Which Laptop?

[CoX]

I've been looking around for a new laptop and have narrowed it down to these two:

Acer 5920G - £779
INTEL® Core 2 Duo T7300 (2 X 2.00GHz), 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
2GB RAM
250GB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS 256MB Graphics card
HD-DVD Drive
Integrated 0.3 Megapixel Camera
8 Cell Lithium Ion battery
Extra stuff: HDMI out port, 1GB Intel Turbo Memory

PC Specialist Custom Laptop - £860
INTEL® Core 2 Duo T7250 (2 X 2.00GHz), 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache
4GB RAM
250GB HDD
NVidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB Graphics card
8xDVD-RW/Dual Layer Drive
Integrated 2.0 Megapixel Camera
9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Extra stuff: Integrated bluetooth, Logitech Alto Cordless Notebook Stand, Wireless laptop & rechargeable mouse (both at discount from standard retail price)

Obviously the extra stuff with the custom one makes it a little more appealing, but I'm a bit concerned about the troubles you can expect with custom made computers, especially laptops - the least of them being it doesn't work at all and you have to send it back and forth to get fixed. Also the graphics card has more memory, but I don't know whether the Acer's one is new enough to compensate for that (combined with the new fangled turbo memory).

Both have Vista Home Basic installed (which apparently has issues with 4GB of RAM) and both will primarily be for gaming.

Which would you go for?

[piemastermike]

they don't have "issues" with 4bg of ram, it's that a 32 bit operating system can't use more than 3gb (as far as I can tell), you would have to go for a 64bit option which then raises driver issues and blah blah blah

[Steak]

Try to avoid Home Basic if at all possible, it's unspeakably bad. I got it with my laptop and hated it, it's crippled compared to XP. Fortunately I've got business now and am beginning to get along more with vista.

[Swirl]

I used Dell's live talk on its website when my family was buying a computer, and asked them about the 8600GS - they recommended buying a separate graphics cards if I wanted to play the more recent games - so i persuaded my family to buy a slightly better computer which came with the 8600GT - needless to say it runs 'The Orange Box' perfectly, but I haven't tried it with games like Crysis or COD4... yet.

[CoX]

Try to avoid Home Basic if at all possible, it's unspeakably bad. I got it with my laptop and hated it, it's crippled compared to XP. Fortunately I've got business now and am beginning to get along more with vista.Whoops, I meant Home Premium. Is that any better?

I could get 2GB of RAM with the PC Specialist laptop as I am trying to avoid 64 bit Vista like the plague. Then get another 1GB stick if and when I can. Doing that and shrinking the hard drive brings it under £800 too.

[Steak]

Does anyone know if Vista x64 has improved any? I think if you buy a new pc then the driver support is likely to be quite good. As far as I knew, most of the driver issues were related to older hardware.

It'd probably be worth going x64 to take advantage of the extra 2Gb of ram anyway. It's not going to save you huge amounts by sticking to 32-bit.

[woody_tng]

I'm running Vista 64 with no problems. There were a few at first, but they have now been sorted.

[piemastermike]

word on the street is that x64 vista is actually pretty good now

[CoX]

With all that taken into account, new spec for PC Specialist custom laptop (shamelessly copied and pasted) is:

INTEL® Core 2 Duo T7250 (2 X 2.00GHz) 800MHz FSB/2MB L2 Cache
4GB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz RAM
64 BIT WINDOWS® VISTA Home Premium
160GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5400rpm)
8x DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
512MB GEFORCE 8600GT + D-SUB + TV-OUT
9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (up to 6 hours) - I know I'll probably get between 2 and 3 tops when gaming


With integrated bluetooth, 2.0 Megapixel camera, 802.11G wireless, Gigabit LAN and card reader.

Also a Logitech Alto Cordless Notebook Stand for £19 instead of the £60-£70 it would cost me to buy separately.

£809 including VAT, Delivery and 1 Year Collect & Deliver repair service.

Sound any good?