Which laptop?

[Clippy]

I know, I'm groaning as I write this.

Looking to buy a new one in the new year and am erring towards a Dell Latitude E6400.

Anyone any experience of this model?

Budget is £600 - £800 purely because need to set some limits.!

[BolshieBastard]

http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/pro...A-SAT-L300-19Y

Comet are doing this great toshiba laptop for £358 inc VAT. Its so good I bought 2! One for the ltd co and one for eldest son.

Not sure what spec you want on the dell but this tosh has just about everything I need. The site says no bluetooth but the box says it has. I havent found out whether it has since son number 2's base unit went tits up so he's using the ltd co laptop! Son number 1 doesnt get to use his laptop until christmas day.

Oh well, wait until son number 2's new base unit arrives (money saved on the 2 laptops paid for his new base unit!).

[PAH]

With that model I'd make sure it has the WXGA+ (1440x900) screen.

When I was looking for a new laptop a couple of months ago, the Dell Vostro caught my attention. Plenty cheap with all the right bits, though I think it was 15" not 14.1". Even had an option for a silly 1920x1200 screen, if you've got superpower eyesight!

What I did find was the more expensive they are the lighter, and smaller you can get the same screen resolution, storage space, and generally only skimp on the cpu, but with a laptop that's a reasonable sacrifice unless it's a desktop replacement.

e.g. there are 12/13" lappies around (for about a grand plus) that offer everything these 14/15" ones do, but in a smaller, lighter, sexier package. Think Macbook Air, but with a DVD-RW, and gigabit ethernet connection!

Overall, for price, and spec, Dells are hard to beat.

[Jaws]

I recently bought the following : http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...nKey=378890000

1680x1050 resolution and works fine for development (including using Virtual PC) - I've used it for hours with no eyestrain. I think the price was a little lower when I bought it though, I bought an additional 2GB ram + a cheap bag with it for £750 total. Note that at that resolution it will struggle with modern games.

[London75]

I can't sing the praises of my Dell XPS M1530 enough, very quick, very upgradeable and good price. All the business features including finger scanner but with the ability to play the odd game to boot.

I bought a cheap one (£540) and upgraded via ebay so Dual Core 2.5GHz and 4GB RAM now.

[Clippy]

With that model I'd make sure it has the WXGA+ (1440x900) screen.

When I was looking for a new laptop a couple of months ago, the Dell Vostro caught my attention. Plenty cheap with all the right bits, though I think it was 15" not 14.1". Even had an option for a silly 1920x1200 screen, if you've got superpower eyesight!

What I did find was the more expensive they are the lighter, and smaller you can get the same screen resolution, storage space, and generally only skimp on the cpu, but with a laptop that's a reasonable sacrifice unless it's a desktop replacement.

e.g. there are 12/13" lappies around (for about a grand plus) that offer everything these 14/15" ones do, but in a smaller, lighter, sexier package. Think Macbook Air, but with a DVD-RW, and gigabit ethernet connection!

Overall, for price, and spec, Dells are hard to beat.

Generally, what should I be looking for in a laptop?

I'm not as clued up on hardware as I used to be.

I only need it for general office type use.

[teclo]

I would suggest a Lenovo Thinkpad of some sort. Having used some pretty horrible and downright unusable Dells, Compaq/HPs and Toshibas over the years I would buy another Lenovo. Solidly build, reliable and looks good too.

Check Dabs to see what they have going there.

[pmeswani]

Generally, what should I be looking for in a laptop?

I'm not as clued up on hardware as I used to be.

I only need it for general office type use.

You need to identify what you want to use it for. As you mentioned above, you plan to use it for Office work. So a Laptop, in my opinion, should have

1. 2GB of memory as minimum, 4GB would be ideal, especially if you are using Vista.

2. ATI graphics chip (nowt wrong with NVidia but is more suited for gamers, HD based graphics card should not be needed, unless your work is around watching Movies).

3. An Ethernet Port as minimum and Wireless an added bonus.

4. 160GB hard drive as minimum.

5. Ideally 15" TFT Screen, but you are the best judge on what size suits you,

6. MS Office 2007 rather than Works (but you may want to buy Office as an add-on or use OpenOffice, whatever turns you on).

7. 3 USB slots as minimum.

8. DVD Writeable drive (Re-writer is a bonus and Blu-Ray a luxury, unless you are working in a field that requires it).

9. Chose MS XP Professional, unless you are prepared to use Vista, and if you go down the route of Vista, in which case go for Home Premium or Ultimate.

Hope that is what you are after.

[London75]

To add to pmeswani's post

Don't go for Vista Ultimate if it's just for the encryption features. Truecrypt is excellent and free for disk encryption.

PS In case you wondered, you should be encrypting these days if it's for work at all. Loss of information is only something you can get away with when employed by the government.

[pmeswani]

To add to pmeswani's post

Don't go for Vista Ultimate if it's just for the encryption features. Truecrypt is excellent and free for disk encryption.

PS In case you wondered, you should be encrypting these days if it's for work at all. Loss of information is only something you can get away with when employed by the government.

I would personally suggest spending £100 (or thereabouts) on getting PGP Desktop Suite, which is far better than TrueCrypt (See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07...s_crypto_flaw/, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03...ffer_unveiled/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02...f_unbitlocker/). But that's a topic for a different thread.

The main reason for going down the route of Ultimate is the Aero functionality as well as IIS functionality, especially if you are doing some testing that requires it.