lisauk

I currently have the compaq nx7010 but it has started to play up. I have £230 in pc vouchers and have saved my christmas money and birthday money up so in total i have £650 to spend at PC world.

I want to stay with a wide screen as that is what i have been using for the past few years.

I am a web designer and run photoshop CS3 and Illustrator cs3 on my laptop so i need something quite powerful, what do you recommend within my budget?

I am going to go to PC work next sunday 10 Feb.

Please can anyone offer advice.

Lisa

TheMatt

Hi Lisa,

Please answer these questions here.

lisauk

1. Budget: How much money are you willing to spend on the laptop?
---- I have £650

2. Screen: What size screen do you want, and do you need widescreen?
--- currently got 15.4 TFT widescreen so dont want to go down in size but up a little maybe nice

3. Brands: Are there any brands you want or don't want to buy?
--- Currently have a HP compaq nx7010 my brother just brought a HP but its quite bulky I am open to suggestion.

4. Mobility: How much will you need and how long does the battery need to last?
--- I need wireless as my home net work is completely wireless, good battery is always good but I do actually use it mostly at home so plugging it in is not a problem. Its just good to be able to take it out if i need to show someone a site i have created for them.

5. Durability: Does this laptop need to be sturdy or durable/semi-durable?
-- Durable is not really an issue for me.

6. Multitasking: Will you be multitasking with this laptop and if so, how much?
-- Multitasking not really sure about but if you mean running lots of programs at once this will be used for photoshop, illustrator, flash, dreamweaver etc etc so lots of Ram i guess it needed.

7. Gaming: Will you be gaming and if so, how much and how new are the games?
-- I use my psp, ps3 for gaming so this is not an issue

8. Calculations: Will you be doing any intense calculations or multimedia encoding?
-- I use flash as i am a web designer but that about all in this case i think.

9. Storage: How much storage will you need and what will you be storing?
-- Storage is a good think currently have a 40gb hard drive and 12GB is free. I have had this laptop for about 4 years so i guess around 120gb would be sufficient.

10. Optical Media: Will you need to burn any optical media like CDs or DVDs?
DVD burner is always good especially if i have to burn any projects to DVD or even my photographs from my camera onto DVD.

11. Operating System: Do you want Windows XP or Vista, or Linux compatibility?
--- Vista is a must as i do alot of IT support for friends and family and I only have XP currently so its hard for me to find my way around on there machines.

12. Location: What country do you live in?
-- Live in UK

TheMatt

Take a look at something like these choices:
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Think...UK/version.asp
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_...21/version.asp

lisauk

Thank you i will take a look someone at work as recommended the 13" macbook what do you think I am normally anti mac but it looks nice also there is a new macbook air out not sure on price though. 13" macbook is £699 in PCWorld.

lisauk

Just took at look at your recommendations sorry they look a little clumsy. What do you think of the macbook?

TheMatt

The real question is, what do you think of the Macbook? It really depends if the operating system will be able to do all that you need it to do (as far as the selection of applications available is concerned). Other than that, all new Macs (specifically those with Intel processors) are now actually PCs and their hardware configuration is nearly identical to that of other laptops.

lisauk

I like the look of the macbook not going to get a macbook air they dont even have a cd drive.

MacBook seems good and if i want to apparently i have install xp on the hard disk too.

As a web designer i think maybe it is the way forward and the experience of a mac after all these year cant do me any harm.

Anyone got a macbook that wants to put in there 5pence?

TheMatt

Post in Alternative Computing > Mac support for more info. With the Macbook what is nice is that there are very few operating system and hareware-software compatibility issues.