New Laptop Advice Required

aquilla

Hi Guys,

I want to buy myself a laptop (as a treat to myself for my upcoming b/day). I don't have a laptop at the moment - only a desktop which does everything.

The laptop would be used for the usual stuff (I'm not a gamer) plus some GNS3 stuff. I'm therefore thinking 15.6" or 17" screen with a core i5 processor and maybe 6GB RAM plus a decent battery life (>4hrs). USB3 would like nice. Optical drive is optional.

Does anyone have any recommendations on which manufacturers to look at or can recommend any particular models based on experience.

Budget is *up to* £700.

Any thoughts / recommendations greatly appreciated.

powmia

www.system76.com

binarysoul

Although my tongue aches when I say this, but Dell laptops don't do bad. It's not the best, but compared to others I've seen better times with it.

petedude

I like HP and Lenovo better, myself. I'm not anti-Dell, but I saw them churn out lots of crummy equipment for a couple years so they've kinda burned me a bit.

gc8dc95

I use primarily HP laptops and have had no problems and the one warranty I did a couple years ago was quick and smooth. I bought an i5, 8gb of ram, and 750GB hdd for about $650ish.Then added more ram and a ssd. It does everything I need.

SteveLord

Whatever you can get with the Haswell (4th gen Core) cpu.

aquilla

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the suggestions.

A friend has recommended this:- The Novatech Elite N1535

He does a lot of business with Novatech so may be able to get a discount.

Fully aware it doesn't come with OS by default - not sure if I will run Linux or Windows.

What do you guys think - good / bad / overpriced?