Purchasing new laptop

[Skunk141]

Hi, I'm in the UK and need a new laptop but am unsure where the best deals are on the net, can any one suggest a good one with this spec.

P 2.8 or above (I'm not sure what the different processors are, what's better Mobile Pentium 4 Processor-M, Mobile Pentium 4 Processor or Pentium M I want at least 512k cache 533FSB)
512MB or more
8x DVD +/- RW
Good on board Sound Enough to play HL2? (is this possible?)
Good on board Graphics Enough to play HL2? (is this possible?)
60Gb Hard Disk
USB 2.0

Many thanks for your help.

 

[ming]

Depends how much you are willing to pay for a machine.
Pentium M is way better than P4 by miles. Pentium M CPUs are part of the Centrino Family which basically includes wireless chipset and consumes less power than any other machines out there.
As you may have heard, P4 consumes great amount of power and does not perform as well as an AMD64 based cpu.

With that said, I think most Pentium M laptops have 1MB cache (or maybe 2MB)
But they tend to be very expensive compared to a P4 laptop. You're looking at a price range of between £1,499 to £2,499 for Pentium M machines, while a P4 starts from £749 - £1,699

 

[Skunk141]

Thanks for that.

I think I'll stick with P4, can anyone suggest a good web based company thats cheap?

HL2 possible?

 

[NetRyder]

How much are you willing to spend? Give us a range and we can offer suggestions.

 

[vern]

I think the more important question is ... what is it going to be for? Portabilty? Desktop replacement? You seem to want to game on it and unless you want to spend some serious money, the laptop is not where you want to game.

 

[Skunk141]

Portable desktop replacement Office 2003, Music Making, Few Games some Movies, IE, PSP, DVD Burning...

Was just wondering if HL2 is possible not essential...

No real cap on price, like to know the cheapest, middle of the range and most expensive.

Thanks

 

[lancer]

Unless you're actually going to be using this laptop in different locations, your just wasting your money and being poncy in the process, the same money you'd spend on a decent laptop, you could either build or buy a top spec pc.

 

[ShepsCrook]

So basically you want everyone do to the dirty work in searching out a laptop and find each level of laptop pricing and features.

Anyway I'll give a hand since I'm very board at the moment.
Now, I don't know if you want to purchase one from a retail store, or from dell.com or what since you're not being overly specific. Your range of things that you want to do is basically everything but rendering and graphics design. So you'll be looking into the Pentium 4 Mobile, Pentium 4 processors. Or an AMD64 processor laptop. Those processors will handle everything including the gaming. The only thing left you need to worry about is video card and ram in the laptops. 512MB would probably be more then enough. Depending on the games you play, HL2 will need a higher end video card, maybe the mobility Radeon 9600 or even better the 9700. I would also suggest a 512MB card on it's own in the laptop. That way if you want to upgrade, you still have an open slot for 512MB more that is easy to pop in.

 

[Steevo]

I have two toshiba A2's here that perform very well. Have Office 03' XP Pro, 512Mb of RAM, 64Mb shared video by Intel. Pentium M 1.5 2Mb cache, 400Mhz FSB, CD-R, DVD a three year warranty. And a 4-5 hour battery life, and built in WiFi, LAN, and a modem.


Payed $1,200 each. Not to bad.


They perform decent on games.

 

[Skunk141]

Ok thanks guys, so your telling me a P4m 1.5 is better thank a P4 2.0????

Bit confused with all this P4M and P4 bit...