Entries by Jimmy Dunn

HP are offering 10% off & Free Delivery sale over Easter (Friday 21st March to Monday 24th March). Seeing as you can pick up a HP Compaq laptop from £435 this makes for some cheap laptop deals!

Just use the Voucher Code:

HPEASTER

Happy Easter from the HP Business and HP Consumer stores.

The Asus X53SR laptop is a great all round laptop, with a powerful Intel Core 2 Duo Processor for superb performance, & a great graphics card providing an excellent viewing experience.

It's quite high performance for a cheap laptop, but it doesn't look great and has a relatively short battery life. However, if you want better "bang" you have to fork out more hard earned "bucks" so it's a good all rounder. I wouldn't recommend it for the high powered exec, but if you want a practical, powerful desktop replacement that you can shove in a drawer to save space or a machine for light travel it's a bargain at just £549 inc VAT from PC World this Easter - that's £250 off.

The Fineprint
This Asus X53SR laptop has a DVI port, so you shouldn't have a problem hooking it up to an HD TV using a HDMI adapter. This could be great if you haven't invested in a DVD player, or perhaps want to watch HD Prison Break from the err ...Internet...

Unfortunately, the HD DVD drive is what it says on the tin "HD" ie. Toshiba's standard that recently lost out to Sony's Blu-Ray. Still, you're not paying extra for that and it will read all your software and "Fisher price" DVDs no problem so what's there to complain about?

Processor: INTEL CORE 2 DUO T5450, 1.66 GHz. Not bad for a laptop
Memory: 2048 MB DDR2 (fast) DRAM. Enough for a basic Vista machine
Storage: 160 Gb hard drive
CD / DVD:Super Multi DVD1RW (reads and writes to CDs and DVD-RW)
Battery life:2.5 hrs (manufacturer)
Weight2.95 kg

Asus X53SR laptop

Apple have launched the world's thinnest notebook, called the MacBook Air. It isn't a cheap laptop - but we thought you'd like to hear more.

The MacBook Air has a fresh, brand new ultra compact thin design. Accoding to Apple, the Air is the thinnest notebook computer available, and indeed it's remarkably sleek. At its widest point, it's a hair over three-quarters of an inch (that's 1.94cm) and it's very light, weighing in at exactly 1.36kg.

The new model Macs are equipped with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, offer larger hard drives and ship with 2GB of memory as standard in most models. All MacBooks and MacBook Pros can now house up to 4GB of memory, making them ideal for the multimedia apps such as Photoshop and Cubase that have long made Macs the creative man's (and wo-man's) tool of choice.

A far cry from the modest little EEE PC we just brought up. But, if you need a powerful and reliable tool for multimedia on the road here's the lowdown.

MacBook Air

• Light, small and super thin.
  
• Base processor is a 1.6 Core 2 Duo.
  
• 2 Gb memory
  
• 80 Gb hard drive
  
• 5 hours batt
  
• 13 inch screen

£1,199

Needless to say at less than 2cm thick, the MacBook Air doesn't have a built in optical drive. Instead, you can use a remote optical drive which makes living without a built-in drive much easier than the traditional docking station alternatives (if you've had a docking station, you'll know what I mean).

Here comes the cheap bit. Education offers. Students and teachers can save up to 8% on Macs and up to 80% on Apple Software products!

Play, relax, and entertain on the go with the ASUS Eee PC.

Today I'm talking about the Eee PCPC701 - a smart little Linux-based laptop.

Linux! Arghh!

You say... but give it a shot. It's cheap as chips and easy to use, opening up a brave new world with easy Web access on the go. This smart little box is great for web browsing, checking email and social networking. You can even make calls with skype or instant messenger. The Eee pc is also great for students and schoolkids, with pres-installed features a host of tools to facilitate student homework.

Eee PC the flexible friend
Speaking of students, it's shock-proof design. Best not to through it at the teacher, but it's a tough little box and it'll take aknock or two more than your average low cost laptop.

The little laptop is powered by an Intel Ulta Low Voltage Celeron M Processor, which gives it a respectable battery life. It's quoted as "900MHz capable", in other words they don't ship at top speed but you could clock it by visiting BIOS.

The Eee PC features built-in wireless networking, sound and a media reader for Secure Digital (SD) and MultiMedia Card (MMC). Shockingly , your new best friend also has a built-in webcam and 2 year warranty.

New best friend - have you lost it?
Well, take a look. The ASUS Eee PC is very compact, just 7" and weighs less than 1 kg allowing you to be truly mobile. Bumps and shocks are no longer issues. And like a dog, it's dependable - it uses a solid - state disk for unparalleled shock protection and reliability. Eee PC will not fetch your paper, but BBC News looks pretty good even at 7".

Fact: The new ASUS Eee PC actually weighs less than a Harry Potter novel!

Easy on the pocket - Priced at £186 and £219 inc VAT the Eee PC is one of the lowest priced notebooks on the market. The cheap little laptop is:

• Easy to use - The new ASUS Quick launcher & one click intuitive user-friendly interface
  
• Easy to carry - Weighs less than 1kg and it comes with a free carry case.
  
• Easy on the pocket
  
• Intel Mobile processor
  
• 512MB RAM / 4GB Hard disk space - this is DDR2 RAM so it's fast!
  
• SD(HC)card reader
  
• 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity
  
• Integrated Webcam
  
• 2 Year Collect and Return warranty

These laptops sold out in the US over Christmas, now the early adopters over here are picking them up.

I love it. I like Linux, but I'm no expert and it works for me. If you want a business laptop replacement it's not for you because it's a Linux box and you probably find it difficult to stay compatible with a Windows-based office using MS Office suite. If you're looking for a multimedia or gaming machine it's not for you because it's only got a 4Gb hard drive.

But if you have schoolkids, want to take note in lectures, work in IT or want a faithful companion for browsing the web you've just found it.

Got your Asus Eee PC for just £218 here and join the consumer revolution!

Sony's digital entertainment laptop with a Blu-ray disc drive, HDMI connectivity, high powered processor and an incredibly large hard drive. This small laptop is a multimedia special, ideal for watching high resolution Blu-Ray DVDs (not surprisingly being pushed by Sony) which are higher resolution that standard DVDs and in competition with High Definition (HD). The WXGA (Widescreen high resolution) screen and huge hard drive reflect its multimedia capabilities - although bear in mind it isn't stricly (err.. at all) legal to rip a DVD onto the large hard drive!



Other than the fancy features the memory is generous - 2 Gb of very fast DDR2 667 MHz RAM. That's even enough to run Vista - which you might aswell get used to because it's going to be standard soon enough - and to tinker with 5 mb photos from your 10 Megapixel Sony digital camera. Speaking of cameras, this cheaper than usual premium Sony laptop has the obligatory MemoryStick drive.

A dual core processor ticks another box, although pretty standard these days. It does, whoever have an 800MHz FSB - this means it is free from a common bottleneck when communicating with the rest of your computer.

One for the desk drawer or young professional's IKEA room plan. Not half bad for under £1,000 inc VAT.

Here's the spec: Sony VAIO Intel Core 2 Duo T7300

• 15.4 WXGA
  
• 2GB RAM
  
• Huge 200GB hard drive
  
• Blu-Ray optical drive (reads high resolution DVDs)
  
• Vista Home Premium

Sony @ Cheap Laptops