Laptop For Rs.100,000?

[streetKIA]

Ive been looking at a couple of laptops but im still undecided on what to get. Acer has a cool laptop for 100,000 but is Acer a good brand? I need a laptop thats fast, got lots of memory, has to be reliable and has to be 100000 or less. Any suggestions?

[xXx]

im on the hunt for a laptop as well. what i've gathered so far is best option is to buy a decent spec laptop for your daily work (this of course depend on what your do day in day out) and then have a powerful desktop for all your gaming and 24/7 downloading etc...

this way you can buy a cheap decent laptop and use the rest of the moeny to pipm up your dektop

Edited June 6, 2007 by xXx

[Devinda_Z]

may be able to give you a heads up - advertising on the forums isnt allowed so check my profile n drop me a mail if you need further info

Edited June 6, 2007 by Devinda_Z

[streetKIA]

Well technically its not advertising. I'm not asking anyone to sell me their laptop neither am I asking anyone where i can buy a laptop for that price, but only what I can buy within my budget.

If anyone could enlighten me on the dependability of acer or asus i would appreciate it.

[MADZ]

may be able to give you a heads up - advertising on the forums isnt allowed so check my profile n drop me a mail if you need further info

ONLY vehicle trading and posting URL's of SL automobile websites are NOT allowed in this forum...you are free to discuss share any other details...!! How many times do i have to tell this ...err

[Devinda_Z]

This guys has Acer Laptops - you should be able to get a decent machine for that - Acers excellent value money, given they come with a lot of features,but not too sure how they hold up in long term use

0714 874085 S&H technologies

[madmax]

im on the hunt for a laptop as well. what i've gathered so far is best option is to buy a decent spec laptop for your daily work (this of course depend on what your do day in day out) and then have a powerful desktop for all your gaming and 24/7 downloading etc...

this way you can buy a cheap decent laptop and use the rest of the moeny to pipm up your dektop

I got a Toshiba Sattelite A100 for about 100k, it's sort of a budget package from the otherwise expensive Toshiba brand. And I'm using my desktop for the 24/7 downloads.

Edited June 6, 2007 by madmax

[streetKIA]

This guys has Acer Laptops - you should be able to get a decent machine for that - Acers excellent value money, given they come with a lot of features,but not too sure how they hold up in long term use

0714 874085 S&H technologies

Thanks man. I'm a little worried about acer though. I'm leaving the country and I need a dependable really good all rounder. Can't be running to get it repaired everyday. Dell's seem really cool but i'm not too sure of their prices. Im guessing they'll be really expensive. Toshiba's satellite L100 seems nice but kinda slow. I also need to buy one from an agent so i can use the warranty abroad.

I got a Toshiba Sattelite A100 for about 100k, it's sort of a budget package from the otherwise expensive Toshiba brand. And I'm using my desktop for the 24/7 downloads.

Is this a 1.83Ghz with 512mb ram? If so, its pretty worth it.

Edited June 6, 2007 by streetKIA

[Saturn]

Ive been looking at a couple of laptops but im still undecided on what to get. Acer has a cool laptop for 100,000 but is Acer a good brand? I need a laptop thats fast, got lots of memory, has to be reliable and has to be 100000 or less. Any suggestions?

Well aside from the badge most laptops are the same.. except for IBM... oops.. Lenovo... or whatever they call it now.

There are a number of brands you can consider... Compaq... lenovo... Toshiba... Acer... etc... all are generally OK - just about any brand will do ok these days, heck even unbranded intel based ones should work fine (I think fuzzo mentioned barebones core2 based laptops a while back)?

When you say power and speed, can you define what exactly it is you want to do with the laptop? Like do you intend to search for prime numbers or study protein folding? In which case you need massive number crunching ability so Core 2 duo and above could be the way to go..

On the other hand if you define speed in terms of graphics then a good onboard graphics card is a good way to go.

As for memory, buy the machine and upgrade the ram, its cheaper than getting it with lots of RAM from manufacturer.

As far as how much RAM you need... well 512 - 1gb should be OK for XP.... for vista 1GB - 4GB should be OK...

One other thing I'd suggest is get a machine which has good cooling (doesnt heat up like mad) and has power saving options (e.g. Cool & Quiet if AMD or Speedstep etc for Intel)..

I suggest you take a trip to Unity Plaza and browse around till you get a feel of some of the machines on offer.

Can you tell me a bit about what you intend to use this machine for?

[madmax]

Is this a 1.83Ghz with 512mb ram? If so, its pretty worth it.

