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I'm looking at investing in a new laptop and could do with your guys' advice.

I've seen a laptop i would like, but am not totally sure whether it is one that will suit my needs or not. For instance, i'm not a gamer as such, but do like to play the odd shoot em up (Halo, COD etc) and of course Football Manager. I also watch films, music videos and what not on my current PC, so it would be nice to have a laptop that can cope with all of this.

Overall, i need a laptop that is fairly fast, has fairly good memory and can cope with the odd high detailed game (A good graphics card)

Here's the one i'm looking at buying >>> http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pi/27-1102827/Laptop-Computers/Toshiba-Satellite-Pro-L300-12F-Intel-Celeron-M-550-2.0GHz-1024MB-120GB-TFT15.4-DVDRW-Win-Vista-Home-Premium-Product-Info

Is it one that is likely to do all the crap i've stated above? Like i mean, i know about the speed of the processors and what not, but not so sure on graphic/sound cards un'all....

Cheers for any feedback  :mrgreen:

If you want to play shoot em ups then I'm afraid you're going to have to get a laptop with a separate graphics card. That one above features integrated graphics which are built into the laptop's motherboard and essentially take available memory to process your graphics. In short, they're shite for games. If in doubt copy and paste the graphics product code into google and you should learn more.

If you're going to run Vista look to get 2gb of memory, although you can always upgrade relatively cheaply but this could void the warranty if you do so in the warranty period.

And for christ sakes don't touch anything with the word Celeron in it.

Thanks for the feedback!

I know sweet fa about graphics cards, so apologize if this sounds dumb, but if i was to buy this laptop (Although if you say Celeron is shite, then i may have to look into it), is it easy enough to replace the graphics card it comes with? Or is the fact it is built into the motherboard, mean it does not allow you to replace it with a more efficent card?
If so, any recommendations of types of graphics cards i should be looking at? I don't need the top notch card, but a relatively decent one.

Thanks again  :thumbs:

Generally laptops are much more of a pain/expensive to upgrade. It's probably do-able but unlikely to be worth it. Actually I'm not sure they'd leave room in a fairly cheap laptop.

Actually, wait until Si Pie replies. I'm nearly a decade out of date on this stuff.

Haha! Okay

Thinking about it, isn't it best for graphics cards to have 64mb of memory? And i presume intergrated cards do not come with their own memory? So like Si said, they use available memory to process it?

Unfortunately laptops are pretty difficult to upgrade graphics wise. If it has integrated graphics I don't think it will be possible to change it for a dedicated card.

I'd get a dual core processor, they're cheap enough and it'll fly compared to that celeron.

If you can stretch your budget I'd get something like this:

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_F3Sr-AP730C_F3SR-AP730C/version.asp


Great laptop processor, 2gb RAM and a big HDD. The most important thing is the graphics though, as it has 128mb of it's own dedicated graphics and up to 512mb supported (it can steal some of your free memory if needs be). It'll be able to play games better.

I think at that price it's a bargain, just whether your budget can stretch. In all honesty you're going to struggle for a laptop that can play games for less than £500

Oh and it has HD DVD if you want to buy loads of films in HD on a redundant format when they go cheap  8)

And an integrated wireless card.

Steer clear of Toshiba as well as they are not the most reliable bit's of kit

To be fair you can say that about all the Tier 1 suppliers at some point, they all have duff batches, but most of the main ones have failure rates of less than 0.5% per 100,000 units

Most of the decent ones have a 2 year warranty anyway

Thanks for the feedback again Si.

The laptop you suggest is a possibility and i could probably stretch to afford it (Bearing in mind i am a student  :mrgreen: )

I have however found a couple of other laptops that could suit my needs, although they both do not have the 2gb ram you suggested.

Here they are anyway:

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pi/27-1053126/Laptop-Computers/Fujitsu-Siemens-Esprimo-V5535-Intel-Pentium-Dual-Core-1.8GHz-2048MB-120GB-TFT15.4-DVDRW-Win-Vista-Home-Premium-Product-Info

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pi/27-1058704/Laptop-Computers/Fujitsu-Siemens-Esprimo-Mobile-V5535-Intel-Pentium-Dual-Core-T2330-1.6GHz-1024MB-120GB-TFT15.4-DVDRW-Win-Vista-Home-Premium-Product-Info

The first laptop is fairly quick and has a reasonable internal memory as well as it's hard drive size, but i'm not so sure about the graphics card?
Whereas the second laptop seems to have a good graphics card, but is lacking in other areas.... :|

Are they any good?

They both have integrated graphics which steal it from your RAM. I wouldn't get either of those.

Tbh you may have to compromise and risk not being able to play the newer games or somehow find the extra money, because these often require decent graphics for the minimum settings alone.

Unfortunately gaming on a laptop is not a cheap experience nor as good as a desktop.

If you're really fussed about gaming then a desktop for a similar amount of money would blow any laptop out of the water.

GO OUTSIDE!

HP are normally best and quite cheap down at Comet

Yeah. Fatbury is obviously being super helpful here. Go and buy whatever HP you can afford from comet and it'll definitely do what you want it to.

I'm going to need a new computer by October(ish) time. I might have to get a job.

How about

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139121/show_product_reviews

Ebuyer tend to be reliable and I bought a Fujitsu-Siemens for my daughter and she is really pleased with it.

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

Is it still possible to buy laptops with XP on it?

I'm not too confident about Vista...

Yeah, theres still quite a few about..

Hmmm....I'm seeing what you're sayin Si, but it's just that Laptops are so much more practical....I will have to look into it.

This may be a stupid question, but how can you tell whether a graphics card is built in or not?

In the specification you'll find the name of the graphics chip. Just google that and you get a fair idea.

You'll struggle to play the newer games with integrated graphics. Unfortunately that's just the way.

When gaming you want to hit the sweet spot of 30 frames per second, otherwise the game begins to lag a hell of a lot.

Halo2V doesn't even load if you can't meet the mimimum requirments and Call of Duty 4 is going to require fairly good graphics. The reality is, on a budget laptop which can play those games you will have to put the settings down to get decent frame rates.

Oh and I'm not besmirching laptops, it's just going to be a bit of a bugger for you if you buy a £350 laptop and then decide it's not good enough and have to get another one a few months down the line at an additional expense.

Yeah that's cool. Now i've got the time, i'm gunna have a browse at some other possibilities now i know what to look for.

Thanks for the help Si! I feel my knowledge of computers/laptops has improved  :mrgreen: