Best place to buy a meaty laptop

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Can anyone recommend a good place to buy a meaty laptop.

I want :
- P4 1.6 / Athlon XP1500 or better
- 512MB RAM
- GeForce4 440Go 64MB graphics card
- 15" (or bigger) screen with 1400*1050 res at a minimum and preferably 1600 * 1200
- 30GB or better HD
- decent speakers
- Win XP

I'm not too fussed about battery life, weight or software bundle but a firewire port would be handy.

The best deal I've seen so far is at Dell who are running a series of online discounts plus a £200 mail in rebate. With some extras like an extra battery, nice leather bag and the like it comes to just under £2k.

I've tried the usual suspects like Dabs, Hi Grade, Microwarehouse, etc and can't get close to the Dell deal. Anyone got anywhere better to try?
 
I think you have found it.

TBH Dell have a good rep, we use the laptops in work (5000 laptop users). The lightweight ones are very flakey however the powerhouse laptops they supply are very sturdy and very fast. I can't see how you would go wrong.

The only cheaper method would be to get someone who is going abroad to smuggle one over.
 
I think you are right - I've tried every vendor I can think of and the closest comparable spec is about £200 more, and that's without the extra battery and bag. (Or the natty coloured palmrests :) )

Oh well. I've got slight misgivings about Dell laptops, but I'm probably biased as I've always had (and have never had any problem) with Toshiba laptops.
 
Probably not much consolation, but I bought a 2nd hand Dell laptop about a year ago (Latitude CPi), and I haven't had one problem with it. It was my primary PC up until a few weeks ago, so I pretty much ran everything on it. Very solid product.
 
You should also try-

Fujitsu Siemens.

They do good stuff too. Worth a look.
 
I'm not too sure on Dell atm since they seem to be getting a rather bad rep for customer service... A few peeps I know have had a lot of hassle off them. As for you're specs, they are rather high and I can't see it lasting too long without the mains lol.

Check out Rockdirect.com anyway since my sister has just bought her laptop from there - P4 2.2, 512MB (max 1gig), 40gig HDD, ATi Radeon Mobility and the usual modem, LAN etc stuff for about £1,500. LCD res is maxed at 1024x768 though. Had WinXP Professional Home but replaced it with Professional Corporate and stripped it down (got rid of MSN, Movie maker, fade effects etc) so its nice and streamlined.

IMO P4's are not worth buying on laptops or desktops unless they are at 2.2ghz or over.. Mainly for the massive FSB increase over the competition. As for the GF Go... Its a decent card but then I'm sure you can replace the graphics card on a laptop just like on a desktop PC.

The latest ATi Radeon Mobility 9000 (or something) is the only DirectX 8 card out for the laptop market at the moment so if you are seriously considering about using the laptop for gaming then its best to invest in at least a DirectX 8 graphics card. If you can hold out for a little while nVidia will have a DirectX 8 card coming out soon.
 
Originally posted by NeoBlade
If you can hold out for a little while nVidia will have a DirectX 8 card coming out soon.

There is no big rush, so I can wait.

Thanks for the very useful info.
 
I heard this place was pretty reliable :

Laptop page

The old ones are the best ones :p
 
I think I'll wait for Apple to create a trendy Titanium version. :D
 
lol nice link Sinzer ^_^

I quite like the new Macs... But then they are rather stubborn in keeping the CPU speed rather low when more apps require a beefy CPU. I've heard that they will break into the 2ghz barrier soon but I'll just wait. The new iBooks are sweet but a decent laptop beats it overall in terms of specs. Then its just down to the OS and I'm not going to spark a debate about that ^_^

The new nVidia Go graphics card should be decent since it concentrates on multi-texturing rather then on processing single textures per pass (ATi Radeon 9000). All games thesedays use multi-texturing pipelines to speed up processing so the new nVidia should be pretty sweet. It should use less power too hopefully so you can play games and watch DVDs that much longer than other nVidia cards.

As for the release.. I can't remember >_< It should be within 2 months though I suspect.
 
I would ring the dell factory outlet , i bought a inspiron 8200 from there last year for about £1100 when it was on there main site for £2300 after a special discount they were running.
it had been ordered by a customer to spec and then he cancelled.

always ring tho cause the deals online are not as good.

i sold mine because it really is a desktop replacement rather than a laptop, and only lost £100 after 10months use.
but it was good spec, had dvd and then hot swapable floppy and cdrw.
 
Yeah, its best to ask around for the latest deals alright. Sadly you can't build you're own laptop since I haven't found any sites that would offer motherboards, cases etc >_< Still, at least the desktop scene looks good as prices are getting lower and lower...
 
I got my new laptop in June from currys!
I dont think u will beat the following spec for the same money:
Advent 7006 Price: £1299,
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz
RAM: 512MB SDRAM (Can’t see me ever needing to upgrade this, but it can handle up to 1GB RAM!)
HDD: 30 GB UDMA ATA 100 (Just a nice size)
Graphics: ATI mobility M6 AGP 4X with 16MB DDR-SDRAM (A great graphics card for a notebook.)
Display: 14.1” TFT XGA LCD (Max resolution of 1024x768. This is crystal clear & great colours!)
Cache: 512KB on die cache
CD-ROM: CDRW/DVD-ROM Combination drive (CDRW = 8x4x32, DVD = 8x.)
Modem: 56K V.90 Data/Fax. (PC Tel brand, but good constant connection speeds of 48000bps)
Audio: Built-in Advance Logic AC97.
Ports: 2 x USB ports
Ports: 1 x Parallel Port
Ports: 1 x P Card port (Type II, PCMCIA 2.1 compliant. Lets you expand your notebook without many problems)
Ports: 1 x Infra Red port (Lets you connect a range of wireless devices easily)
Ports: 1 x VGA Out port
Ports: 1 x TV-Out/S-Video Port
Ports: 1 x Audio Out Port
Ports: 1 x IEEEE 1394 Firewire Port
LAN: 1 x 10/100 Base T (Ethernet card for helping you network your notebook to another pc!)
Its Hardly been switched of for two months but I have had no system crashes. (touches wood)
It just shows that you dont have to spend £2000!
 
that sounds like a good deal too.

the one thing i would say about the Dells is they have a GeForce card in them so you can play the latest games at the native resolution in 32bit olour and still get great framerates.

that is why i bought one , having said that i put amax payne on it and played for about an hour then never bothered again.

plus i like to sit with it on my lap watching tv at night so i swapped it for a very light Sony Vaio.
 
Sounds like a decent deal alright. My sisters laptop has all the usual stuff as stealther has listed but a faster CPU (P4 2.2GHz)and a larger HDD (40gig). Has the usual leather bag as well but no extra battery.

As for the GF Go cards they are quite decent at what they were designed to do... At the moment though only ATi offers a fully complient DirectX 8 card but that should change within the next few months. Looking at past specs and performance the next GF Go! should beat the Radeon Mobility 9000 with some ease in terms of multi-texturing... Of which almost all 3D games use thesedays.
 
Not bad - but I want a GeForce 4 64MB and at least 1400 * 1050 screen, preferably 1600 * 1200.

Got a not bad deal from the Dell Outlet for a P4M 1.6Ghz with GF4 64, 1600 * 1200 screen, DVD-CDRW, etc. Should be arriving Monday I hope! :cool:
 

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