1.8 Centrino Core 2 Duo, 512+256 RAM, DVD writer, WiFi 80GH HDD and a lot more extras.

[Saturn]

Thanks man. I'm a little worried about acer though. I'm leaving the country and I need a dependable really good all rounder. Can't be running to get it repaired everyday. Dell's seem really cool but i'm not too sure of their prices. Im guessing they'll be really expensive. Toshiba's satellite L100 seems nice but kinda slow. I also need to buy one from an agent so i can use the warranty abroad.

How do you define slow? Did you run benchmarks on the machine?

Well most of the big brands like Acer, Compaq, Lenovo are recognised and supported worldwide.

Make sure you get an international warranty/worldwide warranty. Some warranties are not international depending on the manufacturer and you want to make sure your product is supported worldwide.

Hey why don't you have a chat with IBM Sri Lanka.. or Lenovo Sri Lanka? they have (or had) a local presence here... and are reasonably helpful.

See Lenovo/IBM site for sri lanka here:

http://www-07.ibm.com/lenovoinfo/lk/notebo...kpad/index.html

Edited June 6, 2007 by Saturn

[streetKIA]

Well i need a laptop with a lot of memory, and should have quite a lot of ram. Since I'll be away for some time, I need a dependable notebook so I can do a lot of downloading, for viewing documents, etc. I also need a good graphics card for the occasional gaming, movies, etc. Problem is finding a budget laptop with a good graphics card is hard. GMA 950 is crap, and is found on most laptops.

How do you define slow? Did you run benchmarks on the machine?

Well most of the big brands like Acer, Compaq, Lenovo are recognised and supported worldwide.

Make sure you get an international warranty/worldwide warranty. Some warranties are not international depending on the manufacturer and you want to make sure your product is supported worldwide.

Hey why don't you have a chat with IBM Sri Lanka.. or Lenovo Sri Lanka? they have (or had) a local presence here... and are reasonably helpful.

Lenovo is crazily expensive. I went on their website, and their entry machine was 137000.

My brother has a L100 and it usually gets stuck,and programs take quite sometime to load, and he doesn't game or download anything.

1.8 Centrino Core 2 Duo, 512+256 RAM, DVD writer, WiFi 80GH HDD and a lot more extras.

Did you buy it from the agents? Whats the graphics card like?

Edited June 6, 2007 by streetKIA

[xXx]

Madmax that is a very sweet deal you got, you need to hook me up with your contact.

I agree with Saturn most laptops perform well. The badge is just an excuse to jack the price lol. But Toshibas have a very good reputation for their robustness.

streetKIA which country are you going to??? if its states, its worth buying a laptop from there. you get some mind blowing deals out of the blue but you have to be patient and wait for such a deal to arrive.

from what i've gathered you only need this laptop for your uni work and for downloading isn't it? in that case 1 gig of ram will be more than adequate. as Saturn said most economical thing to do would be to upgrade the ram yourself. But I don’t know how this’ll effect when it comes to the warranty. You may wana double check that with the vendor. don’t worry too much about the HDD you can grab an external one for a very descent price.

graphics card doesn’t matter that much to view movies. but i have a feeling you are into your games. im afraid that’s a sacrifice you have to make if you are to go for a budget laptop.

Been an AMD fan I would pick up an AMD anyday over an Intel. That way you can save couple a penny’s too.

[The Don]

Hi Guys,

I do not know much about the SL Laptop market but I would add my 2 cents to the conversation,

Dell,

The problem with Dell is Dell operates a SOHO marketing strategy and thus their warranties are often limited to the point of purchase, though you do get extended warranty packages that you can purchase seperately, personally I think Dell isnt really a very good option if you plan to travel with your Laptop.

Toshiba

I have established that Toshiba is the best laptop for travellers, simply because of the widespread support that is available for it. It is interesting to note that Acer and HP (the other brands I checked out when trying to find a Laptop to buy for my Dad) do not have official agents or repair centers in Sri Lanka, and thus their international warranties would not technically be useful in Sri Lanka !!. I did this by searching for a repair center on the HP and Acer web sites and I found none in Sri Lanka, while as Toshiba has an official agent in the form of KBSL so that inspires a lot of confidence in the brand when using it in Sri Lanka.

Acer

Apart from the little problem mentioned above probably the best value for money laptops arround, and in the UK they offer the cheapest warranty extentions which makes it even more value for money (but the problem being for me no official repair centre in SL and thus the international travellers warranty is USELESS !!) though I am sure if you buy it from an SL company they would take care of the repairs for you.

HP

I think they have better build quality than Acer and their products have always been a big fan of Compaqs, and before Acer improved their build quality I always regarded compaq as the best value for money laptops arround. Very good key boards (Toshiba has these too) and in the olden days did have official agents in SL in the form of Megadynamics and another company some robotics, I thought DMS is an official HP agent in SL but their info is not on the HP web site the last time I checked.

