[Scoot]

Originally Posted by lightweight

www.meshcomputers.com

In particular this one:

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default...=2&APPS=234442

My sister has it and it is awesome. Can't go wrong, has a good graphics card and is blu ray compatible.


Reliable and good value for money

PLEASE JUST GOOGLE MESH BEFORE YOU CONTEMPLATE USING THEM AGAIN.

I'm actually using right now a Mesh computer that has been nothing short of a bloody nightmare from the start. It was late for delivery by several weeks ( even though i paid for express GUARANTEED delivery ) and then when it arrived it woundn't even start up. Phone call to Mesh resulted in waiting for sometime over 20 mins for someone to pick up the phone. Nobody seemed to be in charge and i was passed from one department to the next. Several times they would just cut me off for no reason at all!
They had the computer go back four times and even though i wasn't happy they woundn't give me a refund. My credit card company wanted them to try and fix it before they would act ( i'll never do that again )
In the end i had to pay for someone to re-build the computer , voiding the Mesh 3 year on site warranty which was pointless as the person that was supposed to come out twice never showed up TWICE . TWO BLOODY DAYS OFF WORK AND NOT AN APOLOGY FROM THEM. IN FACT I HAD TO RING THEM AND START ALL OVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

On one PC forum they had a manager come on to deal with all the complaints from Mesh customers . So overwhelmed that after a few days he left and didnt return!

What really got me going was when i googled Mesh and found the hundreds of dissatisfied customers screaming for blood.
I think they were even on Watchdog a while back.

You have been warned!

[booforty]

Jeez, sorry to hear that Scoot and thanks for the heads up about them...

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by Speedtrap

Bigger hard disk do not make a laptop more powerful Its aways recommended to store your data on an external drive due to laptops frequently crashing due to extensive use.

Also for goodness sake do not get a MAC! User experience great, but compatibility sucks with any other software you are going to install later (expecially games, etc)

If you really want a powerful laptop, £600 will not get you jack

Fully agree, especially about backups.

4MB RAM is a waste as a 32bit machine will not be able to use (address) all the memory - maximum is 3GB.

3GB or 4GB - yeah with a 32bit OS you dont get anywhere near the whole of the remaining gig of memory but on most chipsets you'll get something between 3.2 and 3.5GB of useable RAM - Personally I'd put 4 in even though a big chunk of it is being wasted.

Reommendations:
1. Get a Intel Duo Core
2. Get 3GM RAM
3. Get an 120 GB HD max
4. Check to see whether the video adaptor has 512MB of RAM
5. Brand do not so much these days as its mainly made in China.

My 2p worth and hop this helps:

Jerome

Disk size depends on what you use it for, I'd go for 250 minimum as I tend to keep a lot of stuff on my laptops (this one has at least 220GB used). Remember, some games are BIG. I have a rack of meaty applications (compilers, office suites) and a load of audio files - the space goes quickly. Worth thinking about what you are likely to be doing with the machine.

Brand does matter, poorly designed laptops tend to be less reliable than well designed ones (thermal problems, keyboard failures, hinge failures, fried graphics cards... they may all be assembled in the same way but so are all cars).

Video cards are harder to decide on as the manufacturers make models aimed at three roles general desktop use, AV use and gaming. They then confuse the issue by using weird numbering schemes. 512MB (or more) of memory is usually only done for gaming graphics cards although there are exceptions, at the moment a safe bet would be to look for a laptop with an NVIDIA 9800 or 9600 based graphics in it.

A chart like this...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts...otals,795.html

will give a good indication of what kind of graphics hardware you're getting - chances are if its not on that list and fairly well up the list you wont be playing any recent graphics intensive games.

[booforty]

Thanks Dave