Looking for decent all-round laptop in UK, circa £600

pbn123

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Nov 24, 2011
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1. What is your budget?
- £550-650 approx

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
- Ideally I'd like a 13-14 inch, but may have to take a 15.6"

3. What screen resolution do you want?
- Not too bothered

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
- Ideally it should be relatively portable but may have to compromise on this at this price range

5. How much battery life do you need?
- Not too bothered

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)?
- Needs to be able to play Football Manager games on high detail setting, this means it should have at least 1GB dedicated graphics

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
- Multitasking, photo editing, Skype, occasional processing-intensive work. I would ideally like a Core i5-2410m processor or better

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
- 500GB, preferably a 7200 rpm hard drive

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
-Considering the XPS 15 on the dell website:
http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=n00x5m02&c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&model_id=xps-l502x-proc-mod
with a few modifications (memory, bluetooth, backlit keyboard), I have a discount code which will bring it to just under £600 delivered. However, I'd really like to check out the competition.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
-Hopefully 5 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
-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 don't have many strong preferences except that I won't consider an Acer as I have had bad experiences with them before

13. What country do you live in?
- UK

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
- The XPS 15 is tempting, but I'd like to look to see if there's any strong competition, ideally the same specs in a slightly smaller and lighter package. I currently own an XPS m1330 which I love but there doesn't seem to be anything like that on the market right now with the performance I'm looking for in my price range.