My son wants a laptop

been looking round and just getting my head in a tiz

been told not to touch compaq HP or PB.

been told fujitsu siemens are the dogs (but expensive)

looking for something he can use for his schoolwork/ surf the net and a bit of gaming. he plays an online game called guildwars.

also he will probably store lots of music on it and use it as a portable dvd player.


Cheers  Paddy

many people make the mistake of buying a laptop on price and specs alone, this is generally a mistake, if you actually want to use it as a portable size, weight and build quality are just as important as specs if not more so.

some of the better laptop brands.
apple macbook/macbook pro
dell latitude (NOT inspiron)
levono thinkpad
sony vaio

i'm sure there are other good brands too, theese are just the ones I know about.

go somewhere you can see and touch the laptop you are considering before buying it. pick it up by one corner, if it feels like it might break don't buy it. This also gives you an oppertunity to see if the size and weight are acceptable to you.

don't go any lower than 1GB of ram, CPU is not so vital but personnally I wouldn't go below 2GHZ without a very good reason.

edit: sorry that should have been 2GHz, of course it depends a bit on the CPU family as some perform better for the same clock speed than others.