Ok then, I'm thinking of buying my first laptop, I have an outdated dell dimension e520 at the moment and rather than replace it with another desktop I thought I'd spend a bit more on getting a decent laptop to use for everything and do without a desktop altogether. I still want it to be reasonably mobile but I figure a lot of its use will be at home.
I'm not desperate for top of the range performance (and with a budget of around £800 I realise I ain't gonna get that anyway) but I would like to be able to do some decent gaming on it- total war games are my poison and my poor 2.66 single processor, with 1gb ram was about as active as my dog when she's lying in a patch of sun when i tried to play the total war empire demo.
So in terms of benchmark performance, I'd like to be able to play the latest total war: shogun title on good graphics settings (not necessarily highest but I'd like it to play smoothly and look good and ideally be able to handle future games at a more average graphics level)
I'd also like a decent sized hard drive as I have thousands of photos to store (I probably want 500gb at least) I'm not quite sure about speed- I don't really understand what distinct differences hard drive, cpu and ram speed (or graphics card speed for that matter) make to performance- I remember being told once that theres not much point upgrading one far beyond the level of the others- is this true? Is there no point having a really fast cpu and skimping on ram/ hardrive speed and vice versa?
I'm not quite decided on screen size, as ever its the tradeoff between portability and gaming enjoyment I'm probably aiming in the 15" to 17" range.
I'm something of a computing newby and I find the range of cpus, hardrives, ram and graphics cards etc somewhat confusing. Probably because they have relatively simple to follow names I've been drawn to the intel i3,i5,i7 range, I reckon a mid level i5 will probably be sufficient for my needs but I now realise its not as simple as being a simple performance gradient with these processors. Judging by price it seems some i5s can be faster than some i7s- I'd just presumed quad core was always better than dual core but I guess this isn't always the case?
Right better round off there, loads of uncertainty already as you can see!
Any advice would be much appreciated,
thanks, R
I'm not desperate for top of the range performance (and with a budget of around £800 I realise I ain't gonna get that anyway) but I would like to be able to do some decent gaming on it- total war games are my poison and my poor 2.66 single processor, with 1gb ram was about as active as my dog when she's lying in a patch of sun when i tried to play the total war empire demo.
So in terms of benchmark performance, I'd like to be able to play the latest total war: shogun title on good graphics settings (not necessarily highest but I'd like it to play smoothly and look good and ideally be able to handle future games at a more average graphics level)
I'd also like a decent sized hard drive as I have thousands of photos to store (I probably want 500gb at least) I'm not quite sure about speed- I don't really understand what distinct differences hard drive, cpu and ram speed (or graphics card speed for that matter) make to performance- I remember being told once that theres not much point upgrading one far beyond the level of the others- is this true? Is there no point having a really fast cpu and skimping on ram/ hardrive speed and vice versa?
I'm not quite decided on screen size, as ever its the tradeoff between portability and gaming enjoyment I'm probably aiming in the 15" to 17" range.
I'm something of a computing newby and I find the range of cpus, hardrives, ram and graphics cards etc somewhat confusing. Probably because they have relatively simple to follow names I've been drawn to the intel i3,i5,i7 range, I reckon a mid level i5 will probably be sufficient for my needs but I now realise its not as simple as being a simple performance gradient with these processors. Judging by price it seems some i5s can be faster than some i7s- I'd just presumed quad core was always better than dual core but I guess this isn't always the case?
Right better round off there, loads of uncertainty already as you can see!
Any advice would be much appreciated,
thanks, R
You *may* find that you struggle a little online and have to drop it down a touch but thats not too big an issue 
