Good laptop?

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Can you guys recommend a good laptop?
The key things I'm looking for are:

* Good all-rounder
* Top graphics card (Mainly ATI 64MB)
* Crisp/Clear TFT XGA 15" LCD
* DVD/CD-RW
* UK online supplier (reliable company)
* Price around £800 to £1000

I've seen a few on display.
I definately want to avoid 'Shared memory' graphics cards.
Also, NO Acer models. Had one before. Poor screen and build.

Something like Sony Vaio, Toshiba, etc ...

Anybody ordered from http://www.dabs.com/uk ?

[freedimension]

I definately want to avoid 'Shared memory' graphics cards.

There you are damn right.

Also, NO Acer models. Had one before. Poor screen and build.

What's wrong with Acer? I have one and can highly recommend it. I've hardly seen notebooks from other manufacturers that can keep up with the clean design and stability. Also it is so f... silent, I can't hear a whisper right now.
Drawback: most cheaper models do come with shared memory gfx.

Something like Sony Vaio, Toshiba, etc ...

Sony is a company that I personally don't like
a) for their poor customer services
b) for poor build display hinges
c) for their policies regarding copy protection on audio-cds

Toshiba should be ok, but if I would have to buy a notebook other than Acer I would buy a fujitsu siemens (for example an amilo) or hp.
Also I would keep my fingers away from Dell. Loud, large and rickety.
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[fweil]

...,

Because this is the 'off' place, I would add that Sony is much expensive !

[blueznl]

sony's good but way to expensive, especially spare parts (batteries)

try asus, or whatever brand they operate under, or go toshiba

never go ibm

[fsw]

I have a SONY VAIO FXA32 for 2.5 years now and never had a problem with the hardware itself (except battery life...).
The battery life is too low 30-45 min. Suppose it's the CPU (AMD Duron950) that sucks too much current, maybe it's a desktop CPU.

The hinges are standard and the quality is OK.
The graphic is ATI but only a 8mb model
Now a days you get more graphic ram for the money.

A coworker of mine bought a Toshiba and had a failure after a few weeks, he would never again buy a Toshiba.

Here in the US you can even buy a 64bit E-machine laptop (for what it's worth right now...)
If you need a high battery life go with centrino, but they are sooo expansive. 8O

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The battery life is too low 30-45 min

That might be a common thing with certain battery types. My previous laptop suffered the same sort of thing. It had a Lithium battery I think.

After a full charge:

Battery being new - lasted around 3 hour
Battery a year old - 20 mins max

The system also had the worst O/S installation procedure ever...

1) 3 discs
2) Installer loads EVERYTHING to h/d
3) Then, unpacks hundreds of files
4) Audits everything
5) Restarts
6) Installs WinME
7) Restarts
8) Installs drivers
9) Restarts
10) Removes packed files
11) Restarts
12) Continues installation
13) Audits
14) Crashes

Arggghhh!!! I got a sudden urge in wanting to strangle the the persons responsible for creating such a nasty installation setup.

The warranty must of expired by the time I got the thing up and running.
Why don't they just put an image onto the HD?

[freedimension]

Arggghhh!!! I got a sudden urge in wanting to strangle the the persons responsible for creating such a nasty installation setup.

understandable

The warranty must of expired by the time I got the thing up and running.
Why don't they just put an image onto the HD?

Because this way they can serve many different machines and setups with one single set of CDs.

[Karbon]

I have a little compaq PC laptop and my powerbook- love them both (especially my powerbook!)..

[fsw]

Why don't they just put an image onto the HD?

That's what I got with my SONY laptop.
You get 3 CD's, and it seems to be a complete backup (with all SONY apps - argh).
The HD is 1 partition, but you can change it later on (I have 4 partitions [SkyOS/Win2k/WinXP/Extended] and 4 logical disks on the extended partition).
If you need to reinstall the recovery CD, than only the active primary partition is effected - all data on the other partitions/logical drives are still ok.

Actually I would have liked to get a real XP-CD instead of recovery disks...

[Max.]

Can you guys recommend a good laptop?

While I am definitly no DELL fan, I am quite content with my DELL Latitude D600.

Mine features

- Intel Centrino, 1.4GHz
- 512MB RAM
- 64MB ATI Radeon 9000 Mobility
- 40GB HDD (with 5400rpm, which makes quite a difference to the 4xxx often used in NBs)
- Cable based 1GBit adapter
- 11Mbit WLAN
and some other stuff.

It only has a 14" display, but with a very high resolution. I prefer it over my other FujitsuSiemens 15" display any time. It also is usually very quiet. Unlike the FujitsuSiemens again.

[syntax error]

Thanks folks. I was in my local electrical store and got blown away by a Sony Vaio. Only ONE factor caught my attention:

The LCD display. Totally stunning. Without doubt the best I've ever seen.
Anti-Glare XGA 15" with enhanced contrast/brightness.
Totally blows all the others away.

The screensaver features a nature video which again is a stunner.
Particularly the underwater part with the fishes swimming around.

Specs:
=================
Sony Vaio PCG-K115Z

3.06Ghz P4
60GB HD
512MB DDR Ram
15" LCD XGA (ultra sharp/bright)
DVD + / - RW
ATI Radeon 9200 64MB dedicated memory

[blueznl]

if you can afford it:

1. buy a spare battery now before the model is too old and they start charging an arm and a leg

2. swap the batteries now and again

3. if you're using the laptop extended periods (days / weeks) on mains, remove the battery (it prolongues battery life)

i'm in doubt if i should by a new vaio (1300 e) or buy a new battery for my old sr1k... i love the sr1k due to it's very small size...

[Shannara]

My sister got her toshiba 2 years ago, it's running smoothly. I bought a $2,000 HP laptop last week. (This is the 17" screen "desktop replacement"). Anyways, it's running smoothly too. It came with 2 cds, XP Home (POS), and driver CD. Had to buy XP Pro to have a decent system... but it does have DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, etc, etc... a bit out of your price range but... if your looking for a complete desktop replacement like I was ......

[BalrogSoft]

Hi, im waiting my new notebook for the next week, at this moment i dont have a computer, i was using the LAN server computer mounted on my student house where live with other students, and my pIII was broken. i have friends that bought an acer notebook and it works nice, the model that i bought its not the last model of acer, i dont have money to buy a last model, its a travelmate 2001LC, and for 899€ in Spain, the specs are:
Pentium IV 2.6Ghz Celeron (i dont like celeron CPUs but not Celeron CPUs are more expensive)
512 Mb DRR 333Mhz
30 Gb of HD
ATI Radeon 9000 Mobility with 64 Mb
10/100 LAN
56 Kbd modem
Wireless conection
Combo CD-RW / DVD
15" XGA TFT
2x PCMIA II
4x USB v2.0
1x pararell port

Other companies like airis got a very bad commentaries on some forums, its the only bad notebook company that i found on inet, it made some good notebooks but only first models, after have a good commentaries of their notebooks, they change all materials with poor materials, and have a lot of problems. And dont exist a technical service of Airis on Spain!, i dont know what are the situation of Airis on other countrys. Bye