Recs for a decent Laptop under 500£

[trebor8]

Could someone give me a recommendation for 15" laptop but must have own dedicated graphics card and under £500?

 

[LicensedToTrade]

You are better off starting with a list of requirements rather than a budget.

For the benefit of us could you:

List the tasks you will be doing on a day to day basis (always)
List the most demanding tasks you will be doing infrequently (sometimes)

Do you have an idea of how much RAm you need? 2GB, 4GB, 8GB?
Do you have an idea of what processor speed you need? <2.0GHz/ >2.0GHz/ >3.0GHz?

Do you need a single core processor? (for high demand individual applications)
Do you need a dual or quad core processor? (for mid-high demand applications running in tandem)

Graphics Card: You say you need a dedicated card rather than a shared gpu, why is this? Are you running games with demanding graphics engines? Are you running CAD/Design software?

Is weight an issue? Will you be travelling with it much? What about battery life?

Lots and lots of laptops for under £500 and lots for under £300 so if you answer the above I'm sure that I and others will have lots of recommendations.

 

[RemoteTechs]

Try using this, its the Dell PC advisor, you tell it what you want the machine to be able to do and it will recommend a laptop or PC based on your requirements.
Affiliate link disclaimer!

 

[trebor8]

You are better off starting with a list of requirements rather than a budget.

For the benefit of us could you:

List the tasks you will be doing on a day to day basis (always)

lots of everything, except gaming. Need the graphics card for Photoshop and some light video work, - i have mac pro's for most of the heavy duty stuff but these are not connected to the net. I transfer from mac to laptop via ext hardrive and then upload to website from laptop. I sometimes need to do some extra tweaking to graphics/video before uploading, - it'd be easier for these edits whilst on laptop instead of transferring back and forth to mac

really just looking for the highest spec for the money but need the graphics card, - weight and battery life not an issue but needs to be 15" ish

 

[LicensedToTrade]

How about a Samsung RV511?

15.6" LED screen
6GB RAM
2.53 GHz Core i3 processor
nVidia Geforce GPU
640GB hard drive
Around £500

http://www.dabs.com/products/samsun...um-laptop-79NC.html?refs=51340000-54950000-22

 

[trebor8]

How about a Samsung RV511?

15.6" LED screen
6GB RAM
2.53 GHz Core i3 processor
nVidia Geforce GPU
640GB hard drive
Around £500

http://www.dabs.com/products/samsun...um-laptop-79NC.html?refs=51340000-54950000-22

Thanks a bunch!!

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Thanks a bunch!!

No probs, if you find something else of interest be sure to come back and post it for others who may have taken an interest in the thread.

Also, if anyone has any concerns about who dabs are and if they are established, they are owned by BT.

 

[trebor8]

No probs, if you find something else of interest be sure to come back and post it for others who may have taken an interest in the thread.

Also, if anyone has any concerns about who dabs are and if they are established, they are owned by BT.

Sure, it's now a 2-way fight, just found the Acer Aspire 5552G:

http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5552G_Windows_7_Laptop_LX.RC602.001/version.asp

both have great specs for the money

Acer
Screen size - 15.6 in - 1366 x 768
Processor - AMD Phenom II - 2000 MHz
RAM - 4096 Mb
Hard Drive - 750 GB
Operating System - Windows 7 Home Premium
Optical Drive - DVD Super Multi DL
Graphics - Radeon HD6470
Webcam - Y

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Sure, it's now a 2-way fight, just found the Acer Aspire 5552G:

http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5552G_Windows_7_Laptop_LX.RC602.001/version.asp

both have great specs for the money

Acer
Screen size - 15.6 in - 1366 x 768
Processor - AMD Phenom II - 2000 MHz
RAM - 4096 Mb
Hard Drive - 750 GB
Operating System - Windows 7 Home Premium
Optical Drive - DVD Super Multi DL
Graphics - Radeon HD6470
Webcam - Y

Not a bad laptop but it has half as much video memory at 512mb, a slower clock speed but a decent processor none the less, 2GB less of RAM but then RAM is cheap and it can be upgraded to 8GB. It has a bigger hard drive which is always handy. The screen is LCD rather than LED so the colours may not be as vivid, whites will be pinkish and blacks will be greyish etc. But at £50.00 cheaper it aint bad.

 

[mit74]

Video memory makes little difference, there will be very little performance boost on a 1gb card over 512mb and if there is you'd only notice it on modern games. The acer has a considerably better graphics card (almost a generation faster benchmark wise) and the new n930 quad core processor which is faster than the i3 even if the clock speed is slower.

The Samsung card is very poor and if your doing video editing I wouldn't recommend it...however it does have an i3 processor that is optimized for video playback so probably makes up for it. The extra 2gb of Ram is only worth about £20.

Personally although I like the quality of Samsung laptops I'd go for the Acer.

 

[ScotComp]

I've got a few Acer laptops and they're by far the best ones we use and they're under £500. eBuyer is pretty good for them.