Do i buy an R20?

Since my Amilo Pro v2020 looks like it isn’t going to come back to life anytime soon, I am looking for a new laptop. The R20 has caught my eye but I just want to see how u guys rate it.

I know there is a long thread on here about it but that could take sum time to read, so could some 1 summarize the problems with the R20 (if any) for me please?

Also what other laptops are there around £550 that are similar sized and spec

And do any of you know of anywhere cheaper then this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-li...4469655-8753415?ie=UTF8&qid=1188928827&sr=8-1





Many Thanks Chris

 

Have you read my review of the R20? (link in signature below). In fact, I've just bought an R20 for a family member (I got it from the Laptops Direct factory outlet - someone had sent it back for some reason). That Amazon price is a good deal for that spec.

By similar size, I presume you mean, 14.1" widescreen. Other possibilities are the Asus A8 series (which seem to be disappearing) and the Vostro 1400. The HP dv2500 series is higher up the price range. The basic Vostro that I linked to has a slightly better spec than the R20 (2GB RAM) and is just under £500 including VAT and delivery. However, delivery is currently around 3 weeks. If I were getting one then I would have the WXGA+ display.

What's wrong with the R20? Don't buy it if you want 2 or more hours on the battery. The Vostro will win here, particularly if you get the +£10 optional big battery. However, as a light 14.1" machine to carry between sockets then the R20 wins. It is actually a little lighter than specified and has a 60W PSU (the Vostro has a more powerful GPU and bigger PSU).

If the T2350 CPU is like the T2250 then you can undervolt it to reduce the heat and fan noise (but the fan is actually quite quiet) and / or you can use GlockGen to speed up the FSB and give yourself a CPU speed of 2GHz or more.

John

 

Thanks for the review, very helpful!!

The battery life issue does seem like a strong turn off point  although I don’t use it out the house much I like to take it down stairs an leave the charger in my room. But I can live with plugging it in every now and then.

I am borrowing an r40 tomorrow to see how much I like. But I have just seen one in Tesco and the size is a bit big, Is the r20 going to be much smaller?


Thanks for the response


Chris

 

One work-around for the need to carry the PSU more often is to have a spare mains cable so you can leave this part plugged into the wall.

Size-wise, you can get a good indication of the relative size difference by looking at the family photo in the R20 review. the X60 plus is very similar in size to the R40 (except for being a bit thinner).

John

 

Rite, the same bloke has an R20 aswell, so i will borrow that too and report back from there. Thanks for the help

 

Just spoke to one of the guys in the shop, and am now interested in a mac book. Apparently any programs I need off windows I should find for mac. If not they do a dule-boot system where the mac will just load up with xp. What do you think?

 

Isn't the Macbook moving you up in the price range? If so, there could be other alternatives to the R20.

John

 

It is, but to be honest i wouldnt mind paying the extra for a mac book. Because of the look and the battery life

 

If you are looking at Macbooks then the Dell M1330 or the Rizeon S37 is also worth considering or, if you want good battery life, the Samsung Q45.

John

 

My r20 arrived today. I am very happy with the laptop, thanks for the help I think I have made the right choice. One problem is vista doesn’t seem to be running as fast as I would like. The laptop at the moment only has 1 gb of ram 2x 512.

If I upgraded the ram to 2 gb do you think it would solve my problem?


Many thanks

Chris

 

1GB is barely adequate for Vista, particularly since a chunk of RAM allocated to the GPU. Your upgrade options are to either go to 2 x 1GB or replace 512MB with 2GB to give you 2.5GB. Good RAM pricing can be found at play.com and ebuyer. It is best to buy 667MHz RAM although the supplied RAM is 533MHz and a 2 + 0.5 RAM setup will run at the speed of the slowest module.

You can also tweak the CPU speed using Clockgen but this won't help the speed if Vista is busy reading / writing the HDD due to the limited RAM.

Personally, I find Vista looks better without the eye candy, so under Advanced Settings, I set the visual Effects to best performnce + smoothing screen fonts.

John

 

Yeh i have turned all the effects off except the last 3, it looks ok and seems to be running alot faster.

 

That's good. You can leave the other upgrades for the future.

John