Next laptop - which one?

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Hello,

My wife's Toshiba NB205 is dying and she asked for notebook this time.
I read the FAQ and I read this:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/60098-20-general-laptop-advice

I like the idea of picking up some 1-2 year old model (but in good condition/refurbished), so if it dies after a year, I won't be sorry too much for that.

With that, I turn to FAQ questions:
1. What is your budget? - up to AU $500, the less the better.

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

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1280 × 800 or more?

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

5. How much battery life do you need?
1-2 hours.

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)?
Online games in firefox

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
watching movies, word/excel, lots of browsing and IM

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
150-200G

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Australian based preferred as not all US are shipping overseas.

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

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
None. She already has external USB DVD/RW

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.
I personally like thinkpads. But she don't care, as long as it lives long enough and is not slow.

13. What country do you live in?
Australia

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
These are her priorities:
14"+ clear screen;
laptop fast enough to play smooth any online game, load pages in firefox (when you have 3-4 sessions of them with 50-60 tabs each), play movies (no video editing)
trackpad;
normal sound (nb205 has horrible sound, so she's fed up with it);
usb ports - the more the better.
(Yes, can be fixed with a usb hub, but is already built-in - better).

Thanks for your opinions
 

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Thank you for your response.

"clear screen" meant best quality possible in the price range i guess :)

Thanks for the link, the cpu should be ok for what she needs.
"Graphics

Intel® HD Graphics with 128 MB of dedicated system memory, supporting Microsoft® DirectX® 10" -
does this mean this chipset has its own dedicated 128MB memory or it borrows that much from overall RAM?
What's your opinion?

The other question I had in mind is is there a good older model with potentially the same spec (cpu/video wise)
that I can get cheaper because it's not in production anymore?



 
There are some of the older Core 2 Duo laptops out there but they're as good for HD movie watching. It's the better graphics chip of the i3/i5 family (that HD Graphics) that makes it better suited for HD video and movies.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M (GMA 4500M) review
Intel HD Graphics review

Still in production with older parts as a budget notebook:
HP Compaq 620 AUD$400
An older C2D Celeron T3300 2.0Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD 15.6" 1366x768 LCD w/ Intel 4500HD graphics.


 

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In the end, I went for this one: https://www.mln.com.au/product/?itemID=1002#

It's a bit more than $500, but not by much and for dedicated graphics card I was happy to add more .
I'm (almost) sure now that this one will satisfy any requirements my wife will have.


WR2, I appreciate your help and suggestions. While I didn't choose any of the products you pointed me to,
you steered me in the right direction. Thank you.

Regards.