New laptop

Pretty good specs although you can get the same if not slightly better around £50-100 cheaper if you opt for another manufacturer.

I think I've decided to go over my budget for something we a decent battery life. This Ascer Timeline manages an average 8 hours which is pretty impressive. It may not have best processor, but it has lots of ram and decent sized hard drive. Looks like the one for me. I reckon anyway.

Yeah unfortunately, manufacturers are still using really ancient battery technology. If you get a powerful laptop, it will have a short battery life. My mate at uni has this really fucking hench laptop that he reckons he can play Crysis on, but the battery life is only about an hour or so.

If you want something that doesn\'t need charging every couple of hours and that you can actually take places with you, then you\'re going to have to settle for lower specs. Things that really eat battery power are CPU and GPU. I advise getting a lappy that has no dedicated GPU, but instead has onboard motherboard graphics. You can still have plenty of memory and stuff, though.

That Acer Timeline does seem to fit the bill perfectly. I would be very careful about what anti-virus software I used on it, though. Anti-virus software slows your computer down, and the CPU on that isn\'t very fast to begin with. Unless you\'re going to be gaming etc (which I doubt you\'ll be doing much of on that lappy), and you just want it for general use (word processing, web surfing, music listening, etc), I would at least consider Linux over Windows. It will maximise the speed and stability of that laptop massively. You also won\'t ever need any anti-virus software.

Edit: Did you notice that the Acer Timeline has no optical drive of any kind? So you won\'t be using any CDs or DVDs on it.

( Edited 28.08.2009 03:51 by Martin_ )

I think you should look into a Dell Studio 15, great design, good specs and goo battery life. If you go on the site the second from the left is a good deal for the price.

I looked into the Dell Studio 15, but the battery life isn't great - and people seem to run into huge problems with it, often before even a year has passed.

I've decided to go with an Acer. Only problem is there are two models. The 3810TG has a ATI Mobility Radeon HD graphics card, while the slightly cheaper 3810T instead has a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD 64MB.

Which one should I go with? Would one be better for battery life? Or is there just an obvious choice here?

The first one is only £20 more so i'd just go with that personally.

This seems to be good for the price:

# Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo T3400 2.16 GHz Dual-Core
# RAM - 3 GB (installed) (max) - DDR2 SDRAM
# Hard Drive - 250 GB
# Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
# Screen - 15.4 in TFT active matrix 1280 x 800
# Optical Drive - DVDRW (+R double layer) / DVD-RAM
# Graphics - Intel GMA X4500
# Graphics - Intel GMA X4500 - 128 MB
# Bluetooth - No
# Notebook Camera - Integrated - 1.3 Megapixel

£430


( Edited 07.09.2009 02:17 by Buddah )

I'm after a netbook, have a laptop I just want something smaller and bit more portable. I've heard about the Samsung NC10 (?). You guys will have ideas so throw me my way. Many thanks!

The Acer Timeline I just ordered is pretty damn compact. Check out the there's a whole line with 13.3 screens. Pretty expensive, but excellent battery life.

What sort of things will you be needing it for?

Realistically that Acer will give you about 4 hours battery life max. If you want a decent battery then get a macbook.

Game Informer, of which I get a free 12 month subscription when I renew my GameStop card, had a page on netbooks in its September issue. The only one they rated as superb out of the 4 they rated was the Toshiba Mini nb205 for $399.99(that\'s about £250 by my calculations).

Pros: The Toshiba boasted the best performance, battery life(up to 8 hours), and the trackpad out of the bunch. If that isn\'t enough, it also comes with cool extras like hard drive impact sensors, which safeguard your data if dropped, and USB ports that charge devices even when the system is off.
Cons: The Toshiba\'s wide load battery sticks out further than any of the others. If Toshiba fixed that and the screen\'s glassy glare, we might have the perfect netbook.

Well it would just be for typing up notes, catching up on email and typing up essays. I don't want nothing exceptional just good looking with a good battery life and to be honest the brand doesn't bother me either.

Get the Samsung N110, has an amazing battery life, going to set you back just over £300ish.

DaOne said:
Realistically that Acer will give you about 4 hours battery life max. If you want a decent battery then get a macbook.

Various sites have tested the timeline series with highly demanding battery tests and its gone for 4 hours +, so under general usage - it is going to be more than that. Otherwise I\'m returning it.

But anyway, my Acer arrived today - anyone know if I have to let it charge for ages? The manual is kind of non-existent, so I have no idea whether I should leave it charging for the a day - the light has gone off, so I presume its fully charged but...

( Edited 09.09.2009 17:20 by TheStratMan )

I would use it let it run down low then fully recharge.

TheStratMan said:

DaOne said:
Realistically that Acer will give you about 4 hours battery life max. If you want a decent battery then get a macbook.

Various sites have tested the timeline series with highly demanding battery tests and its gone for 4 hours +, so under general usage - it is going to be more than that. Otherwise I'm returning it.

