Dell Studio 15 or Acer 5740??

[pringlejon]

I'm getting a new laptop as my current one is a bit temperamental nowadays and is a bit slow at running the ol' football manager...

My choices are the...

Dell Studio 15 with:
Intel® Core™ i5-430M (2.26Ghz, 4Threads, turbo boost up to 2.53 GHz, 3MB cache)
15.6" High Definition (1366x768) WLED
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4570 Graphics Card
4GB DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Hard Drive
3/3.5 hours battery life
£549

or

Acer 5740 with:
Intel Core i3-330M processor (2.13GHz, 3MB Cache)
15.6" LED backlit HD screen
Shared Graphics Card
3 GB RAM
320 GB Hard Drive
4.5 hours battery life
Dolby Surround Sound Built In Speakers.
£479

If anyone has one of these or could advise something similar would be much appreciated.

Basically, SZer's, do you reckon the dell is worth the extra money? I know it is better spec'd with a dedicated graphics card, more RAM, better processor etc but are they an extra 70 quid better?

Cheers all.

 

[Mr Plow]

I'd get the Dell if I was choosing between those two.

 

[sufc695]

Stay away from Acer laptops, mine ran terribly on Vista and XP was worse.

 

[Bielzibubz]

Or perhaps have a gander at this one I got this very afternoon.

Operating System
Operating System : Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
Chassis
Dimensions : 412mmx280mmx38.6mm
Weight : 3.3Kg
Processor
CPU Type : AMD Turion™ Turionx2 II Duel Core
CPU Model : M500
Cache memory : 1MB L2 cache
Speed : 2.2GHz FSB
Motherboard
Northbridge : AMD M880G
Memory
Installed memory : 4 GB DDR2
Hard Disk Drive
Hard Drive capacity : 320 GB
Hard Drive speed : 5400 rpm
Card reader / Floppy drive
Card reader : 5 in 1 (SD/MMC/MS/MS-Pro/xD)
CD-RW / DVD-RW
Optical Disk Drive : Supermulti Sata 12.7mm
Graphics
Graphics Claim : ATI Radeon™ HD4200
Dedicated Video Memory : Shared Only
Shared Video Memory : up to 1408MB Hypermemory
Screen
LCD size : 17.3''
Screen resolution : 1600x900 LED
Battery
Battery life : Up to 3 hours
Sound
Audio Chipset : TBC
Speaker system : Stereo
Dolby feature : Dolby Sound Room
Communication
LAN : 10/100/GigaLAN Ethernet
Wireless LAN : b/g/n
Connectors
USB : 4 USB2.0
Webcam : VGA Webcam
TV out : HDMI (with HDCP support)
Video out : VGA D-Sub
Audio Connectivity : Stereo Out ; Microphone In
Integrated Microphone : Yes
Keyboard and pointing device
Touchpad : Multitouch
Keyboard : With numeric keypad
Operating System
Operating System : Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium

Curry's are quoting £579.00 for the 1T hard drive version but I picked up the 320 gig one for £447.00 from Staples and I've checked, that's the only difference between the two.

Have to say that after using my 15.4 inch old Celeron for so long this little puppy really is the dog's whatsits.

:D

Phil

 

[pringlejon]

The processor on that is an AMD Turion Dual Core. I'm looking at getting one of the new intel processors, either the i3, i5 or i7 as i think they perform much better when multitasking...otherwise that one looks like a beaut bielz.

sufc695, what was the problem with your acer and how long ago did you get it? as a brand they have improved performance and build quality recently and i have heard good things about them...more so than dell in fact....

also heard the dell studio 15 has poor speakers. can anyone confirm this?

 

[sufc695]

sufc695, what was the problem with your acer and how long ago did you get it? as a brand they have improved performance and build quality recently and i have heard good things about them...more so than dell in fact....

I got it in late 2007 and it was just slow on the whole, and chunks of spare memory space seemed to vanish occasionally, and reappearing the next day...

May just have been a unique problem, didn't get it checked out because it was usable and it was only short-term for me.

 

[Strykr]

ive always found toshiba laptops quite decent, try ebuyer for a decent price,
dell customer service is a pain in the *** too!