New Laptop - Give me your opinion

ozzyo99

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Getting a new laptop from work and can pick whatever I fancy for £1500 or under.

Came up with three possible choices at present in the shape of:

Sony Vaio SZ71WN/C
Lightweight, 2.5ghz, 13", 4-5 hours battery life, 2gb, carbon fibre
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...ey=11105,50417

Sony Vaio FZ31Z
15", 2.4ghz, BD drive, 4gb, lovely screen, better video card, HDMI
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...ey=11105,50417


Ruled out a Macbook Pro, IBM X61, XPS - not seen any Tosh/HP which fit the bill either.

Usage:
Won't be playing games on it, but will probably use it to watch the odd movie. Wireless in the garden, music et al. Not sure how much I'm likely to need it on the move, seldom only for the odd train journey I expect.

Because of the the bigger screen, BD drive I'm leaning towards the FZ31Z but the short battery life (120mins without switching to stamina mode) is mildly concerning. Which brings me back to the SZ71 which has a lovely CF chassis, good battery life, but a smaller HDD and inferior RAM/GFX card (although RAM would be upgraded).

Thanks guys (and girls).
 
It's not as easy to get a hold of through work due to the suppliers we use.
 
I've got the FZ31Z and am very happy with it.
I paid £1049 from Comet but it is now £1029 Link
It's specification takes some beating.
If you are worried about battery life, you could always buy a spare battery.
 
Ah nice one, yeah not bothered about the price as it's not my money. How long do you find you get out of the battery?
 
Sony laptops are over priced, so if you're not bothered about the badge, I'd look at other makes.

Sony KDL40-D3500, Sony RDR-HXD870, Sony BDP-S300, Sony STR-DA5300ES, Kef KHT1005.2, Sony Vaio FZ31Z

I wuv Sony? :rotfl:
 
Sony give a good after sales service and you get a lot of software with them


Problems are that You get a lot of crap you'll never use. If it's not for gamin the video card shouldnt matter. and it will give you better battery life with a lesser card. Ram as im sure your aware is stupidly easy to upgrade. Blu-ray in my eyes is a bit pointless but thats me. i watch movies on a big screen not a laptop. if you dont have a bluray player already then go for it, you should be able to plug it into your tv... To be fair If it was me id have the macbook pro lol. but seeing as though that isnt an option....have a look at other brands

Dell XPS machines are good
Asus make fantastic laptops
Acer are one of the fastest growing computer brands
HP are the TOP computer brand.. bare this in mind when choosing
 
I wouldn't go ordering a Rock, they went into receivership two days ago.

Good machines though.

Regards

Mark
 
Blu-ray in my eyes is a bit pointless but thats me. i watch movies on a big screen not a laptop. if you dont have a bluray player already then go for it, you should be able to plug it into your tv...

To be honest, I wouldn't buy it to use as a bluray player as it will only output 2ch PCM over HDMI (and when I tried it out the sound was awful).
The point is for data storage. How long will it be before Bluray writers will be standard equipment, even on Macs?

Regards,

Gavin
 
2 things... yea cant believe rock are going... theyre looking for a buyer now! some guy scammed em outta £200k or more so they couldnt pay the bills!

2nd thing, that sony only 2ch pcm? WTF? a lot of modern laptops now especially high spec have optical out through the 3.5mm jack, i thought sony of all people would have that!
 
How did a company like that get scammed??

just as well i bought my laptop from Novatech! nearly went for another Rock too!
 
Yep, me too. It came down to Rock, Dell and Alienware. In the end I went for the Alienware as it was the only one with the 8800M CTX GPU and a 15" form factor - the others were both 17" and I wanted a smaller machine. Luckily for me, it seems. The Rocks were nice machines though.

Regards

Mark
 
How did a company like that get scammed??

just as well i bought my laptop from Novatech! nearly went for another Rock too!

I've got a Rock and it's been and still is great! Sad to see them go, the 200k scammed from them was by a previous employee as far as i know, as to how, i have no idea.
 
In the end I went for the Alienware as it was the only one with the 8800M CTX GPU and a 15"

Thats a lovely machine, was seriously tempted, but heard scare stories about chasis cracking and chikened out. Rock equivelent i thought was too expensive, so got an X80r pro from Novatech, it's no looker but the 8800M makes a huge diifference. But since it's a clevo, im guessing the lid hinges will start to crack soon:)
 
Apparently the UK models have had all the bugs of the earlier US models sorted, so I'm hopeful of a decent long life. Trouble is they only build them to order so I'm going to have to wait till late May to get my hands on the beasty. I'm told they're still all built in Miami and then shipped over here to Alienware UK.

Regards

Mark
 

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