Hello,
I’m sure like me many of you get asked what laptop or PC should I buy from friends and family? As such I sent the following to a friend recently and it may be useful to others:
Firstly, how much do you want to spend roughly?? I’d suggest £400 plus for one that will last.
A good CPU is a must for longevity i.e. (in order of awesomness) Intel I7, Intel I5, Intel I3, Dual Core 2 Duo, Dual Core.
Always try and go for a good CPU with a high GHZ as the higher the GHZ the faster the CPU will number crunch.
I’m in two minds about the AMD CPU’s at the moment, they are ok but not quite up to scratch compared to the Intel stuff.
Avoid anything with the word Celeron or Sempron in!!
RAM – Go for 3GB plus, no less!! RAM is like your short term memory it allows you to open loads of things at once!! Less RAM less things open at once!!
Hard Drive – This is really down to personal choice so how much music etc etc do you have to fill it with so maybe 320GB plus.
If you really want to get into the semantics of it though (you probably don’t) there are three types of hard drive to look at; a expensive and very very fast one called a SSD (stands for a Solid State Drive so no moving parts and they are never any bigger than 120GB ish) a faster one (7200RPM) and a slightly slower one (5400RPM). Basically the faster a hard drive the faster it will be able to retrieve data for you (start windows, load software etc etc?) but you do loose size with speed.
Operating System – Windows 7 all the way! Pro or home will suite you fine. Some will say 64 bit, this means Windows can make better use of the hard ware but 32 or 64 wont make any difference for you.
Screen – The bigger a screen the heavier it will be so you may want to go for the bog standard 15.6″.
If you get a laptop from a web site like Scan, Dabs, Overclockers, or Ebuyer you’ll only get the standard manufacturer warranty where as if you go with Dell or PC world etc they may throw in a extended warranty!!
Its also worth looking at Novatech.co.uk, they make their own laptops and PC’s and seem to have some excellent kit at the moment and their tech support is brilliant!!
My favorite makes – HP, Compaq, MSI, Toshiba
Reasonable makes but cheaply manufactured – Acer, Asus
“I dont like you” makes – Sony, Levono, eMachine, Packard Bell.
