New Laptop - what spec?

[Ticktock]

If it helps when working away I can play Battlefield 3 on High on my lappy even with it decidely lame Geforce 630M (yes that bad), mainly because unless you run the graphics maxxed out it is cpu intensive so and a quad core i5 is enough

So you got a new laptop with a Haswell i5, but with a year old GPU, instead of 7xxM? Was that by design, or are they shifting their stock of 6xxM GPUs? I haven't looked at a new notebook for a while, so not sure what's been about.

And yes, it is quite bad that I'd consider a year old GPU outdated, but when you're buying a new notebook I'd expect new components - in my desktop I'm running a GPU that's a few years old now, but I can easily upgrade that whenever I get around to it.

[amcdonald]

So you got a new laptop with a Haswell i5, but with a year old GPU, instead of 7xxM? Was that by design, or are they shifting their stock of 6xxM GPUs? I haven't looked at a new notebook for a while, so not sure what's been about.

And yes, it is quite bad that I'd consider a year old GPU outdated, but when you're buying a new notebook I'd expect new components - in my desktop I'm running a GPU that's a few years old now, but I can easily upgrade that whenever I get around to it.

No mines a 2nd gen i7 (Sandybridge I think), had it quite a while now and wasn't exactly expensive at the time I bought it.


I was just trying to prove you can run newish games even with an old graphics card as long as you've got a decent cpu and are prepared to dial down the graphics a notch

At home I've got 6970s for when I want ott graphics for gaming, for laptops I have them speced for running virtual machines, and virtual servers, gaming tends to come second when really. So lots of memory and a decent cpu and plenty of disk space, the graphics card I can cope with being a bit lame

[ladymuck]

Or you could buy the same from eBay. A brand new Macbook pro costing £1549 from Apple cost me £1000 on eBay in a bid I won. The next guy won another bid for the same laptop from the same seller for £800. Go figure

Totally valid and an excellent thing to do when you know what you want and how much you should pay for it. Never done it myself as I'm not very trustful of people selling second hand (even new in box) computer equipment unless it's something fairly innocuous like a scanner or printer.

[Fishface]

Thinkpad T series

WTF have they done with the keyboard ???

Is there any laptop left with a grown up keyboard or is it all 'chiclet' ?

[Spacecadet]

WTF have they done with the keyboard ???

Is there any laptop left with a grown up keyboard or is it all 'chiclet' ?

As with most things, the chiclet keyboards are quite good once you get used to them. As long as they are attached to a solid laptop they should flex less than the old style laptop keyboards.

What is bad though is when key like Home/End/Page Up/Page Down become "special function" keys and need a combination key press to access them

[d000hg]

Mac Book Air. Job done. Yes its expensive but how much nicer is it to carry something that is properly light instead of a two tone pile of laptop...

Apple (United Kingdom) - MacBook Air

Or an ultrabook. But you pay a big premium for the design.


I don't think you need i7 or 8Gb RAM for your stated usage. A £400 job should do nicely.

[bobspud]

Or an ultrabook. But you pay a big premium for the design.


I don't think you need i7 or 8Gb RAM for your stated usage. A £400 job should do nicely.

Power is not the only thing you get from a Macbook Air. Did you know that they support the use of two 27 inch thunderbolt screens from a single port? This used to be restricted to only the mac book pro's but now its pretty much most of the range. To me that is the feature to have. My desk at home is clear of any cables and I can carry a light machine around if I am on the road. Yes you can get Matrox boxes that do it but its just another mess of cables to have to tidy.