Great value Dell 1545 laptop Fri, May 22. 2009
Sony VAIO NS20E laptop - a sprinkle of style and sense Tue, Apr 14. 2009
The Sony VAIO NS20 is a basic laptop from Sony VAIO which offers a refreshing sparkle of style and features to an otherwise rather dull budget laptop market.
For just £450-500 you get solid laptop with a slim profile for good looks and portability. Its smooth rounded corners and edges give the VAIO NS an elegant and attractive feel. Gentle curves also keep exterior dimensions to a minimum and ensure that this laptop is really easy to slip into a bag or carrying case.
Excellent picture quality
With a good-size 15.4” widescreen display, the VAIO NS allows you to fully appreciate your multimedia entertainment without compromising portability.
Sony "X-black" LCD technology ensures images are bright and sharp for truly realistic and natural-looking pictures. I had never seen this in action an took it for a simple branding excersise but the intense contrast and colours bring multimedia files to life vividly on screen and it stacks up well compared to a price-competitive Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. Its anti-reflective coating minimizes glare to allow enjoyment of movies, games and photo slideshows outside in the garden as well as from a wide variety of viewing angles.
Good connectivity
The VAIO NS also features a wide variety of connections including Sony's i.LINK™ for digital camcorders, a VGA (ie analogue) port which is good for most projectors an ExpressCard 34mm slot for memory cards, the laptop also accepts MemoryStick as you'd expect. Some models also featue an S-Video output for connecting up your laptop to a TV.
Solid hardware
It's well built for a budget laptop, with the kind of quality you'd expect from Sony. Its Intel Core Duo processor and 3Gb DDR2 RAM copes well with Vista and runs standard Office Suite software with ease.
And so this is where the mini-review should end. We've used them and we think they cope well with the demands of Vista Home Premium, offering a very pleasant user experience. Girls should keep their eyes open for the stunning pink models!
Silly software - but sound multimedia all round
Proprietary Sony VAIO software uses built-in intelligence to make simple work of organising rapidly growing – and potentially chaotic – collections of music and digital photos and video clips. VAIO Music Box uses a powerful ’12 Tone Analysis’ system to categorise music into different genres and moods, then automatically builds playlists that you can select to match the moment (hmm...).
VAIO Movie Story takes the work and complexity out of managing photos and video by vastly simplifying the task of arranging your pictures, adding effects and judicious editing to show them at their best, then synching the images to music. The result is a quality slideshow to enjoy and share – a long way from the original mass of pictures on the hard disk.
Sony’s trademark quality and attention to detail is evident wherever you look, from the X-black LCD enhanced screen to the clear tone of the integrated speakers and the provision of four USB ports for maximum connectivity. Along with the peace of mind that comes with the global status of the brand, this makes the VAIO NS hard to beat in its class.
Sony VAIO NS Series laptops at Cheap Laptops
Sony VAIO NS series
Excellent picture quality
With a good-size 15.4” widescreen display, the VAIO NS allows you to fully appreciate your multimedia entertainment without compromising portability.
Sony "X-black" LCD technology ensures images are bright and sharp for truly realistic and natural-looking pictures. I had never seen this in action an took it for a simple branding excersise but the intense contrast and colours bring multimedia files to life vividly on screen and it stacks up well compared to a price-competitive Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. Its anti-reflective coating minimizes glare to allow enjoyment of movies, games and photo slideshows outside in the garden as well as from a wide variety of viewing angles.
Good connectivity
The VAIO NS also features a wide variety of connections including Sony's i.LINK™ for digital camcorders, a VGA (ie analogue) port which is good for most projectors an ExpressCard 34mm slot for memory cards, the laptop also accepts MemoryStick as you'd expect. Some models also featue an S-Video output for connecting up your laptop to a TV.
Solid hardware
It's well built for a budget laptop, with the kind of quality you'd expect from Sony. Its Intel Core Duo processor and 3Gb DDR2 RAM copes well with Vista and runs standard Office Suite software with ease.
