Need a relatively portable budget laptop for movies + stuff

bananabm

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Nov 5, 2010
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Hi guiz and galz

The short:
United Kingdom based student looking for a £550 15" laptop to do a bit of coding work and watch movies on with batteries that can last longer than the movies do.


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The long:

1. What is your budget?

About £500 - £600 perhaps?


2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

Something like 13" or 15", leaning towards 15".


3. What screen resolution do you want?

Something relatively sharp, but not fussed about 1080 or anything on a screen as small as a laptop display. The 1366x768 offered by most big names seems fine to me.


4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

Portable. I've already got a desktop that I game on.


5. How much battery life do you need?

This is relatively big for me. I need it to be able to go for 2.5 or 3 hours fullscreen video, as I plan to watch quite a lot of movies on it away from power/while travelling. Most of my movies are 720p if that makes a difference, so not just SD stuff. I don't mind paying extra to get a larger battery if necessary.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

Not bothered about games since i'm keeping my desktop, although a bit of TF2 never went amiss. Mostly i'll be playing plants vs zombies or world vs goo on this baby.


7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)

Some coding, watching movies, listening to music, browsing the web. That's about it. I might do a little photo editing but nothing like filtering megapixels of data or anything.


8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

320GB bare minimum, ideally 500GB.


9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

Not bothered, but obviously I want a UK-based site. ebuyer, scan, overclockers, or amazon I've used before, I'm fine with most sites.


10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?

A good couple of years... I guess? If you're asking about how futureproof I want it, not that fussed cos I've got my PC for that.


11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?

just DVD. no writing or blu-ray required.


12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

Not bothered at all. No macs though ;)


13. What country do you live in?

United Kingdom. England if it makes a diff.


14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I'm not going for bleeding edge performance or anything, so I don't need a custom build (at least my experience with custom builds is that they're not so good on value for money at lower specs). I don't mind going for clearance, or even lightly used/refurbed if it means I can get a particular bargain (ie; sites like this http://www.mcscom.co.uk/)
Also, if you find an absolute steal that's, say, 13" or has a slightly worse battery life feel free to post it.

also i think i'll need windows 7. msdn-aa only gives you a 1 install license i think. but if it gives you a multiple install license then i'm good on OS.
 

Doom3klr

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Jul 27, 2010
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Perfect just get a netbook acer has a nice 10.1 inch netbook with hdmi bluetooth ati 4220 dedicated video and dual core amd for 335.00 & a portable dvd drive will run you like 50 bucks. Then you can do movies games and it ways 3 pounds and get 4 to 5 hours battery life.
 

dapneym

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Jan 16, 2008
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I don't have a whole lot of time right now, but after a quick search on Currys I found a few that may fit what you need.

It's a bit on the small side given what you were asking for, but the ToshibaSatellite L630-12U seems like a decent match, and it's currently £529.97:
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-l630-12u-06525298-pdt.html

Here's another Toshiba, the Satellite C650D-114. This one is actually 15.6"
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-c650d-114-04961684-pdt.html

This one's an Acer, and I've heard very mixed things about them on the whole, but since it fits in the price range I figured I'd include it.
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-5741-06539243-pdt.html

Those are just a few of what I saw, but hope it helps in some way with your search.
 

bananabm

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Nov 5, 2010
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Sorry, no netbooks. As nifty as they are, they're just a bit too small for me. I can't type on a keyboard that small :(



Thanks guys :) will have a look at those.