Lenovo

Here is the thing with Lenovo, if you are buying one, buy one of the IBM inspired ones like the T series or even the budget R series is very good (though honestly speaking Acer and HP have better buys in this department) but the all Lenovo C series etc are reported to be problamatic according to buyers forums. So consider Lenovo if you have some money to spare, and you are looking for a high spec laptop with rugged durability (the T series comes with a 7200RPM HDD !! not in all models though)

But in my humble opinion if you are looking to buy a decent laptop for office work etc which is reliable, the best buy at the moment is probably Acer or HP (depending on how they are marketed in SL cos both are priced very competitively) and the Toshiba Sattelites for a bit more but has the advantage of having a official agent !

best of luck !

The Don

Madmax that is a very sweet deal you got, you need to hook me up with your contact.

I agree with Saturn most laptops perform well. The badge is just an excuse to jack the price lol. But Toshibas have a very good reputation for their robustness.

streetKIA which country are you going to??? if its states, its worth buying a laptop from there. you get some mind blowing deals out of the blue but you have to be patient and wait for such a deal to arrive.

from what i've gathered you only need this laptop for your uni work and for downloading isn't it? in that case 1 gig of ram will be more than adequate. as Saturn said most economical thing to do would be to upgrade the ram yourself. But I don’t know how this’ll effect when it comes to the warranty. You may wana double check that with the vendor. don’t worry too much about the HDD you can grab an external one for a very descent price.

graphics card doesn’t matter that much to view movies. but i have a feeling you are into your games. im afraid that’s a sacrifice you have to make if you are to go for a budget laptop.

Been an AMD fan I would pick up an AMD anyday over an Intel. That way you can save couple a penny’s too.

XXX, if you read a few forums you may notice the Turion 64 chipsets suffered from the lack of a proper motherboard chipset and they really didnt perform as well as the intels on benchmarks though they should have done. I do not know if VIA has released a good chipset for the Turions and the Semrons but the ones released by ATI etc didn't really do justice to the processor.

The intels have always had the advantage of having intel designed motherboard chipsets, thus at the moment its probably a better buy, unless things have changed cos I haven't looked at the topic in a while !.

[gpmac]

If u know someone in the US ask them u to buy a high spec dell from ebay and ship it to u here, u will save a bundle guaranteed, the only downside is that most Inspiron models are not being sold by the local agent, but ive been using laptops for over ten years and never have even one of them broken down during the warranty period, like with most electronic gadgets replace within 2 years and u should be ok

[sharkster]

dell's are a no-no IMO... HP's have always been my best friend... can't you buy a laptop from wherever you're going cos prices are insane here... you'd get a much better deal abroad...

[The Don]

plus the Dell would need to be sent back to wherever it was purchased from to get repaired if it breaks down, so if you are buying a Dell buy it from whoever sells it in SL

and to be honest Laptops have a range of problems that desktops rarely have especially relating to all the moving plastiky bits, moving cables like the ones which connect the lcd to the motherboard, have overheating problems because a lot of them use heat pipe based cooling so warranty is more relevant to laptops than desktops so make sure you get one !

[thar]

acer is quite good! i hav been using one for the last 2 years!! i hav so far had no problems!!

[Devinda_Z]

HP's have always been my best friend...

cos prices are insane here... you'd get a much better deal abroad...

amen to that! 5 years of ludicriously hard use and counting! its in tatters with bits falling off now, but i still manage to get all my work done on it, so HP-Compaq all the way!

[speeddemon200]

ok well. here's a bit of ma limited laptop knowledge.....just a warnin havnt checked out da local laptop market at all......

ok in my opinion da best value for money is da VAIO, u get a super config, cool software at da best price for dat range in da market.....for example, i got my VAIO a yr n' a bit bk at £1300....it's a core duo 2400(1.83 ghz) processor...15.4 inch wide HD screen, 1gb (upto 2gb) DDR2 Ram, 160GB 4200RPM hard disk, DVD DL Writer, NVDIA shared graphics wit turbo cache n' 256mb shared memory....as for gamin capability, i play NFS MW, n' carbon on it wit no issues...(i use da lowest pixel count n' max detail resolution tho...),

dey gave me Windows media centre wit it, DVD editing software vid recording SW, lotsa other cool sw, wit da standard office sw's.....

da competition; HP advent(cant remember da model), 3.4G P4 HT processor, 1gb(-2gb) ram, 17inch widescrn hd monitor, 100GB hdd, DVD DL RW, ATI independent 256mb graphics, media remote, came wit media centre....price £1500-1600....da toshiba's of da same spec were more, dell was more too.....

i hav heard dat da acer has overheating issues, otherwise their prices also were quite gud for da specs dey were giving.....

plus da best part is wit da VAIO u get da cool n' sleek luks.....but no agent in SL.....tho most countries do hav a agent.....

think da apple's are quite gud too, but there hardware configs r a bit different to window's based laptops, cause of da MAC OS platform....but da new range is quite reasonably priced....

hope i helped

[noaim]

I agree Hp-Compaq is rugged... ive dropped my laptop quite a few times.. still works likes a charm! ...

