Posted by masseur
I change my laptop approximately every 2 years, and I have had vaios since vaios first came out.
My current vaio, an SZ4, will be 2 years old in March but given it has just had a backlight failure and the fan is making a bit of noise occassionally I think I'll do my upgrade sooner rather than later.
I've always had vaios of around 1.7-2kg in the 13" size as that suits me perfectly.
The trouble now is that the current vaios that I would get are the Z series (2.6ghz core duo/4gb ram/320gb HDD etc, 802.11a/b/g/n, HDMI port, 2xUSB) but these are still around £2k whereas there is now a whole new crop of laptops which are much cheaper.
In case I have missed anything, does anyone have advice of any laptops that meet this spec/weight/size criteria that I should consider?
thanks
Posted by tranced
what about asus laptops?
Posted by masseur
I often hear bad things about asus quality and support so I'm not too sure really.
I guess I'm looking for something matching my requirements that someone has personal experience of. Sony have always been excellent with warranty issues (though I've only had 2 or 3 in all those years), and so that also goes to show the quality too.
Posted by tranced
i quit. i'll keep looking
Posted by SEP990i
Well from my personal experience stay away from HP laptops. I currently have one and I have had no end of problems with it. It is no out of warrenty and luckily is stable at the minute. We will see.............
Sorry it doesnt actually help with searching for a new laptop.
Regards
James
Posted by tranced
seeing the specs of the vaio you have currently, i saw this dell: http://www.dell.com/content/p[....]~29~laptop-inspiron-13_anav3~~
Posted by paul101
what about a thinkpad?
THIS is a truely excellent laptop, and weighing in at only 1.4kg, it is really light
you can upgrade the ram to 3gb cheaply enough
thinkpads are always the most robust in their class. build quality is always exelent
edit: here is the thinkpad x200, at just 1.1 kg
(it has ddr3 ram aswell
they arent the most powerful of machines, but build quality and weight makes up for it
[ This Message was edited by: paul101 on 2009-01-07 17:32 ]
Posted by larry 68
Stick with VAIO, I've just bought a FW21L , not to the spec your after but I'm absolutely loving it, my 1st vaio and its a joy, screen is fantastic, running standard 3gig ram on hungry vista and its speedy when multi tasking, wireless n connects instantly and sync via bt to my K850i is a breeze. Dedicated media keys are used constantly.
Only weak points are the speakers , not the greatest but then laptops rarely are but dolby through headphones is good, battery life around 2hrs on a 17in screen.
Posted by masseur
thanks all. I got a vaio tonight on my way home.
it should have been the slightly older Z11WN/B for a sale price of £1298 from a Sony Centre (best price I could find on the web was £1450 at ebuyer), but when I got home I found they'd actually given me a Z21WN/B instead which is a slightly later spec (2.53ghz instead of 2.4ghz) and a couple of other minor updates
fantastic 13.1" screen with native resolution of 1600x900!
it also has a sim card slot and everything else I wanted/expected
now to get everything shifted onto it so the old SZ4 can get the backlight repaired
Posted by totalgsm
Why not dell? I have a Vaio though
CR220E
Posted by masseur
I looked at the dell link that tranced gave but it was for US dell.
I did check the UK site but they don't really have anything with the same specs. XPS is about the closest but its already at the money I paid for the vaio when you try to configure it to as similar specs as possible
thinkpad probably would have been my 2nd choice from what I saw today but I think I ended up with a pretty good deal now
Posted by paul101
seems a good deal
just remove all the bloatware from it and it will be pretty snappy (vista has its own apps for power / net management)
Posted by jcwhite_uk
I love Sony laptops but have had experience of a couple with screens failing just after the warrenty runs out. Deal with HP everyday at work and they are really reliable unlike Dells.
Posted by masseur
you can get the Vaio extended (2 extra years) warranty for as little as £127 (on Amazon) now so probably for the first time ever I will do that for this new laptop
Posted by dude_se
i was going to say get a dell xps.
mines a 2.1ghz c2d, 3gb ram, 8600M GT 256mb card, 320gb hdd, hdmi, bluetooth, wireless n, etc, etc.
it really is well equipped. cost £590 back in june (with some discount codes).
you can really spec them up if you have the money.
the support is great too. emailed them about my hdd which failed (unlucky i guess).
they sent a courier asap and i got a new one
Posted by >500
some nice lappys announced at CES so far. Check them out masseur. Maybe something worth waiting for?
Im always a big fan of the Vaio's though
Posted by masseur
yeah, I have to say the new P series looks quite smart, and with a great 8" screen, but compared to other netbook sized laptops its going to be very very expensive (I read £800+)