Which Laptop ?

[Gramps]

I am in the market for a new laptop but the more I look the more confusing it gets, a couple that caught my eye were the Samsung R40 at £469 and the Acer Aspire 505 at £389, both are on the Laptops Direct website.
My main use would be just general surfing and listening to mp3 music, any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Inactive]

http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/mobilecomputing/mobileprofessional/np_r40r001suk.asp

Cannot find the Acer 505?

I didn't even know Samsung did laptops.

Acer are generally OK, good value for money.

[Gramps]

Sorry inactive, this is the full model number for the Acer, http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5052AWXMi_LX.AV40X.022/version-1.asp

[Inactive]

No problem, my only concern with the Acer would be the screen size, but if that is OK for you, that looks fine to me.

Well apart from Vista, but we hadn't better go there.. 

[Rik]

Like Inactive, Wilf, I'd be inclined to go for a 15.4" screen. Otherwise, Acer are generally good value and reasonably built. If you buy from Laptops Direct, avoid their pre-delivery inspection and don't let them sell you a copy of Norton AV!

[Stevescat]

I always wince when I see integrated graphics. If you want Vista to look pretty, transparent desktop, how well would this perform? There's no arguing the price is good, but it would be a concern unless you could try before you buy.

[Gramps]

One thing that concerns me about vista is it's compatibility with xp, what I mean is, I have a desktop running xp on a wireless network, will there be conflict transfering files etc?.

[Rik]

There shouldn't be, Wilf.

[dennyjim]

Just bought an Acer 9301 17" screen with vista home premium from the same place.
It's OK once you get rid of all the Acer E-Cr*p utilities that run as background processes. They take up about 25% of memory and are not needed at all once you do your initial backup of the system

[Rik]

Funny, that was the first thing I did too, well, the second in truth, the first was to wrench the supplied Norton AV off the machine and replace it with NOD32.

[dennyjim]

I knew not to get NV, had the heads up from a mate who had fallen for it Rik

[Inactive]

Found this Acer at eBuyer, take a look.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/123116/rb/0

[Rik]

I knew not to get NV, had the heads up from a mate who had fallen for it Rik

It was factory-installed by Acer in my case. That didn't stop laptops direct from trying to sell me a copy! Beware the upseller, they care only for their profit.

[Gramps]

Thanks for all the info, looks like I will go for the Acer, first though I am going to pay a visit to Comet,they have an Acer (AS 5612 ZWLOI) advertised at £549.99. bit more than my budget but what the hell,it' only money 

http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=373257

[Gramps]

Sorry that was the wrong model, should be this one 

http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=383988

[Rik]

Looks quite a good buy, Wilf. I would be slightly concerned by the screen size still, but if you can look before you buy, you can make your own judgement.

[Gramps]

How do they measure the screen size Rik, is it corner to corner?

[Rik]

That's it, Wilf, as with TVs, monitors are measured on the diagonal.

[Inactive]

How do they measure the screen size Rik, is it corner to corner?

Not forgetting that a widescreen will give less visible screen ( size for size ) than a standard screen.

[RobMc]

Sorry that was the wrong model, should be this one 

http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=383988

Hi,

I bought an acer vista laptop (Aspire 5610z) from Comet in February. I've been very happy with it. Runs everything I want it to and seems to run very quickly.

First thing I did was to un-install the pre-installed Norton Internet Security and replace it with NOD32 (I see a trend here). I haven't bothered to un-install the other acer stuff as I haven't found the need to yet. In fact my laptop has almost the same spec as the one you identify except mine has "only" 1GB ram (which is sufficient for what I do).

Sharing files on Vista home is a little different from normal, just like XP Home shares files differently from XP Pro. But I have a happy little network with XP-Pro, XP-Home, server 2003, Vista Home, Ubuntu and a Synology Network device all happily sharing the ADSL line (both wired and wireless).


Only thing I would say before buying a Vista based laptop is... If you have an application or a piece of hardware that you absolutely must have running under Vista, check first that it will work.


Oh just to add the 15.4" screen is measured diagonally (I've just measured mine) and rather surprisingly it is 15.4" ! (approx 13" x 8.25") 1280*800 and it also looks quite nice connected to my samsung lcd tv (at 1360*768)

Rob.

[Rik]

First thing I did was to un-install the pre-installed Norton Internet Security and replace it with NOD32 (I see a trend here).

[RobMc]

Perhaps I should add that you get precious few cd/dvds with the acer laptop well actually only one, which is a Windows Vista Anytime upgrade DVD. One of the first things that you need to do when starting the laptop for the first time (or soon after) is to create a restore dvd set (so have a couple of blank DVD handy). You may feel a bit uncomfortable with this, I do, but at the end of the day "you pays your money and takes your choice".

Rob.

[Rik]

Good point, Rob, I'd forgotten about that.

[Gramps]

Well I don't know yet whether I have done the right thing but I settled for a Packard Bell 17" screen laptop but I haven't had a chance to sort it out yet.
Been pensioning off my 7 year old Time desktop which was connected to the netgear modem/router via a RJ45 patch lead, I was hoping that I could connect my Medion desktop with the same cable but windows doesn't pick the connection up, Do I have to reconfigure the router to suit the Medion ?

[mrapoc]

If it connects via ethernet - no just plug it in, but u may have to reapply any firewall settings to the new machine