My Dads laptop has bitten the dust. Its always been trouble, but now its dead. He needs a lappy for his work, so we need to source a replacement.

My knowledge of laptops is limited, especially the current lineups. We need something thats going to be reliable, have good product support in case we get a Friday afternoon model and not cost the earth.

Specs are not too important except that it must have 1GB of RAM to run the CAD package Dad wants to use.

We have been looking at this one

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06a/21675-38187-38191-38191-38191-12318784.html  (the 1501 model)

but any and all suggestions welcome

How about this? (Dell Latitude D600)

We have about 15 of those at work, very nice machines. OK, its a refurb but it comes with a full three year on-site Dell warranty which has proven to be very good for us. Comes with a Rad 9000 too so the graphics wont steal main memory.

My work notebook is

http://vaio.sony-europe.com/view/ShowProduct.action?product=VGN-A617M&site=ite_en_GB&pageType=Overview&category=VN+A+Series

And I cant recommend it enough - it gets heavily abused, I run test SQL databases on it for the cisco IPCC environment, and it handles everything admirably. The screen is among the best I have ever seen on a notebook as well.

EDIT - mine is slightly different from that model, having 2 x 1GB RAM and a 120GB disk

Avoid HP like the plague.  If you ever have to call their "Customer Support" / Indian Takeaway number.  I rang them up through work to report a faulty fuser unit in a printer.

They tried blaming the printer itself, paper tray, Toners, drum and even me.

I also have a dislike of Dell.

Id go with Toshiba, Acer or Panasonic.
Sonys are too expensive for what they are.

The lowest end Toshibas and Acers have really obscure vid chipsets, so explore thoroughly.

In this market, Id think about a refurbished Thinkpad or mid-range Acer. HPs lappies arent bad, but their service indeed sucks. Make sure you can get from a store/source that will honor their own warranty instead of the manufacturers.

All the modern Acers and Toshs that Ive ever worked on have had either Intel, ATi or Nvidia.  Even my mums Sub 300 quid one is a relatively well known S3

Yup, its the S3 I was thinking of. Its just utter sh*te. Probably more than OK for your mum to surf on and write letters, but no more.

Hardly Obscure though, Windows supports it out the box.

In 2D right? Of course an OEM version of XP is going to have the proprietary drivers included.

S3 is getting popular again, but they were gone from the scene for years.

I can only think of that one Acer and the one Toshiba that uses the chipset, might be more over there.

Id rather have crap Intel i8** onboard tbh, but thats as it plays nicer with Linux and dual boot.

Linux makes baby jesus cry.

the baby Jesus had a Prince Albert??

I have a nearly 2 year old Gericom Hummer and they are tough as old boots. 3Ghz Pantsium with 1GB ram and a GO5600. Still pretty much up to it as far as notebook compys go although it is heavy and battery life isnt good. Worth looking at one of theirs if you can find one.

IBM have loads of build quality too but I have no idea of the present support levels so treat with caution.

Medion notebooks tend to be poor though, avoid


http://www.gericom.com/index.php?id=301&L=1&type=0

thanks for the advice all,

HP service has always been second to none for us, thats why we were considering them. Last time we had a problem with an HP printer they talked us through the full strip down and clean routine, then when that didnt fix it they sent round a courier to pick up the printer and had it back to us good as new in a couple of days.

We found a Tosh Equium on special offer in town for Ã,£599. 1 gig of RAM, Celery M 1.4 and 15.4" wide screen. ATI Radeon graphics, more than enough for what Dad needs.

PS Soopah M8, your sig is going off the edge of my screen, any chance of another CR in there?

Edit, thats interesting, it doesnt do it up here, perhaps its just my Dads PC being a bit rubbish? Or did you change it in the last 20 mins?

Quote from: maximusotterthe baby Jesus had a Prince Albert??

Thatd be more likely the reason why hes crying. Is that a wooden piercing? Eef, splinters...