Before I buy

[mvtaylor]

Hello there, I've been looking for a laptop to replace my desktop (they really are so much harder to get exactly what you want...) and may have stumbled upon what I'm looking for but, before buying, wanted to see if anyone could recommend anything better.

Looking at the Toshiba Satellite P300-19P - £599 from Amazon

http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe....tellite-P300-19P/1055914/toshibaShop/false/#0

Really looking for a 17" screen. I'm not a massive PC gamer, the most graphic intensive thing I'm likely to fire up is some form of MMO so a top of the range graphics card isn't needed, but something dedicated is. Having a large number of other programs open is obviously the only other thing but I'd expect any laptop with a dedicated graphics card to have sufficient RAM and processing power to manage that. Storage isn't all that critical as I've got an external hard-drive, let's say 250GB min.

What else now, built in web cam/microphone are other good bonuses, wireless card needed... Blu-ray player isn't necessary. Oh, and it's got to look pretty good also!

Basically it looks like the Toshiba has got everything I could want for a fairly good price, have I missed anything obvious that I should need or is there something better out there?

FINALLY (sorry) since it doesn't come with some form of MS office, is OpenOffice a perfectly useable alternative?

If you've managed to stick with this, thanks very much!

 

[brucethetech]

there are plenty of comparable models or around that price. the problem is once you click submit to order it you'll find it or something else cheaper somewhere else. and yes openoffice is the msoffice equivalent minus publisher. what do you plan on using the laptop for?

 

[mvtaylor]

Well I'm a student so, a bit of word processing, streaming/downloading/playing media, messenger, facebook and the odd bit of gaming so it doesn't have to be anything fantastic.

I have tried my best to look around and you're very right that give it a few months and something better will no doubt come along but it seems that at the moment this has got everything I want for the best price.

 

[brucethetech]

Realistically you will use it for more than that once you fall in love with it. But in a perfect world using it for school, aside from your word processing, everything is web-based and wwill mainly depend on your internet connection speed. you'd be hard pressed to find a modern machine for sale that would give a satisfactory performance in the areas you listed.....which probably means you could come out cheaper than what your looking to spend. Im not sure how much 599 of whatever unit of dollars you listed is but if its anything close to US dollars that is more than enough

 

[red1776]

Hey bruce,
at the moment 599 quid is worth 818.00 USD....at least i was able to help with that
I am in the market for a LT as well and need to facilitate multiple apps at once for business so i thought i would share what im looking to purchase with you. a 17" screen at this price is tough...i wanted a 17 myself. anyway have a look MV
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220459

 

[mvtaylor]

Cheers for the help guys, newegg FAQ's say there's no international shipping which kills that one, it does like a good deal though but clearly no chance of me getting my hands on one as it's not on the UK asus site either :/

Maybe an easier way to do this is simply post my desktop specs and see how you think they match up:

ACPI x86 based
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
320GB Hard drive

Dunno what else to bother listing, everything else that would appear standard I guess. Anyway, that's what I currently use and it's never really given me any trouble and has managed everything I would (foreseeably) want the laptop to do.