Laptop advice needed please...

[sardonicus]

I've been looking to buy a new laptop as my pc is a few years old now(the sticker on it says designed for windows 2000 and ME !!)
The Mrs wont let me spend the money on my disco but a laptop's o.k.
I've narrowed it down to two , a  HP G61-410SA  and a Dell Inspiron 1545. which are adequate for what i will use them for.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-g61-410sa-04127309-pdt.html?srcid=369&xtor=AL-11
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/dell-inspiron-1545-black-04927996-pdt.html

So has anyone got any advice on which one to choose,and is there much difference between a T4400 and a T3100 ?
Thanks .

[dxmedia]

Laptops around that price are much of a much. Just put the specs against each other and see if ones missing something you'd need.

Don't go to PC world though, try online such as aria or ebuyer.

[Saffy]

Not all dell 1545 are the same and pc world sell a poor spec of the machine at a higher price than for instance Currys so shop around and compare spec of the 1545 like Hard drive size, processor brand/speed and memory and webcam.   I have a dell 1545 it was a step down from the lenovo I had that went pop but I really like it. It was the lesser screen resolution that I had to get used to everything else is good. It didn't have built in bluetooth so I bought the proper dell internal module cheap off ebay. The internal wifi card was not was not a good as my old one so swapped that out too.

[Bobtail]

Also try Amazon as they do weekly specials

Bought my kids two very good spec'd HP net books for less than £230

Jim

[tim_aka_tim]

Don't buy HP laptops!!!! Warranty provider Squaretrade did a study of laptop reliability in 2009.
HP came out worst by a long shot. 25.6% of HP laptops will fail within 3 years of buying.
Also, netbooks are 20% more likely to fail than a laptop. I suppose an HP netbook would be the
ultimate insult.

Dell comes out at 18.3% failure withing 3 years. If you want a decent laptop, buy Asus or Toshiba,
whose failure rates are 15.6% & 15.7% respectively (Top positions on the survey).

http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

I've seen plenty of failed HP laptops personally. Many of which are just over a year old.
Likewise, I've seen lots of very old Toshibas that run just fine.

[jay2578]

I`m on an acer aspire 1410, old, but a grand when new! only time i had a problem was when i needed more memory.......... well, not really a problem

[carbore]

The thing I like about Dels is the Service tag. You just key that number into the webiste and you get all the Drivers and manuals for that Exact machine. Makes it really easy for support. Trying to find drivers for some machines is a nightmare as they have cryptic corporate websites and change the internals mid production run.

Either way im sure youll be happy.

[tim_aka_tim]

is there much difference between a T4400 and a T3100 ?

Anything marked Celeron, as the T3100 is considered low end. It runs at 1.9Ghz, is dual core
with 1M cache and 800Mhz front side bus. The T4400 is 2.2Ghz with the same cache and
fsb. They are however, different processors with other different specs. To give you some kind
of performance idea, the T3100 gets a Passmark score of 1314, while the T4400 gets 1549.
(Passmark is a cpu benchmark).

In the real world, things like the hard disk, graphics and memory speed will make more difference
to your actual experience.