[The Don]

ok well. here's a bit of ma limited laptop knowledge.....just a warnin havnt checked out da local laptop market at all......

ok in my opinion da best value for money is da VAIO, u get a super config, cool software at da best price for dat range in da market.....for example, i got my VAIO a yr n' a bit bk at £1300....it's a core duo 2400(1.83 ghz) processor...15.4 inch wide HD screen, 1gb (upto 2gb) DDR2 Ram, 160GB 4200RPM hard disk, DVD DL Writer, NVDIA shared graphics wit turbo cache n' 256mb shared memory....as for gamin capability, i play NFS MW, n' carbon on it wit no issues...(i use da lowest pixel count n' max detail resolution tho...),

dey gave me Windows media centre wit it, DVD editing software vid recording SW, lotsa other cool sw, wit da standard office sw's.....

da competition; HP advent(cant remember da model), 3.4G P4 HT processor, 1gb(-2gb) ram, 17inch widescrn hd monitor, 100GB hdd, DVD DL RW, ATI independent 256mb graphics, media remote, came wit media centre....price £1500-1600....da toshiba's of da same spec were more, dell was more too.....

i hav heard dat da acer has overheating issues, otherwise their prices also were quite gud for da specs dey were giving.....

plus da best part is wit da VAIO u get da cool n' sleek luks.....but no agent in SL.....tho most countries do hav a agent.....

think da apple's are quite gud too, but there hardware configs r a bit different to window's based laptops, cause of da MAC OS platform....but da new range is quite reasonably priced....

hope i helped

The Vaio's have always been my sentimental favorite simply because of the brilliant Sony designs, they are not quite value for money cos for the price you pay for them you can sometimes get a lot more by other brands particularly HP and their new DV series would give the Sony's a run for their money anyday, complete with Altec Lansing Speakers.

And it was actually Sony Laptops which I was referring to when I was talking about overheating issues connected to the heat pipe based cooling system but this is a problem that manifested in the Pentium 4 era Sony's so I am sure they have solved these problems on newer models. The problem if I remember correctly was dust setteling on the heat stink causing the loss of cooling efficiency and this by itself is not a problem but the major design flaw on these Sonys were the fact you could not get access to the heat stink without removing a whole load of stuff and this by itself is quite a risky procedure as you risk damaging the internals (and in my Dell etc you have one cover to take off held on by 2 screws to get access to the heat stink) and thus I had to resort to using high pressure air to cleaning the heat stink from the outside as this problem manifested itself in quite a number of Sonys while I was in uni, and what would happen is the computer would just shut itself down to protect the processor.

[xXx]

speeddemon200, in my book a £1300 laptop doesn’t falls under the budged laptop category

i agree with Don, early generation Vios had lot of heating issues and they are very hard to diagnose and fix once a problem occur

[streetKIA]

Thanks guys for all your comments. I'll be going to Singapore and I know you can get some laptops at a reasonable price, but unfortunately I have so much to spend on, I will have to buy the laptop on credit card so buying the laptop is outta the question. Ive heard from some of my friends that their compaq computers have given a lot of trouble. maybe with the older models. I also have to buy from the official agents to get the warranty available in Singapore. All that I could find was the acer aspire 5613, toshiba satellite, and an asus. I went on softlogic's website, but I couldn't find any prices. I'm guessing they must be way outta my range.

@madmax- could you tell me if you bought your laptop from the agents because if you did, that would be a very good deal.

@speeddemon200- Sony's vaio seems nice but waay too much for me. Like you said, I'm a little bit weary of Acer. I'm unfamiliar with it and I don't know how long it'll go before it gives me problems. Some people have had problems with it.

@The Don - Yeah, Toshiba does have a very good warranty, and they seem to be quite hardy, though for the price, acer offers more.

@xXX- Wel i'm not that much of a heavy gamer, but I need a graphics card that could support a few games that require T&l. Probably like a ATI mobility X1400 or less. It has to have more than 64mb. The GMA 950 on the acer aspire doesnt even support T&L.

Edited June 7, 2007 by streetKIA

[madmax]

@madmax- could you tell me if you bought your laptop from the agents because if you did, that would be a very good deal.

Bought it from Singapore. Best is to buy it from US, Aussie or Singapore. UK is more expensive than SL when you convert to Rs.