Looking for notebook £500 Max.

[Roverno]

Hi, im looking for a notebook around 11 inch screen and a £500 budget. or do they call it a netbook??

I need some help with this because i have heard the new AMD APU units are good in small form pc's and wondering if the same stands for these notebook things.

If anyone can recommend any that they have had experience with, that would be great. I can build and OC pc's but i hate this silly laptop market, but offered to look around for a friend of mine. Help much appreciated.

 

[WR2]

Hello roverno;

Depending on the APU/CPU installed you'd have either a bit 'Netbook or a ultra-portable laptop.

The A-series Llano APUs haven't been seen in anything smaller than a 14" model yet.
You can find the less power E-series Fusion APUs in 11" models but they're just a small step up in power from the NetBook Intel Atom CPUs and AMD C-series APUs.
HP Pavilion DM1-3200sa £340

 

[WR2]

Here is a review of the HP DM1
The line up is getting refreshed with the AMD E-450 but I'm not sure if they're available over there yet.

 

[Roverno]

Nice, i did see a pc with and amd e-450. Is there i decent performance boost from these?

 

[Roverno]

i meant laptop

 

[WR2]

Not really. The Zacate E450 increases the CPU freq from 1.6Ghz to 1.66Ghz. The GPU moves up from HD 6310 to 6320.
This is still in the range of many 3yr old laptop CPUs.

 

[Roverno]

humm, i hate these tiny things. their performance is so shoddy. Glad its for a mate and not me.

Thanks for you help WR2

 

[WR2]

The performance isn't up-to-date - that's for certain. In the same price range you can find much more powerful CPUs/APUs - just in larger chassis.

But it will get the basic things done well... and if there isn't any thing more than light multi-tasking (e-mail and web surfing for example) a HP DM1 is really a pretty good choice.
Multi-tasking MS office programs like MS Word and Excel? Probably not a good choice.

 

[Roverno]

What kind of price would you be looking at to get a decent multitasking PC in an 11inch chassis or would you have to go up to 13 inch?

 

[WR2]

If he needs/wants a DVD drive he's have to move up into a 13" chassis.
Anything other than the bog-standard 1366x768 LCD resolution is probably out of his price range. You start seeing extra cost options for 1600x900 in 14" models.

Samsung 400 12.5" laptop £525
Core i3-2310M (2.1Ghz) Sandy Bridge CPU, 3GB RAM, 320GB 7200rpm HDD, 12.5" 1366x768 LCD w/ HD 3000 graphics.
Has an anti-glare matte screen - handy for outdoor usage in the shade or other glare prone situations.