But anyway, my Acer arrived today - anyone know if I have to let it charge for ages? The manual is kind of non-existent, so I have no idea whether I should leave it charging for the a day - the light has gone off, so I presume its fully charged but...

I've used one of the new Acers that claims 7.3 hours battery and with normal use went for just over 3.

Laptops these days stop charging when they are fully charged, check your tray icon, should tell you the battery life.

I would of gone for a Samsung Netbook NC10+ TBH, good battery life, Compact, almost a full sized keyboard.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525:

I\'m taking my desktop with me too, but scrapping the old hard drive (160 GB freezes and is really loud) with a 500Gb and a further 500GB external for backup of all my things.
Also swapping my ancient ATI X550 (256MB) graphics card for a
Zotac 9800GT 1GB

DaOne said:

I've used one of the new Acers that claims 7.3 hours battery and with normal use went for just over 3.

Interesting. You should have checked the power options because it would have been interesting to see what mode is was running in for that - I think they have stretched the truth and for the full 8 hours you need to be running in power-save mode, possibly with the Radeon graphics card switched to the internal accellerator thing - which I'm perfectly happy to do. But it would be pretty dodgy if it really was that bad generally because it's basically why these laptops sell.

Then again, I've spoken to numerous people who own them and do get that sort of long battery life and plenty of reviews - so maybe you were just unlucky somehow. Also depends on what you consider normal use.

I will report back with my findings after giving it a full charge tomorrow.

I'm in America now and I've been through a few full charges of my Acer Timeline.

Adding it all up, as long as you're running in power save mode and not doing anything more demanding beyond a word processor, internet browsing and viewing pictures - you definitely get a solid 7.5 hours!

The prediction thing is crap though. It jumps up and down for absolutely no reason at all - when you have nothing open and you're on desktop in the space of twenty minutes it can jump between eight hours left to four and a half. I suspect this partly due to Vista being pants. Hopefully I'll sort out Windows 7 too and that'll improve things.

In short - I'm very happy with my purchase! Cheers everyone!

Reviving an old thread!!!

I'm going to buy a laptop now, I've been searching ages and narrowed it down to two laptops now,

Both £350 so absolute bargains.
Both 4Gigs of Ram, plenty
Both Dual core processors, decent enough.
Both windows 7 home premium 64 bit, awesome

But this Compaq CQ61 is 15.6 inches, 3 hours battery and 2.6KG.
And this Acer Aspire Timeline 3810TZ is 13.3 inches, 8 hours (probably 5 realistically) and 1.6KG.

Do you think 13.3 inches would be too small and get annoying after long periods? I want to use this as my main computer, because I can't take my desktop to Japan (where I'll be staying for 1 year)

Or conversely is a 15.6 inch laptop portable enough?

I've never had laptops before, always had desktops with 17+ inch screens. So I know nothing about lugging laptops around or using smaller screens.

From reading this thread Stratman has the acer and Firefly has the compaq (though I've not seen Firefly post in a while...)? Would you recommend them? Thanks in advance!

I’ve had my Acer for about a year and I’m extremely pleased with it. The battery life has been superb, it still manages about seven hours in power save mode as long as you’re not doing anything too demanding (ie. sticking to internet browsing, word processing, music) and I’ve found (especially since upgrading to Windows 7) that even when you use thing that are more demanding â€" it still packs a much better punch than most. For example I’ve recently been on a few flights, I watched two movies back to back (1.5 hour/2.5 hour), played music for another hour and it still indicated about 25% left. It’s very impressive. Keep in mind this is all in power save mode, but I see absolutely no difference in terms of overall performance between that and standard. The latter just seems to use the battery quicker.
Also, considering it’s definitely not as powerful processing-wise as some other laptops, it seems to do extremely well with demanding programs. I occasionally use photoshop cs2 on it with no problems, last week I even got Pro Tools running on it without a hitch.
In short, I’d say go for the Acer if you just want to do standard things and have a great battery life â€" with only an occasional need to run extremely demanding programs. Also, the keyboard feels AWESOME. I’m writing this on my PC, and I’m recoiling in disgust at the feeling of these keys.

Every laptop I've ever used has shit keys. I hate these crappy flat keyboards. Noisy clanky keys ftw

knighty said:
Every laptop I've ever used has shit keys. I hate these crappy flat keyboards. Noisy clanky keys ftw

hmmm ok thanks Tom, I'm ordering the 13.3 inch now.

If I find the screen too small,my thinking is that I can buy a bigger screen to leave at home to plug it into, giving me a nice comfy screen at home, while remaining portable.

I think you'll be very pleased.

Oh and the screen is very adequate. I had the same concern when I ordered mine but it's absolutely fine. I constantly forget that it's a 'compact' laptop, it feels like a normal one. When I see people with big 'normal sized' laptops I feel as though they're unneccessary. I don't understand why they'd want such a big screen, nor want to lug something like that around.