Hi, does anyone have any (UK) recommendations on a laptop with the
following specs?

Price: up to £1000
Processor: Intel Core Duo etc.
RAM: 1GB
HDD: say 60Gb
Screen: 17 inch widescreen (big)
+ wireless network, DVD writer etc. and reasonable built in speakers

I would just go for a dell, hp, lenovo or suchlike but it's a big
investment so if anyone has any useful input that would be great.

Thanks

Dave

Hi,

Did you try http://www.ibmsystems.co.uk/ it is search site for all the
best laptop offers on the WEB? Hope this helps...pappa

davehowey@f2s.com wrote:
> Hi, does anyone have any (UK) recommendations on a laptop with the
> following specs?
>
> Price: up to £1000
> Processor: Intel Core Duo etc.
> RAM: 1GB
> HDD: say 60Gb
> Screen: 17 inch widescreen (big)
> + wireless network, DVD writer etc. and reasonable built in speakers
>
> I would just go for a dell, hp, lenovo or suchlike but it's a big
> investment so if anyone has any useful input that would be great.
>
> Thanks
>
> Dave

Consumer Reports magazine just came out with their annual electronics
issue (in US). It's pretty weak on details but might be a good place to
start.

I would recommend NOT getting a Toshiba. My wife and I bought one a
while ago. The power system failed, but fortunately it failed very
soon after purchase and the merchant exchanged it.

Th replacement laptop has had some power glitches as well, but it still
does operate.

The biggest reason that I would recommend against Toshiba is that when
I had a virus that the antivirus software was unable to deal with, I
wanted to reinstal Windows. I had partitioned the drive and wanted to
re-format the OS partition and re-install windows onto only that
partition. The thing is that the Toshiba recovery cd only supported
reformatting the whole drive (whereby I would have had to back up 40 GB
of data). The Windows image on the disk was in some sort of crazy
proprietary format, so I couldn't just image the drive myself. The
technical support people were completely worthless, too.

So beyond getting a reliable laptop, I would suggest doing some
investigation and making sure that your laptop has a reasonable
re-installation plan.


davehowey@f2s.com wrote:
> Hi, does anyone have any (UK) recommendations on a laptop with the
> following specs?
>
> Price: up to £1000
> Processor: Intel Core Duo etc.
> RAM: 1GB
> HDD: say 60Gb
> Screen: 17 inch widescreen (big)
> + wireless network, DVD writer etc. and reasonable built in speakers
>
> I would just go for a dell, hp, lenovo or suchlike but it's a big
> investment so if anyone has any useful input that would be great.
>
> Thanks
>
> Dave

kramer31 wrote:
>
> The biggest reason that I would recommend against Toshiba is that when
> I had a virus that the antivirus software was unable to deal with, I
> wanted to reinstal Windows. I had partitioned the drive and wanted to
> re-format the OS partition and re-install windows onto only that
> partition. The thing is that the Toshiba recovery cd only supported
> reformatting the whole drive (whereby I would have had to back up 40 GB
> of data). The Windows image on the disk was in some sort of crazy
> proprietary format, so I couldn't just image the drive myself. The
> technical support people were completely worthless, too.
>

The recovery CD is to put the system back to the same condition it was
when it left the factory. If you partitioned the drive and installed
software then it's your responsibility to back all of that up so you can
recover it. It's not reasonable for the recovery CD to put it back to
your modified condition. After all how could it possibly do that, and
still have all the registry settings needed for the changes you made.


Ian Singer
--


================================================== =======================
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I am near Toronto Canada, can I tell where you are from your reply?
================================================== =======================

I repair laptops, and I totally disagree with you. While there are some
model-by-model exceptions, Toshiba laptops are among the better brands
out there. Any unit can fail, and there are horror stories for
individual units of all brands.

As to the matter of OS recovery, the way that Toshiba does it isn't the
best, but it's better than most brands. These days, most brands don't
give you a CD or DVD AT ALL ... they use a "recovery partition" on the
hard drive. A lot of good that does if the hard drive fails, and that
mechanism also doesn't work [at all, in many cases] if you have used
Partition Magic or any other software to alter the partition structure
as it was originally shipped.

