[Magicjim]

Hi all,
Would really appreciate some help with purchasing a new family laptop to replace my ancient PC.

Had my heart set over the last few months, waiting for the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 700. This is because in general day-to-day use, a tablet would do the job. My iPod touch has managed for some time now. But I don't want an Ipad and thought this tablet with keyboard was the answer. If I needed anything more, I could attach the keypad.

However, I think it may not meet all my requirements. So over to the knowledgeable AVForums members!

I have a budget of £400-£600 (preferably nearer to £500)

Here are the basics:

Size: 14" - 17"
Display: Must be Full HD
Screen: Would prefer matte but spec & price dictate
Use for: General daily surfing/emails. E-learning (PDF's etc.), HD footage/14mp Pics editing and saving (just purchased Panasonic TZ30). Have ability to burn to seperate Bluray drive. Music storage & editing (inc. be capable of handling music mixing/producing programs). Good reliable Wifi & poss. 3G. Streaming fims/music/watching iplayer/You Tube etc(+ childrens websites to keep them happy with games and programmes). Connect to Panasonic HD TV to watch streaming movies/home movie & pics.
Gaming: No
Battery life: Needs to be above average if possible. But general usage will be at home. So will be plugged in the majority of the time.
Portability: Will be at home most of the time. So only the occasional trip out/holidays/trip to play centre etc. So portabilty not a big issue.
Blu-Ray: With the option of cloud storage and the fact that I could store my HD footage on external drives to watch again, along with streaming movies. I guess this would be an unrequired extra cost/weight etc? Though it would be nice to watch Blu-Ray through laptop on my main TV.
HDMI: Connection is a must. Preferably more than one port.
Preferred brand: Willing to be guided though keen on Asus, HP, Samsung.
Brands to avoid: None really, though Acer doesn't really inspire me &/or anything that looks/feels cheap. (stating the obvious perhaps)
Refurbished: If a refurbished model matched my requirements, wasn't too old and the guarantee was good with reliable after sales, I would be interested.
Other details:Obviously I would like the best my budget will allow. The bigger the processor, storage, RAM, HDD whatever, the better! I'm guessing that a 3rd gen Intel Core i7 will unfortunately not be within my price range. Webcam is not important.

Any advise would be greatly received as my head is hurting!

[LJx]

My advice would be to look at this website and then sort all the laptops by price Cheap Laptops, Notebooks, Tablets & Netbook Deals at SaveOnLaptops
and go through them comparing specs. For £400 you are looking at an intel i5 CPU, for closer to £600 then you are pushing an i7 quad core CPU, as you don't need a graphics card for gaming then an i7 is definitly an option if you were pushing towards £600. But even spending just £400 gets you an i5

[Magicjim]

Thanks LJx. Do you, or does anyone, think that the Asus Infinity will be able to manage the tasks I will be doing? Or will I need extra's for example to store/save pics/movies etc. I love the idea of a tablet for genral use but don't know if it'll be suffice for the rarer tasks i'll need. Indeed, will a cheaper £400ish i5 Laptop be able to do all I need? Apologies for the lack of tech savvy, but I thought I had a basic knowledge of laptops etc. I've found out how wrong I am now . I will check out the link though - thanks.

[EndlessWaves]

If it must be Full HD then you can discount the transformer infinity (which is 1920x1200) as well as most laptops, generally lower resolutions are more popular because they're more usable for many people (a high resolution gives you a lot of space by shrinking everything). However, these days you can get some 15" and 17" laptops for well under £1000 with 1920x1080 screens so you may be able to find something in your budget if you're set on it.

I'm not sure about the movie editing but I would think the transformer should handle basic photo editing, point and shoot cameras of a similar resolution to yours have been around for five or six years now.

And do remember that there are always trade-offs, high internal specs will often mean lower build quality and lower screen quality at the same price and laptops are far from equal in those areas.

[Magicjim]

Thanks EndlessWaves. But the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 700 is marketed as the first Full HD tablet? + The TZ30 is not just a point & shoot. It takes full hd footage. Confused ..........

[LJx]

I saw an article on that tablet and it has got a good screen 1920x1200 resolution but it is still a tablet and can't be compared to a PC or laptop, it uses as a different sort of CPU and won't run any of the sort of apps that a laptop can run. It is more like an iPad or nexus 7 than a laptop but if you think that will be enough then you should go for it although I don't know when it is out.
personally if I was going to get a tablet I would wait for Windows 8 tablets as some of them will be fully compatible with desktop stuff but they will probably be expensive

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by Magicjim

Thanks EndlessWaves. But the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 700 is marketed as the first Full HD tablet?

It'll show Full HD without scaling it down, but being a higher resolution there will be extra space (in this case black bars top and bottom). There's nothing wrong with that, but whether it'll suit you depends on the reason you've specified Full HD resolution.

Originally Posted by Magicjim

+ The TZ30 is not just a point & shoot. It takes full hd footage. Confused ..........

Yeah, my point was that you'd expect the point and click cameras to have a similarly trivial editing process requiring than requiring special high end hardware.

[Magicjim]

Ah, ok. Maybe showing my ignorance in that case. I figured if I've got a 14mp camera that does hd, then I'd need an hd laptop or whatever to edit? My current problem is a great camera that I can't save off the memory card, as my pc doesn't have the spec to save/edit/show. So I keep buying memory cards as I can't clear the old one. Crazy but true. So when buying a laptop, this would need to be resolved as a priority. I just don't know what spec etc I require. Think that the Asus tablet is not the one for me, that is clear.

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by Magicjim

Ah, ok. Maybe showing my ignorance in that case. I figured if I've got a 14mp camera that does hd, then I'd need an hd laptop or whatever to edit?

HD and Full HD are the TV Terminology way of refering to exactly the same thing as Megapixels in camera speak. HD = 0.9 Megapixels, Full HD = 2.1 Megapixels. So your TZ30 shoots 14MP stills and 2.1MP video and you can edit either on a screen with fewer megapixels (resolution in the computer world).