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souperman
29-Apr-07, 22:35
Looking for a laptop as a 16th birthday present, around the £400/450 range, any ones to avoid / recommend ? I was considering the Acer 5633 Wlmi, any thoughts / advice gratefully received,
Thanks.

Bobinovich
29-Apr-07, 23:27
The Acer ones do have great specs for the price. Remember if you want the laptop to be used wirelessly then you'll need to invest in a wireless router if you don't already have one.

This one (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/123116) is good value at £410 inc. VAT or this one (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/120022) at just under £450 inclusive if you don't want to venture to Vista and would prefer the integrated card reader & webcam to the extra 512Mb memory. It would really depend on what the laptop is going to be used for.

I would suggest staying away from Intel Celeron & AMD Sempron processor models however - laptops can't easily be upgraded (memory is a fairly easy component though) so buy as high a spec. as you can justify.

Hope that helps :D

souperman
30-Apr-07, 01:22
Thanks Bobinovich, I was hoping you would catch this thread, should have mentioned the laptop will be used mostly for MSN, Bebo, music, photos and making cd`s for her old man, ok to employ your services for the setting up of anti-virus, firewall, router etc sometime during the next few weeks ?

Bobinovich
30-Apr-07, 23:00
Of course :D! Just trying to remember your setup though and cannae mind if you've got a wireless router already or whether you're simply running one PC piggybacked onto the other through a network cable? I seem to remember it being the latter and, if that's the case, I'd recommend you nip to Argos and pick up either this (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6769091.htm) (my recommendation) or this (http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6766630.htm), either of which will allow you to connect both desktop systems (wired) and the new laptop (wireless) independently of each other - much neater with added hardware Firewall security for all! :)

As the laptop is going to be used with MSN & Bebo then the integrated webcam on the 5633 model would, I'm sure, be appreciated, and also the card reader may come in handy for the photography side. Lastly it comes with Windows Media Centre which is great for easy access to music & photo's. Both systems are capable of writing to CD & DVD so no problem with the music CD's!

souperman
30-Apr-07, 23:30
Excellent, I`ll be in touch over the next week or three,
Thanks again.

emb123
01-May-07, 14:11
For what it's worth another professional opinion... I agree with Bobinovitch and also about avoiding the lower end processors. More important to have a better processor than a bigger hard disk for instance. You can upgrade the hard disk, memory CD/DVD writer and a few other bits but the processor is there for the life of the machine. I'd suggest choose carefully when it comes to graphics engine. I favour nVidia GPUs personally, and where possible avoid shared graphics memory, it's a cop-out and tends to gives poor graphics performance.

Acer are excellent value for money and would be my first choice for overall bang for buck.

There are a few big names that are worth considering when money is no object, but you could do a lot worse than Acer. They are not quite so robust as say some of the HP / Compaq models so you'll need to look after them (worth having them insured too) but the same is true of all laptops.

I'd suggest avoiding Samsung laptops. I've encountered a few which after a really rather short period of time looked like old Fiats - bits keep falling off.

----
Having looked at the two laptops you've listed, I would suggest this one http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/120052 for just a few pounds more has a slightly higher spec. Has Centrino 64bit CPU and the graphics memory is not shared. Ati Radeon GPUs are perfectly good too btw - indeed some people prefer them, I personally favour nVidia but's that's mainly for reasons of software compatability which is not such a big deal these days.

souperman
01-May-07, 18:36
Thanks for all replies, Acer now ordered, along with Netgear router as recommended by Bobinovich ( £42 with Amazon ), should keep a teenager happy for a couple of hours !
Thanks again.

Rheghead
02-May-07, 15:38
I use an acer travelmate laptop as my main computer. It went through a stage of cutting out due to overheating. But I am pleased with it and it was my fault for letting the mrs have the heating on at 30°C and playing a high graphics game at the same time.

sweetpea
06-May-07, 18:05
whether you're simply running one PC piggybacked onto the other through a network cable?

Can you tell me how to do this? I've got the netgear router from argos so when I set up a laptop what do I need to do?

Bobinovich
06-May-07, 18:42
Hi Sweetpea

With the router plugged in as per the instructions and switched on, and your laptop powered up (and it's wireless facility enabled) then your laptop should report "Wireless Network Detected" in a bubble near the clock. Click the bubble and then click the Connect button to connect to the wireless network.

Insert the Netgear CD into the laptop and follow through the Wizard to setup the router - the main thing you'll need to supply is the ISP login username (frequently your e-mail address) and password. Once you've gone through the wizard you *should* find yourself able to surf the Internet.

If the wizard doesn't secure your wireless connection then that will need to be set up to stop anybody latching onto your wireless signal. We can go through this once you're up and running.

There are a number of things which could crop up during the whole process but I'm sure you'll get back in touch if things don't work as easily as the instructions above indicate.

Let us know how you get on and feel free to PM me if you get stuck!