And so this is where the mini-review should end. We've used them and we think they cope well with the demands of Vista Home Premium, offering a very pleasant user experience. Girls should keep their eyes open for the stunning pink models!
Silly software - but sound multimedia all round
Proprietary Sony VAIO software uses built-in intelligence to make simple work of organising rapidly growing – and potentially chaotic – collections of music and digital photos and video clips. VAIO Music Box uses a powerful ’12 Tone Analysis’ system to categorise music into different genres and moods, then automatically builds playlists that you can select to match the moment (hmm...).
VAIO Movie Story takes the work and complexity out of managing photos and video by vastly simplifying the task of arranging your pictures, adding effects and judicious editing to show them at their best, then synching the images to music. The result is a quality slideshow to enjoy and share – a long way from the original mass of pictures on the hard disk.
Sony’s trademark quality and attention to detail is evident wherever you look, from the X-black LCD enhanced screen to the clear tone of the integrated speakers and the provision of four USB ports for maximum connectivity. Along with the peace of mind that comes with the global status of the brand, this makes the VAIO NS hard to beat in its class.
Sony VAIO NS Series laptops at Cheap Laptops
Budget laptop beats the finance blues Thu, Nov 13. 2008
The Advent netbook laptop is a low cost laptop for light home users and is ideal for word processing, accounting and browsing the Internet. Unlike most budget laptops, it is quite lightweight (1.12kg) making it suitable for carrying form place to place. The 10" Widescreen Display display is great for browsing the web and checking email, although the widescreen feature is a bit of a red herring becuase the laptop might not have quite the processor or memory performance you would like for smooth playback of movies.
Oh yes, whilst we're on cost, that's what you want to know isn't it?
The Advent 4211 C is currently available from PC World for just £279 - Wow!
Specs
This laptop comes with Intel’s newest and smallest ever processor, the Intel Atom as used in the eeePC. It's good 1GB Memory which isn't going to be great for games but will run the XP Home operating system without any trouble.
Unfortunately, like the eeePC it doesn't come with a CD or DVD drive! Again, this can be a good thing. A more solid laptop for starters, less to go wrong... OK that's the only reason but it's a valid one.
A generous 120GB hard drive provides ample space for storing music, photos and documents. Its also got 3 USB parts too, so you can plug in an external hard drive or DVD drive.
Additional features include a built in webcam, microphone and Bluetooth, so it's a good tool for Skype, NSN and any other program you choose to use to catch up with friends and family online.
Advent 4211 C Netbook now £279.99 from PC World
The laptops uses the old Windows® XP operating system, but wait - that's not such a bad thing becasue a machine fast and big enough to run the overweight operating system would cost twice as much.
Oh yes, whilst we're on cost, that's what you want to know isn't it?
Advent laptop £279 but no DVD drive
Specs
This laptop comes with Intel’s newest and smallest ever processor, the Intel Atom as used in the eeePC. It's good 1GB Memory which isn't going to be great for games but will run the XP Home operating system without any trouble.
Unfortunately, like the eeePC it doesn't come with a CD or DVD drive! Again, this can be a good thing. A more solid laptop for starters, less to go wrong... OK that's the only reason but it's a valid one.
A generous 120GB hard drive provides ample space for storing music, photos and documents. Its also got 3 USB parts too, so you can plug in an external hard drive or DVD drive.
Additional features include a built in webcam, microphone and Bluetooth, so it's a good tool for Skype, NSN and any other program you choose to use to catch up with friends and family online.
Advent 4211 C Netbook now £279.99 from PC World
Entertainment laptop runs rings round HD video Mon, Nov 10. 2008
The HP DV5-1110EM is a perfect Entertainment Laptop with Blu-Ray DVD drive and Radeon HD3450 graphics card it is equally adapt at watching movies or playing games.
