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Need to buy a Laptop

Need to buy a Laptop

Postby nicksthegreat » Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:07 am

Hey guys,

My girlfriend is looking for a decent laptop under NZD $2000 (which is USD$1500 approx).

She wants it for Photoshop CS3, 3DS Max, Freehand and Sony DVD Architect.

These are the models I have come across so far


Toshiba Satellite A300/E00 Notebook

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Postby markcynt » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:36 am

I always had good luck with HP. The dv9812TX looks very good.

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Postby phileysmiley » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:39 pm

I've had a Toshiba for almost 2 1/2 years. Other than the fact that the hard drive went after 2 years and 4 months (4 months past the 2 year extended warranty I bought) I've had no issues.
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Postby ar1stotle » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:11 pm

If she wants to use lots of photoshop and 3ds max, you definitely want a lot of processing power and ram. The T9300 is probably where you'll get the most bang for the buck. It's the latest generation of Intel laptop chips afaik. 3gb of RAM is fine... if not you should be able to upgrade to 4gb pretty cheap. Another things you'll want is HDD space. If you don't get much initially, be sure to hook her up with an external drive. One thing I noticed is that if a laptop lists like 320gb of HDD space, it's really just got 2 160gb HDDs. So keep that in mind. Another thing is that a bigger screen will definitely be better for graphics work. If she's doing a lot, I'd recommend at least a 17". She'll probably thank you in the end. But also with the big screen, you're going to want high resolution for detailed work. My 17" is 1440x900, which works fine for normal use and gaming but I hear that if you want real graphics you'll want a full 1920x1200.

Also, as far as video cards go, I think the Quaddro line from Nvidia is made for rendering things like 3d models.

Here's one I found that can be configured pretty well and fits your budget (it's under $1400). 17" 1900x1200 screen, 3gb of RAM, T8300 (should be upgradeable to the 9300 later if necessary but performance is still comparable to that of the 9300 so not worth a huge price difference), 8600GT (not a quaddro but better than integrated), 250gb hdd space, for $1368. You might be able to find something better if you look around but this will hopefully give you an idea of what you're looking for. Check sites like techbargains... they have some pretty nice deals.
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Postby nicksthegreat » Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:52 am

Thanks for all the information guys. Appreciate it.

We got the Toshiba Satellite A300/E00 Notebook today.
We got it upgraded to 4GB for free.
Got a good deal for a 3 Year warranty.
And half price on a wireless logitech mouse.

Total: NZD $1828

Booting it up now woop!!
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Postby nicksthegreat » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:28 am

Do I need a third party software to partition my Hard drive in Vista?
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Postby Grav!ty » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:36 am

No, once you select the drive during setup, you'll be able to use the Advanced function which lets you choose what size you want the partition. I think it's called the advanced function (been a while since I installed Vista), but you'll know it when you see it.
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Postby nicksthegreat » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:54 am

Sorry mate i did not make it clear, Vista is already installed on the Laptop. I cant find anything under the Properties of the Disk Drive
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Postby Grav!ty » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:00 am

Sure. Go to disk management (right click Computer>Manage) and then at the bottom section select the drive and right click and you'll see what the options are. You should be able to shrink the Vista partition depending on how much space is available, and then from the free space create a new partition.
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