h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have no idea what much of the jargon means anymore. Could anyone help?

I've been happy with different Dells for years and don't want an HP. My netbook is an ACER which I chose for the huge battery life, but that's now rubbish. I only use it to take out to bookings with me, often not for months, then every day for a week, and I expect I'll change that to a tablet when one I like comes out.

I mainly use a laptop for space reasons, I only occasionally take it out with me so weight is not an issue. I use it for surfing, Office type tasks but have what seems like a stupid amount of photos, which I sort through regularly.

Fast please! As the one I'm using now is slow as a pig. It was bought for my son cheap, then confiscated and when puppies ate the lead for the Dell I moved to this horrible thing.

Has to cope with being on or asleep pretty much 24/7 *or* faster than a speeding bullet to load up.

Any ideas?

Budget is, er, well, not a huge issue. The last Dell I had I paid about £700 for, maybe I should just splash out and get another lead for it, but it's about 5 years old now. I should be entitled to a new one.

and I want a number keypad, so I guess that means a 17" screen.

The advice I was given by a very knowledgeable computer nerd friend of mine was to go for something with an i3, i5 or i7 processor (depending upon budget and usage). i7 processors are however only really needed for serious gaming applications.

However not just any i3/5 processor will do. It needs to be one of the more recent incarnations which use 'sandy bridge' architecture. These are super fast (as I can now testify). My i3 processor laptop (an Acer 5750) is as fast as I could ever have dreamed a computer could be . I find using anything else a frustrating experience now.

Spec-wise I think that you should buy the machine which contains the best processor you can afford- other things like hard-disc size and memory can be very easily and cheaply upgraded later. It's the processor which costs a lot and can be very fiddly (especially in a laptop) to upgrade.

In other words, given the choice of a laptop with an old pentium 4 processor, 1 terrabyte hard drive and 8gb memory or;
one with an i5 processor, but only a 320gb hard drive and 2gb memory, choose the latter!

The other expensive thing is the software, so make sure it has windows 7 on it, otherwise upgrading later will be pricey. Windows 7 also comes in various flavours, with 'professional' the best I suppose... I don't however think you'll find any new laptops with XP on them now.

Oh and look out for reconditioned or refurbished laptops. I got mine for £100 less than most places were selling my specification machine for (350). It was indistinguishable from new

Bye the way, computer model numbers don't mean much; I found during my research for the new laptop, that they are about as helpful as car model numbers in telling you what you'll get. So my Acer 5750 can be sold with a myriad of different spec, just like a 'Ford Fiesta' can be anything from the pre-computer-age mk1 to the current space-age-elecric-everything specifications So you must ensure that you are comparing like with like when checking prices.

I would like to start a campaign that states that model numbers of anything should be unique to a specific specification!

Brand-wise my personal bias is towards Acer, just because they seem to last forever- usually well beyond a time that you would want to use it due to obsolescence. I've found many, many anecdotal stories online about Acer's reliability.

hear hear to Acer's. They are so long lasting it is amazing.

Thanks, that's really helpful. I already found that I can't compare prices properly. the bit about not needing the i7 was *very* helpful because that added about £200 to the laptops i was looking at, and I wasn't sure if I needed it.

Which? Said 500HD and 4GB of ram, you don't think that's necessary?

If ACER last so long why does the battery only give me 2 hours now, instead of the 8 it started with (and what made me buy it)?

Brilliant Winnoch - I am in the same position as Mina, except I'm looking to getting a laptop for private purposes only, but don't need it for playing online. And you gave an explanation even I can understand!

Aye 4gb memory and 500gb storage would be a good minimum. Was just using extreme examples to highlight that it's not the end of the world if you're caught short with either. Whereas if you're caught short with a weak (by current standards) processor it's harder and more expensive to rectify. I've seen 4gb memory modules for less than £20! A new high spec processor on the other hand will usually be at least £100, then you have to fit it.. My laptop only came with a 320gb drive but not too worried. I store most of my big files on my main pc and am external drive.

Oh and which? Is a good guide to consult. Perhaps not the very last word in detailed reviews but you're unlikely to end up with a turkey buying one of their best buys. just remember though that the I series of processors can still come with the old slower archetecture. I suggest you google the processor model number on the laptop you choose to ensure it uses sandy bridge tech.

As to start-up times... how adamant are you about your laptop running Windows?

