Recommendations for laptops (using MacBook Pro as a benchmark)

Hi. Firstly, I can't really afford to spend atleast AU$2200 on a 15" MacBook Pro, haha.
I don't really want to spend much over AU$1,500-1,600. The laptop I had was a Dell Inspiron 6400. I NEVER want a Dell again. It's broken down after about 3.5 years, but I've had a lot of trouble with it over the years.
My requriements:

• Screen: atleast 15"..
  I'm a design student. A part from the the fact that everybody's riding Apple at uni, the main reasons i use MacBook pro as a standard is because of their design/style, reliability AND the screen's colours are so rich.
• Atleast 160GB HD
• I've heard 4GB ram is the new norm and I guess appropriate since i use Adobe programs (often simultaenously). I can't recall what how many GHz my Dell had but again, whatever's the best I can get in that price range.

I hope that's fairly reasonable for the price range. Ive heard that Toshiba and HP are good, reliable brands but any suggestions which consider what i've mentioned would be greatly appreciated!

Welcome to the forums

I've recently bought a Lenovo W510 which I'm very happy with. It's got a quad core chip, 8 GB of RAM (options are 2 - 16 GB), a 500 GB HDD and a Quadro FX880M graphics chip. It cost me a good bit less than a lesser-specced Macbook Pro.

The only down side is that it looks smart, but it isn't shiny aluminium. It ought to have all the grunt you need though.

Alternatively, look into the HP Envy machines. They look as nice - if not nicer - than the MacBook Pro machines while still being a good bit cheaper. The Lenovo build quality ought to put both Apple and HP to shame though.

I would go with a Asus g51VX.

I'm very happy with the Asus laptop that's listed in my sig too. 2.8 GHz Core 2 proc 4 gigs ram and 15" screen. So far it's given me no trouble at all. It replaced my old Dell E1705, which I actually loved but was getting long in the tooth (3 years old). Since I work at remote location in the Gulf of Mexico, I got into the habit of retiring my laptops at a max of 3 years to try to make sure I don't have a catastrophic breakdown while on the job. But this Asus runs cooler, is faster and is lighter than the old Dell. But I do miss the extra real estate the 17" 1920 X 1200 monitor on the Dell gave me though.

ALSO it's got to have a good battery life and a webcam! haha
I've had a look at Lenovo. They seem to have good prices for their specs, but my god.. I don't think I could get over how ugly their ThinkPads are lol (I know that's pretty superficial but if Im spending that much I want to atleast be half-happy with it how looks).
I'm thinking of sticking to Toshiba, Asus (and maybe Lenovo.. lol) but i'm still so lost because there are so many models but then you can just upgrade to the same specs. Should I be aiming for the cheapest models and then upgrade their specs? How would you be thinking?

Well you can always just buy a 8 or 12 cell battery which will increase the life time the Asus g51vx does have a 2.0mb webcam

+1 for Lenovo or ASUS. Lose the cosmetic complex. Bad enough people are infected with that with regards to phones.

onenine90 said:

ALSO it's got to have a good battery life and a webcam! haha
I've had a look at Lenovo. They seem to have good prices for their specs, but my god.. I don't think I could get over how ugly their ThinkPads are lol (I know that's pretty superficial but if Im spending that much I want to atleast be half-happy with it how looks).

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They aren't ugly, I find them to be quite plain but smart. They are built solidly though which I would say is far more important than looks. All my opinion of course, but I'd have a look at one or two in the flesh before you decide.

I'm thinking of sticking to Toshiba, Asus (and maybe Lenovo.. lol) but i'm still so lost because there are so many models but then you can just upgrade to the same specs.

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I'm not keen on Toshiba models but I've only seen the lower half of their range which seem to be very poorly put together. I have heard good things about the Asus range though.

Should I be aiming for the cheapest models and then upgrade their specs? How would you be thinking?

