Laptop recommendations and Windows 7

[Ian Clyde]

Hi,

Apologies that this is a little 'off-topic', but I am about to replace my steam-driven laptop, I'm somewhat of a techno-idiot so does anyone out there have any recommendations for which make/model to go for? I currently have an IBM notebook which has been very reliable over the last 5 years and am considering a Lenovo now however they seem expensive compared to most other 'common' makes...perhaps thats the price for reliability and robustness?

Also....any known issues with running Actinic(v9) on Windows 7?

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts out there.....

Ian.

[Duncan Rounding]

I'm a Dell fan personally. I think big name brands are safest. Just get at least 4Gb RAM.
The keyboard layout is very important to me - I hate having to pause to locate the odd key that's not in the 'normal' place as on a full size keyboard.

I've had no problems with W7 and Actinic or in fact with any other software at all.

[Steve G Griggs]

Laptop

I agree with Duncan; Dell (or Acer, always had good service from Acer laptops) with as much RAM as it will physically take. Go for Windows 7 if you can not Vista....

[Ian Clyde]

Duncan/Steve,

Thats great, many thanks for that, a lot of people I have spoken to recommend Dell and apprently Actinic use Dells as well so decision made!

Thanks for your help...much appreciated.

Ian.

[completerookie]

just bought a dell studio 1555 on Friday, 6gb ram, 500gb, T9600 processor - very fast, true HD screen etc but if you want to get even better future proofing, go for the i7-720m intel processor

pay particular attention to the processors, I bought a new Acer touch-screen laptop only to discover the processor/bios did NOT support xp-mode inside win7

for me, that was critical, XP will only work on intel processors that support VT technology

take a look at http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36503#specs and use the dropdown's to check if the processor supports
Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT)

kev

[Ian Clyde]

Thanks Kev....

Ian.

[taliesyn]

just bought a dell studio 1555 on Friday, 6gb ram, 500gb, T9600 processor - very fast, true HD screen etc but if you want to get even better future proofing, go for the i7-720m intel processor

pay particular attention to the processors, I bought a new Acer touch-screen laptop only to discover the processor/bios did NOT support xp-mode inside win7

for me, that was critical, XP will only work on intel processors that support VT technology

take a look at http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36503#specs and use the dropdown's to check if the processor supports
Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT)

kev

Make sure the BIOS supports VT, not just the processor. Most laptops out there these days are perfectly capable of VT, but it is disallowed by the BIOS (ACER are notorious for doing this).

Apart from the Microsoft XP emulation (which I guess not everyone will need anyway), Windows 7 will run perfectly well on a laptop without VT.

[Steve G Griggs]

That's worth knowing-thanks for the info about VT