CHR1S Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 I am starting to feel my laptop creaking under the strain Are there any current or upcoming technologies that are a must have for a techie laptop? The main reason I have to have a laptop is I work over multiple sites. A few other things to bear in mind - It has to be powerfull enough to run PS and video edit It has to be light/small enough to carry around and hold with one hand It has to have a decent battery life (over 1 hour at full power would be nice ) Not be stupidly expensive Ive looked at the 13" dells etc but they have a 1.3Ghz CPU, if we could get that up a bit but stay at 13" I would be happy. Thanks
Mako Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Mac Book. Mako's eyes melt from their sockets and his skin burns, while a sudden surge of blood pressure causes multiple haemorrhages. What's your budget? Or do you just wants specs for a ballpark figure?
sacrej Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 I bought myself a vaio VGN-FW56E for christmas, full 16inch full hd screen, bluray (for backups ), ATI HD 3450 512mb graphics (can play bioshock 2 at full hd) 500 gig, chiclet keyboard, cardreaders, firewire, hdmi out, 2-3 hours battery, 4 gig ram... core 2 duo, 2.2ghz I think..... was a bit pricey at £800, but does the job very well and dual boots with Kubuntu linux. more ram would be better though and intel VT so I can run 64bit virtual machines
AngryITGuy Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 I recently got myself a HP ProBook 5310m, think it ticks all the boxes as its powerful and lightweight. Details here mines the VQ469ET version.
K.C.Leblanc Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Buy a decent desktop and a netbook. Works for me,
Jamman960 Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Brought a Dell XPS M1330 last year, nice n light but not the cheapest of laptops then again all 13inchers tend to be pretty pricey.
CHR1S Posted March 31, 2010 Author Posted March 31, 2010 13" Macbook Pro seriously £1,809.01 for a decent spec.... lol! Mako's eyes melt from their sockets and his skin burns, while a sudden surge of blood pressure causes multiple haemorrhages. What's your budget? Or do you just wants specs for a ballpark figure? Erm, possibly around £6-700 Buy a decent desktop and a netbook. Works for me, I would need 2 decent spec PCs and a netbook so the laptop is more convenient and probably cheaper.
pete Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Thinkpad X201? Don't pay list though - take it as a starting point for negotiation.
BHMS Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 If you can afford it I recommend the Asus UL30Vt for a 13.3" or UL80Vt for a 14". They seem quite hard to get a hold of, cheapest I could find them was here: 13.3": Specialty Software - ASUS UL30Vt-X1 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) 14": Specialty Software - ASUS UL80Vt-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Black Laptop - 11.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) Essentially the same laptop in different form factors, 11+h battery life, switchable dedicated graphics, roughly same processor but overclocked to 1.73ghz so they have acceptable midrange performance. Review here: ASUS UL80Vt First Look: Mobility Redefined - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News
webman Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Everyone I've known with an HP laptop have had problems with them. I'd recommend Lenovo or Toshiba. 1
CHR1S Posted March 31, 2010 Author Posted March 31, 2010 If you can afford it I recommend the Asus UL30Vt for a 13.3" or UL80Vt for a 14". They seem quite hard to get a hold of, cheapest I could find them was here: We have a couple of the Acer version, they are great for office tasks but not for anything more processor intensive. The 8 hour battery life is great tho
SimpleSi Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Are there any current or upcoming technologies that are a must have for a techie laptop? 3G capability builit in so all you need is a pay-as-you-go sim and you can bypass any firewall/filters and get at any technical downloads you need And use it to download those youtube videos that a teacher needs desperately for the next lesson and didn't realise that they couldn't download them in school Enhances your godlike status no end regards Simon
stevenwba Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 3G capability builit in so all you need is a pay-as-you-go sim and you can bypass any firewall/filters and get at any technical downloads you need And use it to download those youtube videos that a teacher needs desperately for the next lesson and didn't realise that they couldn't download them in school Enhances your godlike status no end regards Simon Good point! Also another one for a mac book pro, had never bothered with them untill a few weeks ago, but ive got to say ive fallen for them
Hightower Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 Everyone I've known with an HP laptop have had problems with them. I'd recommend Lenovo or Toshiba. The Toshiba's we've had aren't the best to be honest. Fair enough they are budget teaching laptops, but most models we've had experience overheating issues.
stevenwba Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 if you dont fancy the mac book, maybe some of the new asus laptops, got a few of these Acer Aspire 5732Z Value Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer and i like them
Soulfish Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 We use the Dell E6400's for techie laptops. The backlit keyboard is a great option . There's supposed to be a refresh coming soon for the i3/i5/i7 laptop CPUs and a change in model number to E6410.
webman Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 The Toshiba's we've had aren't the best to be honest. Fair enough they are budget teaching laptops, but most models we've had experience overheating issues. Yeah, the higher-end ones are great though, e.g. Satellite Pro and upwards
BHMS Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 We have a couple of the Acer version, they are great for office tasks but not for anything more processor intensive. The 8 hour battery life is great tho In that case I'd go for the vostro 3300 SYSMAN linked. It caught my eye the other day, small but very powerful at a good price. Never had any problems with the Dells I've had, can't find any independent reviews though
jamin100 Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 £1,809.01 for a decent spec.... lol! ah but the hopefully the new i3 13" MBP will be out shortly. Bang 4GB RAM in there and it'll fly. I have the base model 13"MBP 2.26 C2D, 320GB HD, 4GB RAM and it handles 3 VM's easily + it runs Windows 7 in bootcamp so I can use Windows at home if i really have to!
tallan Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 To advance webman advice on toshiba I would recommend anything from the Satellite Pro L500 Series as we have the Satellite Pro L500-1VX which work like a dream with no known heat issuse
Soulfish Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 They are available now. Spec sheet here. Ohh hadn't seen that - cheers . Haven't appeared in my premier login though
soveryapt Posted March 31, 2010 Posted March 31, 2010 (may of been said but here goes) .. MacBook Pro and get a copy of parallels or bootcamp Windows to it if you need that (you could actually bootcamp windows then get parallels to run that copy of windows when booted into OSx if need be. I use a 2 year old MacBook for a similar thing running Parallels for any windows bits I need to do and it works just great. Get about 3-4 hours out of it when using it as my workstation, slightly less when I'm doing more with it (PS etc) slightly more when I don't have parallels running and I'm just SSH'ing into servers to do stuff. Well worth a look, the MacBook Pros certainly have improved battery life on my 2 year old beast too.
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