The laptop is powered by an AMD Turion X2 processor with 2 processing cores running at a respectable 2.10 Ghz for churning through video like a knife through butter. 3 GB DDR2 memory provides ample space to process and display video or games, although you might want to consider upgrading the OS to something state of the art (like Windows XP... haw haw) rather than using the Vista Home Premium that it is sold with.
Storage is in the form of a 250 GB hard drive, which is above average for a laptop, reflecting its multimedia / home cinema credentials as an entertainment laptop.
You can plug the laptop into your surround sound system to enjoy 3D sound for games, movies and music. 4 USB connections will allow you to plug in your iPod, printer, Skype handset and one more device - so its a sensible balance. If you're interested, it's also got an infra-red port which are rarely used but actually pretty good for syncing a basic Nokia or Sony Ericsson phone.
Many HP laptops have an S-Video output so it's a little dissapointing, but you can connect to many new digital flatscreen TVs with the laptop's HDMI (digital) output.
Weighing in at 2.65 kg you wouldn't rule this laptop out for business jetsetting, but that's not its purpose in life. For one thing it's also pretty large (259 mm * 357 mm *349 mm) but its high performance graphics and fast processor are also pretty tough on the battery life.
All in all a good little portable media laptop at a good price from a brand you can trust. It's available in Black / Silver from PC World priced £599 inc VAT.
HP Pavillion DV5-1000 series entertainment laptop
Storage is in the form of a 250 GB hard drive, which is above average for a laptop, reflecting its multimedia / home cinema credentials as an entertainment laptop.
You can plug the laptop into your surround sound system to enjoy 3D sound for games, movies and music. 4 USB connections will allow you to plug in your iPod, printer, Skype handset and one more device - so its a sensible balance. If you're interested, it's also got an infra-red port which are rarely used but actually pretty good for syncing a basic Nokia or Sony Ericsson phone.
Many HP laptops have an S-Video output so it's a little dissapointing, but you can connect to many new digital flatscreen TVs with the laptop's HDMI (digital) output.
In most circumstances you'll be more than happy watching your DVDs or the BBC's marvellous iPlayer on the 15.4" High Definition display, but sadly this entertainment laptops lacks a TV output!
Weighing in at 2.65 kg you wouldn't rule this laptop out for business jetsetting, but that's not its purpose in life. For one thing it's also pretty large (259 mm * 357 mm *349 mm) but its high performance graphics and fast processor are also pretty tough on the battery life.
All in all a good little portable media laptop at a good price from a brand you can trust. It's available in Black / Silver from PC World priced £599 inc VAT.
Acer Aspire 5920 Laptop Thu, Aug 28. 2008
The Acer Aspire 5920 is on sale at PC World UK for just £399.97 at the moment and just it's worth every penny. Shipping with Vista Home Premium, this affordable laptop has just about everything home-office buyers could ask for in a solid budget notebook. With a generous 3Gb DDR2 RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2MB L2 Cache (4mb cache models are available) this little laptop is more than fit to cope with the trials of Vista and still pack a punch.
Acer have continued their car obsession of Ferrari and Lamborghini laptops with this suitably robust and clean design from BMW Designworks.
The Aspire 5250's 250 GB SATA Hard drive allows you to store over 60,000 songs or 200,000 photos, with good read and write performance. When you've filled it up, there's a dual layer DVD drive which can back up up to 8.5 Gb to disc in one shot.
As you would expect from ACER, there's also a handy 5-in-1 card reader, supporting Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick® (MS), Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD) formats.
This is an excellent little package from ACER, perfect for the home or light traveling home office user. Watch the spec, just like any laptop there's alot more than one Aspire 5250 to chose from!
Acer have continued their car obsession of Ferrari and Lamborghini laptops with this suitably robust and clean design from BMW Designworks.
Acer Aspire 5250
As you would expect from ACER, there's also a handy 5-in-1 card reader, supporting Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick® (MS), Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD) formats.
This is an excellent little package from ACER, perfect for the home or light traveling home office user. Watch the spec, just like any laptop there's alot more than one Aspire 5250 to chose from!