As you note, the Toshiba recovery DVD does a total destruction and
recovery of the entire hard drive. I agree that it's not ideal. But if
you know what you are doing, you can make a recovery media yourself
because it leaves an I386 folder on the hard drive. It's still better
than having no media at all of any kind. And you can, if you want,
generally use the Toshiba product key with a generic OEM Windows CD of
the same version (home or pro). Of all of the major laptop makers, only
Dell is significantly better in that they always offered, and now supply
as standard, a more or less generic Windows XP CD.



kramer31 wrote:
> I would recommend NOT getting a Toshiba. My wife and I bought one a
> while ago. The power system failed, but fortunately it failed very
> soon after purchase and the merchant exchanged it.
>
> Th replacement laptop has had some power glitches as well, but it still
> does operate.
>
> The biggest reason that I would recommend against Toshiba is that when
> I had a virus that the antivirus software was unable to deal with, I
> wanted to reinstal Windows. I had partitioned the drive and wanted to
> re-format the OS partition and re-install windows onto only that
> partition. The thing is that the Toshiba recovery cd only supported
> reformatting the whole drive (whereby I would have had to back up 40 GB
> of data). The Windows image on the disk was in some sort of crazy
> proprietary format, so I couldn't just image the drive myself. The
> technical support people were completely worthless, too.
>
> So beyond getting a reliable laptop, I would suggest doing some
> investigation and making sure that your laptop has a reasonable
> re-installation plan.
>
>
> davehowey@f2s.com wrote:
>> Hi, does anyone have any (UK) recommendations on a laptop with the
>> following specs?
>>
>> Price: up to £1000
>> Processor: Intel Core Duo etc.
>> RAM: 1GB
>> HDD: say 60Gb
>> Screen: 17 inch widescreen (big)
>> + wireless network, DVD writer etc. and reasonable built in speakers
>>
>> I would just go for a dell, hp, lenovo or suchlike but it's a big
>> investment so if anyone has any useful input that would be great.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Dave
>

On my 3 year old Toshiba 5200, the recovery CDs recognize that I have
repartioned the drive and offer to redo only the C: partition (or the whole
disk). Love it!
Terry

"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:456785A3.7030101@neo.rr.com...
>I repair laptops, and I totally disagree with you. While there are some
>model-by-model exceptions, Toshiba laptops are among the better brands out
>there. Any unit can fail, and there are horror stories for individual
>units of all brands.
>
> As to the matter of OS recovery, the way that Toshiba does it isn't the
> best, but it's better than most brands. These days, most brands don't
> give you a CD or DVD AT ALL ... they use a "recovery partition" on the
> hard drive. A lot of good that does if the hard drive fails, and that
> mechanism also doesn't work [at all, in many cases] if you have used
> Partition Magic or any other software to alter the partition structure as
> it was originally shipped.
>
> As you note, the Toshiba recovery DVD does a total destruction and
> recovery of the entire hard drive. I agree that it's not ideal. But if
> you know what you are doing, you can make a recovery media yourself
> because it leaves an I386 folder on the hard drive. It's still better
> than having no media at all of any kind. And you can, if you want,
> generally use the Toshiba product key with a generic OEM Windows CD of the
> same version (home or pro). Of all of the major laptop makers, only Dell
> is significantly better in that they always offered, and now supply as
> standard, a more or less generic Windows XP CD.
>
>
>
> kramer31 wrote:
>> I would recommend NOT getting a Toshiba. My wife and I bought one a
>> while ago. The power system failed, but fortunately it failed very
>> soon after purchase and the merchant exchanged it.
>>
>> Th replacement laptop has had some power glitches as well, but it still
>> does operate.
>>
>> The biggest reason that I would recommend against Toshiba is that when
>> I had a virus that the antivirus software was unable to deal with, I
>> wanted to reinstal Windows. I had partitioned the drive and wanted to
>> re-format the OS partition and re-install windows onto only that
>> partition. The thing is that the Toshiba recovery cd only supported
>> reformatting the whole drive (whereby I would have had to back up 40 GB
>> of data). The Windows image on the disk was in some sort of crazy
>> proprietary format, so I couldn't just image the drive myself. The
>> technical support people were completely worthless, too.
>>
>> So beyond getting a reliable laptop, I would suggest doing some
>> investigation and making sure that your laptop has a reasonable
>> re-installation plan.
>>
>>
>> davehowey@f2s.com wrote:
>>> Hi, does anyone have any (UK) recommendations on a laptop with the
>>> following specs?
>>>
>>> Price: up to £1000
>>> Processor: Intel Core Duo etc.
>>> RAM: 1GB
>>> HDD: say 60Gb
>>> Screen: 17 inch widescreen (big)
>>> + wireless network, DVD writer etc. and reasonable built in speakers
>>>
>>> I would just go for a dell, hp, lenovo or suchlike but it's a big
>>> investment so if anyone has any useful input that would be great.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Dave
>>