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Price up the upgrade vs. the difference in price.

e.g. when I bought my laptop there was a £70 price difference between 4 GB and 8 GB RAM. 4 GB of RAM costs £70 elsewhere, so I'm as well getting the upgrade from the manufacturer.

RAM and HDD are the only things I'd upgrade on a laptop. Things like the screen (what resolution do you need?) and CPU can be very very difficult to upgrade and the GPU usually cannot be upgraded. If you know if you have any miniPCI slots you can add things like Bluetooth later, again weigh up the cost.

David said:

They aren't ugly, I find them to be quite plain but smart. They are built solidly though which I would say is far more important than looks. All my opinion of course, but I'd have a look at one or two in the flesh before you decide.



I'm not keen on Toshiba models but I've only seen the lower half of their range which seem to be very poorly put together. I have heard good things about the Asus range though.



Price up the upgrade vs. the difference in price.

e.g. when I bought my laptop there was a £70 price difference between 4 GB and 8 GB RAM. 4 GB of RAM costs £70 elsewhere, so I'm as well getting the upgrade from the manufacturer.

RAM and HDD are the only things I'd upgrade on a laptop. Things like the screen (what resolution do you need?) and CPU can be very very difficult to upgrade and the GPU usually cannot be upgraded. If you know if you have any miniPCI slots you can add things like Bluetooth later, again weigh up the cost.

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Okay so maybe I will stick more to ASUS and Lenovo.. Do ASUS not sell online? I can't see a store (atleast an Australian one).

And I should've clarified - i'm not talking about upgrading afterwards, I mean upgrading while customizing/ordering the laptop on the site.
Somebody said to me it was bad that I chose a cheap Dell model and then just upped the specs because it still meant that there would be cheap parts in there - that i would've been better off going for a more mid-range model; is there any validity to that?

onenine90 said:

Okay so maybe I will stick more to ASUS and Lenovo.. Do ASUS not sell online? I can't see a store (atleast an Australian one).

And I should've clarified - i'm not talking about upgrading afterwards, I mean upgrading while customizing/ordering the laptop on the site.
Somebody said to me it was bad that I chose a cheap Dell model and then just upped the specs because it still meant that there would be cheap parts in there - that i would've been better off going for a more mid-range model; is there any validity to that?

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Yes, there is some truth in that. Although you can upgrade some of the innards, you are still left with a chassis, screen, motherboard, power supply, keyboard and touchpad that may well be cheap crap.

Okay so i'm sticking to ASUS.. I know this questions depends on ghz and usage and stuff, but simply put, should I be aiming for an i7 processor over an i5? Would I be able to tell much of a difference?

onenine90 said:

Okay so i'm sticking to ASUS.. I know this questions depends on ghz and usage and stuff, but simply put, should I be aiming for an i7 processor over an i5? Would I be able to tell much of a difference?

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There are two types of i5: the 4xxM and the 5xxM series. The latter is the slightly better one (it has some virtualisation stuff, etc. See: http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=47341,49022,) and clockspeeds are from ca. 2.1 to 2.5 GHz.

There are also two types of i7: the 6xxM (dual core, 2.66 GHz) and the 7xxQM (quad core, 1.6 GHz).

It all depends what you are doing.

For games, I'd aim for an i5-520M or i7-620M (fast dual core chips). For things like photoshop, rendering, video editing, heavy multitasking, running lots of virtual machines (I often have 1-2 open) get the i7-720QM.

The dual core chips will have better battery life and lower heat output (25 W) than the quad core chips (35 W). I get ~3 to 3.5 h on a 9 cell battery, for example, with an i7-720QM.

I recently ran a Windows 7 install on 2 laptops, both equipped with 4GB of ram. One had an i5 and one had an i7. The i7 pulled ahead and was considerably faster. Can say that much.

I would go for the i7 quad for future proof.

Thanks for the help every1! I end up gettingan ASUS N61JQ-JX002V - apart from the suprisingly crappy webcam and the fact that it's not as quiet as I thought it would be (just as loud my dell really - but I guess it's pbly just the fan) I can't complain!