The Laptop review

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

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

Lenovo's N200 Lenovo laptop comes with an integrated fingerprint reader for extra security - perhaps something the Governmnet should consider in light of today's latest personal data leak. Novelty or not, this notebook has buckets of features in a small package for just £446.49!

Wired or wireless network?
With this affordable laptop you can connect to either with the Lenovo N200 Core 2 Duo, which works with 802.11g, 802.11b and 802.11a protocols for wireless access, and Ethernet and Fast Ethernet access for wired networks. The laptop combines smooth and fast performance from the 1.5ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and backed up by a substantial 1Gb of operating memory - and it's DDR2 memory so it's fast.

The 24-bit colour WXGA TFT display offers a rich 1280 x 800 resolution with amazing colour depth lets you enter a world of superb graphics and fast video. Integrated stereo speakers with high definition sound make for a stunning combination to deliver a portable audio visual experience. A built-in microphone and camera provides communication and fun factors to the Lenovo N200 Core 2 Duo notebook PC. DVD writing facilities come as standard, with a drive that handles recordable DVD and CD media to play and write with.

Features

• Intel Core 2 Duo
  
• 120 GB Serial ATA-150 (5400 rpm) hard drive
  
• DDR II SDRAM
  
• 15.4" TFT active matrix
  
• 5 in 1 Card Reader
  
• Fingerprint Reader
  
• Integrated 1.3 Megapixel camera
  
• DVD-Writer
  

If you want to be on the bleeding edge of technology get a Vista upgrade.

This Lenovo notebook PC weighs in at just 2.8 kg with a full load of features, take a look at Lenovo laptops for more details.

Going on the experience of sales at Cheap Laptops and immediate colleagues, friends and family ACER are a real contender for affordable but capable laptops.

But why is that? Well, for just £352.49 (we musn't forget the obligatory 49p...) you can get your hands on an Acer Aspire 5051WLMi. Now, that's an ACER laptop with economy in mind - ie. you might "aspire" to upgrade to a Travelmate, Lamborghini etc.

What do you get?

For the price it is an impressive package powered by a powerful 2GHz AMD Turion 64 low power processor supported by 1 Gb RAM. Unusually for laptops it also has a 120 Gb hard drive and a built in DVD +/- RW. Not bad eh? Well, that's the one reason why ACER seem to be killing off Toshiba's long term domination of desktop replacement notebook PCs.

I like to call these laptops "tabletops" because they have quote high end processors and aren't ideal for travel / mobility but can still be popped away in the drawer once you've finished doing your online shopping from Tesco, ordered your wife (or partner!) some sexy lingerie to keep you out the doghouse and poked fun at friends on Facebook.

All of which moves us swiftly on to display.

Can I watch DVDS?

Well, this little laptop has a 14.1" WXGA monitor. That's Wide screen XGA in English and yes, good for personal DVD viewing but perhaps you would fork out for a 17" if you want to share. ACER laptops are alway fully featured and the cheaper models are no exception. The Acer Aspire 5051WLMi has a 5 in 1 card reader to make it easier to grab photos from a digital camera.

The laptop comes with Windows Vista home and a built in wireless interface.