sin. Where models by default come with a 1-year warranty I've tacked on the cost of an additional 2 years' service. Here's my shortlist:

• Apple MacBook Pro 15" 2.66Ghz - £1734.31 (with student discount)
• Dell Precision M2400 - £1506.35 (£1845.93 with the 5 year warranty option)
• Lenovo ThinkPad T510 - £1458 (though the NVS3100M GPU puts me off)
• Sony Vaio Z11V5E - £1564 (500GB mechanical drive option with 1600x900 display)
• Sony Vaio Z11X5E - £1893 (128GB SSD drive option with 1920x1080 display)

The MacBook Pro is due for a refresh in a couple of weeks' time, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes. The ThinkPad seems the best overall, but the T-series aren't exactly lightweights, and its 15.6" size makes it a tight fit with my existing gear. I'm really leaning towards the Vaio Z and MacBook Pro because they're both aesthetically desirable but wary of the price premium they command.

The nice thing about Apple and Sony is that they have brick and mortar stores where I can try out the laptop first-hand before comitting. (although my local Sony Centre won't have the Vaio Z in stock for another 2 weeks). So far the only ThinkPad I like the looks of is the X300/X301, but they stopped making that model available in the UK (their website only lists the X201) and it doesn't have the best GPU either.

Can anyone recommend any other laptops that might be worth looking at?

I think this would suit your needs just perfectly:

http://www.welcometoalex.com/page/index.cfm

/runs

Get a cheap Acer or Dell for £350 and a single year warrentee (included in price). Then throw it away after a year and get another one. This will give you a brand new laptop for four years straight and you'll still spend less than any on the above list. Plus at the end of three years I bet the £350 laptop will have a comparable or better spec' than the £1500 laptop. Basically what I am saying is you're wasting money. Put your student loans into a ISA, you'll need it later.

I have an Acer Aspire 57xx which you can easily pickup for under £400 (5710 etc).

By the way did the TV work ok that you purchased from eBay/China?

I would be tempted by the 128 GB SSD. While it isn't a lot of storage, external storage is fairly fast these days and cheap. You can easily pickup a USB 3.0 1.5 Tb drive for about £150 (*a guess).

ManipUni said:

Get a cheap Acer or Dell for £350 and a single year warrentee (included in price). Then throw it away after a year and get another one. This will give you a brand new laptop for four years straight and you'll still spend less than any on the above list. Plus at the end of three years I bet the £350 laptop will have a comparable or better spec' than the £1500 laptop. Basically what I am saying is you're wasting money. Put your student loans into a ISA, you'll need it later.

 

I have an Acer Aspire 57xx which you can easily pickup for under £400 (5710 etc).

 

By the way did the TV work ok that you purchased from eBay/China?

 

I would be tempted by the 128 GB SSD. While it isn't a lot of storage, external storage is fairly fast these days and cheap. You can easily pickup a USB 3.0 1.5 Tb drive for about £150 (*a guess).

I considered that strategy, but it simply doesn't work: a £350 laptop is still going to be working after a year, possibly even three years, but it'll still have crappy specs compared to a beefier model, and that's where I'm coming from: money isn't really a problem, I'm after portable performance.

W3bbo said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

I considered that strategy, but it simply doesn't work: a £350 laptop is still going to be working after a year, possibly even three years, but it'll still have crappy specs compared to a beefier model, and that's where I'm coming from: money isn't really a problem, I'm after portable performance.

I'm loving my Dell Studio XPS, granted I paid over 2k for my spec but you can lower the spec to your budget maybe drop the SSD or not get as much RAM etc.

W3bbo said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

I considered that strategy, but it simply doesn't work: a £350 laptop is still going to be working after a year, possibly even three years, but it'll still have crappy specs compared to a beefier model, and that's where I'm coming from: money isn't really a problem, I'm after portable performance.

I use an Acer Aspire 57xx at work every day. I plug in an additional monitor and have no issues with its perforamnce. I do have the 3D shadow effect rubbish turned off but I do that on my desktop too.

W3bbo said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

I considered that strategy, but it simply doesn't work: a £350 laptop is still going to be working after a year, possibly even three years, but it'll still have crappy specs compared to a beefier model, and that's where I'm coming from: money isn't really a problem, I'm after portable performance.

The point is that nothing you can buy today will still be top notch after three years... not even close.

If memory serves, the best money could buy three years ago was a Core 2 Duo. Nowadays you can find relatively cheap models with a Core i5 or a Core i7, and the same applies to SSD's.

For what it's worth, my arbitrary rule of thumb is that a notebook will only keep its value for 18 months or so, and I shop accordingly.

Blue Ink said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

The point is that nothing you can buy today will still be top notch after three years... not even close.

If memory serves, the best money could buy three years ago was a Core 2 Duo. Nowadays you can find relatively cheap models with a Core i5 or a Core i7, and the same applies to SSD's.

For what it's worth, my arbitrary rule of thumb is that a notebook will only keep its value for 18 months or so, and I shop accordingly.

In terms of performance, yes; but over the past 5 years the screen dimensions of laptops hasn't changed one bit: they're still 1280x800, in fact it's gotten worse: more laptops are 1360x768 which has even less vertical space, which I consider essential.

Laptops with 1400+ screen size and discrete GPUs have always been considerably more expensive than those without, and hardly ever for less than £1k. Then there's the discrete GPU thing: not even Intel's latest and greatest GMA can beat a GeForce Go from even 4 years ago.