At the risk of sounding like a pundit, Linux Ubuntu (which is the OS I am using) is terribly fast starting up, even with a fairly sluggish processor. Should you be happy not to use Windows, then Linux (which you will get for free) could be a real option. As for office software, there is Open Office, which does everything that the MS Office package does, but again, comes free. As for sorting photographs, Linux supports loads of software for that, which, again, is free. (F-Spot, for one. There is GIMP, too, which does most of what a decent version of Photoshop can do.)

All this would cost you nothing, and you would have some 100 pieces of silver to spare on more CPU power.

Y.

I tried using some of the open source stuff before - I used Scribus after seeing it recommended here, but it was hard to use, in fact so hard I'm now about to pay someone to put my newsletter content into the format I've been using for years. The Help was AWFUL, it wouldn't do anything with photos because I didn't have Gimp, I couldn't make it auto fill text boxes and couldn't find a way to find out if it did that, it didn't have auto text size and again no easy way to find out how. I wanted to carry on using PSP which I've used for years and know how it goes, so didn't see why Scribus couldn't just work with what I already hard. All my work is in Office, and I have a paid copy, so it won't cost me anything to reload onto a new computer. If I buy a laptop it's going to have Win7 on it, so to remove that and reload that, then learn to use it is basically time I really don't have at the moment.

£100 is more valuable to me as time, than money at the moment.

Winnoch, will it actually say 'sandy bridge'? I like the Dell XPS 17, the i5 if I don't need i7 and seemed nicely priced. There's no way I have time to look through every different model to get the best price, and Which won't tell me without subscribing. Annoyingly, Gadget Show haven't updated laptops for over 2 years, and seem to concentrate on people wanting to watch movies on it. Rather than work.

Personally, if it were me, rather than concentrate on processor power I'd concentrate on RAM and hard disk capacity...

Unless you're running a lot of graphics-heavy software a lot of the time (games, 3D design), 'office' software will quite happily run on virtually any modern processor...

Where things slow down drastically is if the machine hasn't got enough memory to handle what it's being asked to do... Personnaly I'd go for 8GB RAM - but that's being a bit greedy 4 will probably be fine... and as big a hard drive as you can get your hands on (500 GB as an absolute minimum)

If you're not going to move it around much then I'd also go for the biggest screen you can find, and the best keyboard...

Yes, you can update RAM & Hard Drive if they're not big enough, but it can be a pain in the neck doing it on a laptop as the stuff is crammed into a little tiny space - not exactly designed for easy removal... And unlike a desktop, it's generally impossible just to add a second hard drive... Which may well mean paying someone to take out your existing hard drive, copy all the files onto a new one and installing it in its place (and, in the meantime, stealing and 'interesting' photos you happen to have left on the machine)

I've used Linux Ubuntu for a few years now and haven't noticed it being any faster.

I'll stick with the 4 and 500 then, as minimums, and i5. The chances of any upgrading happening is nil whatever happens, so that little lot seem okay as a starting poitn.

I've just bought a Dell Inspiron

Don't buy a Dell Inspiron.

I have a Dell inspiron and have had it for 2 years. It is working beutifully and still takes next to no time to load up and runs fast despite the amount of games I have on it. I am running vista on it as windows 7 hadn't come out when I got it.

Dell do an outlet shop so if you aren't fussed about telling them what you want you can get a cheaper model. This was in the region of £300 though they were retailing at more.

I have had a lot of laptops in my time usually only lasting for a year and being slow for half of that time. This one however hasn't had any of those issues 2 years on.

Mina, you don't necessarily have to get a 17" to get a number pad; I have a Toshiba C655 15.6", with a number pad (Dell and HP have 15.6" ones that have the number pad, too.) Just my

OK Whiskey, I can see where you're coming from re the hard drive. But I stand by my statement not to worry too much about the supplied RAM; It's cheap to upgrade if you have speed issues and the modules just slip into a slot under the base usually, so no dismantling/ removal of other components. In practice though all but the very cheapest laptops will come with 3-4gb nowadays. Do however check that the motherboard can support more memory!

Oh yeah, almost forgot about the practical stuff; screen size, battery life and weight! It'll always be a compromise though; small screen usually = long battery life, but not so satisfying to view for long periods. Weight, I've found, tends to be a factor of price; they get lighter the more you spend.