New laptop, Opinions please

1992kingsley

Hi,

I need to get a laptop for use at home and college and was looking for a second opinion,

I will be using is for word, excel, PowerPoint, Internet and watching films,

I want a small one as I cycle into college so it has to fit into my bag!

I was looking at a Lenovo Thinkpad X121e with the following specs,

intel core i3 processor
8gb of ram (do I need this much)
finger print reader
320gb 7200rpm hard disk drive
6 cell battery
not sure which wifi to get either intel centrino wireless N 1000 or thinkpad a/b/g/n?

Total cost is a little under €630

Thanks for help in advance

Pov06

If you want to watch HD movies, then you need to get an AMD based processor because they include a dedicated Radeon HD card.

I bought myself an Acer Aspire One 722. It has a 720p screen and can play 1080p movies (on an external monitor/TV) no problem

1992kingsley

How reliable is a Acer Aspire One 722?
As in will I need to buy another one in a year?
Or would it last a few years?
I would rather spend a little more if I knew it would last longer

Neodymium

Pov06 wrote: »

If you want to watch HD movies, then you need to get an AMD based processor because they include a dedicated Radeon HD card.

That is untrue. You do not need a dedicated graphics card to watch hd movies, even in 1080p. The newer sandybridge 2xxx intel 'i' series processors which include intel 3000 graphics would probably be better than the entry level radeon dedicated graphics cards.

How reliable is a Acer Aspire One 722?

Lenovo laptops generally have a much better build quality than acer laptops. I have an acer and it's not very durable. I would choose the lenovo laptop.

There is a lenovo z570 here for £400 (~ €465) with similar specs to the one you posted. It has 4gb ram compared to the 8gb in the laptop you posted, but 4gb should be plenty for your needs. The laptop which I posted also has a larger hdd at 500gb

Fluffy88

Do you have a link to the one your talking about above?

Dell have an Inspiron 14z laptop which is a 14" laptop.
or
This laptop looks like a good deal, 13.3" screen

EDIT: Neodymium's laptop looks like a better deal than both of them and as far as lasting, any of the Intel 2xxx(Sandybridge) series will last a long time

arknine

Bought a x121e last month. Delighted with it.

I wanted something very portable and powerful enough.

I bought direct from Lenovo and they had an extra 10% discount - came to just over €400 for the 2gb. ..... i bought 8gb of RAM and upgraded myself as it was much cheaper than buying from Lenovo...

Phone Digital River (sales line on Lenovo site) they're based somewhere in Ireland.... ask them for a discount code (you might get lucky )

Anyway - i have this a month now - and for about €450 all in. Bargain.

Its the size and the portability 11.6" screen - that wins against the 15" laptops suggested - 15" is too big to be lugging around the place.

sh7289

If you're thinking about buying a Lenovo Z570, have a read of this thread;

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-B-V-and-Z-series/many-Z570-problems/td-p/481043/page/23

I spent the last couple of weeks trying to find something around the €500-€550 mark and settled with an Acer Aspire 5750g from Komplett for €549 delivered.

Specifications
Product Description
Acer 5750G-2434G50MN
Processor
Intel® Core i5-2430M Processor 2.4GHz
RAM
4GB DDR3 SODIMM
Hard Drive
500GB - 5400rpm
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce GT520M - 1GB
Network
Gigabit LAN, Wireless b/g/n netwerk
Built- in Devices
1.3 Megapixel Webcam
Connections
1x USB3.0, 2x USB2.0, HDMI, VGA, Gigabit LAN RJ45, Jack in, Jack out
Card Reader
multi card reader
Optical Storage
Dual Layer DVD±ReWriter
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition
Screen
15.6" TFT Widescreen LED Backlit ( 1366x768 ) HD Ready

http://komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_02PC/02_NOTEBOO/21_15/productdetails/80003371/Acer_15_6_5750G_2434G50MN_i5_2430M_4GB_500GB/LX_RMU02_138/default.aspx

arknine

10% discount code for Lenovo site

X10%NOV

kevinmul

Lenovo support are usless. my new laptop camera never worked . I have returned it under warrenty and 5 weeks later the best I can expect is another 2 weeks. If you expect good back up forget it.

Fluffy88

kevinmul wrote: »

Lenovo support are usless. my new laptop camera never worked . I have returned it under warrenty and 5 weeks later the best I can expect is another 2 weeks. If you expect good back up forget it.

Sorry to hear you are having issues kevin.

In contrast I bought an XPS 17 with a backlight keyboard.
When it arrived yesterday(after 4 working days), there was no backlight.
Called Dell, spent an hour on the phone with them from 7 at night, and a technician is coming to my house tomorrow to install a new backlight keyboard.

Some people say Dell are not a good brand, have to say, service and support is amazing!