W3bbo said:

Blue Ink said:

*snip*

In terms of performance, yes; but over the past 5 years the screen dimensions of laptops hasn't changed one bit: they're still 1280x800, in fact it's gotten worse: more laptops are 1360x768 which has even less vertical space, which I consider essential.

 

Laptops with 1400+ screen size and discrete GPUs have always been considerably more expensive than those without, and hardly ever for less than £1k. Then there's the discrete GPU thing: not even Intel's latest and greatest GMA can beat a GeForce Go from even 4 years ago.

Have you considered a desktop + netbook combo? It works really well. You use the desktop for graphics rich applications, games, serious coding; and you use the netbook for giving presentations, chatting and computing on the go.

If your main OS will be windows I wouldn't go with a MBP. I have the 13" and the bootcamp drivers just aren't that great IMHO.

I can't turn off the keyboard backlight, audio was so quiet I couldn't hear it (although not tried this since the latest upgrade so it may be fixed) & the trackpads are a bit clunky.

For OSX they're brilliant, but I'm disappointed by the way it runs windows.

W3bbo said:

Blue Ink said:

*snip*

In terms of performance, yes; but over the past 5 years the screen dimensions of laptops hasn't changed one bit: they're still 1280x800, in fact it's gotten worse: more laptops are 1360x768 which has even less vertical space, which I consider essential.

 

Laptops with 1400+ screen size and discrete GPUs have always been considerably more expensive than those without, and hardly ever for less than £1k. Then there's the discrete GPU thing: not even Intel's latest and greatest GMA can beat a GeForce Go from even 4 years ago.

Unfortunately, that's true... and for no obvious reason. If screen size is important for what you do, then you don't really have the option.

Back to your original question, I would suggest you include the HP EliteBook 8440p (the VQ664ET model) in your list. Sensible design (as in "not really hot"), and with the same Quadro NVS3100M you are not a fan of, but otherwise seems to match or exceed your requirements. Considering it goes for 1010 GBP ex. VAT on the HP website, sounds like a decent alternative.

Blue Ink said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

Unfortunately, that's true... and for no obvious reason. If screen size is important for what you do, then you don't really have the option.

 

Back to your original question, I would suggest you include the HP EliteBook 8440p (the VQ664ET model) in your list. Sensible design (as in "not really hot"), and with the same Quadro NVS3100M you are not a fan of, but otherwise seems to match or exceed your requirements. Considering it goes for 1010 GBP ex. VAT on the HP website, sounds like a decent alternative.

 

eww HP... They are even worse than Gateway in the reliability and customer happiness charts. Incidently Lenovo also does very poorly on the charts.

I love Dell for throw away laptops but have seen a couple of their expensive models and frankly they remind me too much of the cheap stuff... At least with an Apple, or Sony you know they're good pieces of kit (*after you wipe the Sony and reinstall).

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/

That's a lot of money for a computer.

I wouldn't consider systems that don't have an arrandale processor (most of the i3s and i5s); this is the current generation.

The Dell Studio XPS 16 meets your requirements; it has a 1080p screen.

Edit: I may go for this myself. Configured one on the US site and it's coming to $1500 with a 1080p RGB-LED screen. I wonder if it's wide-gamut? Looks like it has hdmi + displayport and you can replace the optical drive with an SSD for a top-notch system.

W3bbo said:

Blue Ink said:

*snip*

In terms of performance, yes; but over the past 5 years the screen dimensions of laptops hasn't changed one bit: they're still 1280x800, in fact it's gotten worse: more laptops are 1360x768 which has even less vertical space, which I consider essential.

 

Laptops with 1400+ screen size and discrete GPUs have always been considerably more expensive than those without, and hardly ever for less than £1k. Then there's the discrete GPU thing: not even Intel's latest and greatest GMA can beat a GeForce Go from even 4 years ago.

Yes most screen resolutions are too low. Maybe this is caused by the belief that the higher the resolutions, the smaller things look smaller on the screen. Even tech sites perpetuate this!

Last I checked the lowest-end discrete cards give about twice the performance of integrated graphics. Given that performance doubles every two years, and that intel integrated grahpics has now caught up, I would expect current intel graphics (not gma but "hd graphics") to be on par with low-end discrete graphics from about two years ago. Correct me if this is way out.

CSMR said:

That's a lot of money for a computer.

I wouldn't consider systems that don't have an arrandale processor (most of the i3s and i5s); this is the current generation.

The Dell Studio XPS 16 meets your requirements; it has a 1080p screen.

 

Edit: I may go for this myself. Configured one on the US site and it's coming to $1500 with a 1080p RGB-LED screen. I wonder if it's wide-gamut? Looks like it has hdmi + displayport and you can replace the optical drive with an SSD for a top-notch system.

Tempting, but 16" is too big, 15" is the largest I can go, anything larger simply won't fit in my bag and other gear.

W3bbo said:

CSMR said:

*snip*

Tempting, but 16" is too big, 15" is the largest I can go, anything larger simply won't fit in my bag and other gear.

Check the dimensions. The screen is between 15" and 16" and the laptop may be compact for the screen size.

The ThinkPad T410 (upgrade the screen and warranty accordingly) should fit your specs and it's lighter than the ThinkPad T510.