New laptop

Mirth

This is the best one I've found so far which is within my budget (£600). I need it for general use + browsing + moderate gaming.

If you have better/cheaper alternatives or if you just want to critique my choice, go ahead!

RonBurgundy

I'm still using an HP Pavilion dv7 I bought in Jan 2009. Has lasted pretty well but the battery has started to conk out, which I think is pretty normal after more than 3 years of daily use.

That looks a good deal to me, GM.

Pepe LeFrits

I got this last summer and I love it. Should be in your price range. I was looking for something compact as I travel a lot, but I still wanted a good sized screen (for design work) and plenty of power.

There's a version with a proper graphics card if that's a priority, I think Capi may have tried it out.

The build quality is superb.

Captain

The U46sv is good. Has pretty much everything you need although the screen isn't fantastic compared to me vaio (which, to be fair was twice the price and has shit speakers to compensate). Good keyboard, battery life is excellent, has a usb 3 port, large amount of storage and runs pretty fast.

I paid £615 and some pennies for mine but that was excluding vat.

Pepe LeFrits

I'm pondering getting a new laptop, probably an ultrabook of some kind like the Asus Zenbook U500vz or a Samsung Series 7 Ultra. Any opinions?

Klaus

Can't stand laptops.

GaelForce

Pepe LeFrits wrote:
I'm pondering getting a new laptop, probably an ultrabook of some kind like the Asus Zenbook U500vz or a Samsung Series 7 Ultra. Any opinions?

Got one of these at christmas. It's perfect for me, lightweight and the battery lasts 5-6 hours so I can carry it around all day at uni without needing to being the charger a lot of the time too. All the tech stuff is meant to be great but I don't really know...

It looks fit as too.

Tony Montana

Klaus wrote:
Can't stand laptops.

Pourquoi?

kamikaze

DO NOT BUY A LAPTOP NOW.

if you can wait a few months, wait until the new intel haswell chipsets come out. it's not the usual incremental upgrade in technology. they're supposed to provide twice the battery life, multiples better cpu and gfx performance. even if you don't need those things, it will obviously lower prices on the older stuff.

lorddulaarsenal

Don't buy a laptop. Tablets show porn and forum too guys

Qwiss

This seems as good a place as any to ask for recommendations on Desktops. I need a new one for my home office and I want at least an i7 3770k, 16gbs RAM, 2TB of hard drive space and a graphics card that can handles light gaming and 2 monitors. And I need it to cost less than €1000.

Pepe LeFrits

kamikaze wrote:
DO NOT BUY A LAPTOP NOW.

if you can wait a few months, wait until the new intel haswell chipsets come out. it's not the usual incremental upgrade in technology. they're supposed to provide twice the battery life, multiples better cpu and gfx performance. even if you don't need those things, it will obviously lower prices on the older stuff.

Interesting, hadn't heard of this before. Cheers kami

Burnwinter

Hadn't heard that either. For what it's worth I've had a Toshiba Portege with SSD and an i5 chip for the last couple of years and have found it excellent. Would be worthless for media or gaming though, also I run Linux on it, so probably an outlier.

If I could get this laptop with twice the battery life and a retina display I would.

Meatwad

qs! wrote:
This seems as good a place as any to ask for recommendations on Desktops. I need a new one for my home office and I want at least an i7 3770k, 16gbs RAM, 2TB of hard drive space and a graphics card that can handles light gaming and 2 monitors. And I need it to cost less than €1000.

you can build one for less (if that's an option ... surprisingly not too dificult).

FantasticMrFox

Burnwinter wrote:
I run Linux on it, so probably an outlier.

Which Linux distro do you run?

Qwiss

Meatwad wrote:
qs! wrote:
This seems as good a place as any to ask for recommendations on Desktops. I need a new one for my home office and I want at least an i7 3770k, 16gbs RAM, 2TB of hard drive space and a graphics card that can handles light gaming and 2 monitors. And I need it to cost less than €1000.

you can build one for less (if that's an option ... surprisingly not too dificult).

Had considered it but I'm afraid I'll install something arseways and it'll never really function smoothly. The most I've ever done before is add a bit of RAM or a hard drive.

Burnwinter

Fantastic.Mr.Fox wrote:
Burnwinter wrote:
I run Linux on it, so probably an outlier.

Which Linux distro do you run?

Xubuntu (+XMonad)

Rohit

I am waiting for the Lenovo Think Pad Helix here although I fear it will be too expensive.

banduan

we get IT expos over here with stuff on sale, then right at the end they'd sell their display units for super cheap.

Got my i7 Samsung lappy for RM2,200 (roughly 400 quid) about 2 years ago in one of those. Even dumped me a rubbish printer for my troubles. The lappy is decent, not the best, but runs most games I've wanted to play on it and runs the heavier software with no problems.

Burnwinter

Grunt's just not that much of a concern on a notebook these day (unless you're a gamer I suppose).

About the only thing I really would wish for is a notebook that was just magically powerful enough to run a mid-range server's worth of VMs, but that's obviously a pipedream for now.