Probably limited to around £600.00 max - depending on how our budget for new IT is looking.

a quick look at laptops direct brings [url=http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Samsung_RC710-S01UK_Core_i5-480M_Laptop_NP-RC710-S01UK/version.aspthis[/url up, never owned a Samsung though so can't comment on reliability etc.

You bought a Dell because it was inspiring, buy a Toshiba cause it runs and runs...

Also check out Acer, bargains to be had but the dedicated GFX card may take you out of the mainstream.

I bought a Dell because it was reasonably priced for the spec and I had good service from my last one. This experience has been less than stellar from day one so I won't be making that mistake again.



I've bought Toshiba's for my Mum and Daughter and they've been rock solid. The downside is they can be pricey if you want anything other than bog standard. Ditto Sony. I've found a nice Lenovo Ideapad with the spec I want for pretty much bang on my budget but I'd have to wait a few days for delivery.

Acer I'm nervous about as the last one I had was a nightmare. That was a few years ago mind.

Is anyone else having trouble using the "back" button on here? When I press it it often doesn't go anywhere, but stays on the same page. If I click the down-arrow next to it, the history shows that there are often 3 or more copies of the same page. I've seen this kind of issue with advert systems on sites before on other sites.

You can see that the browser is responding to the back, as there is a status flicker at the bottom of the screen, and a progress bar fills in.

Back button works fine elsewhere, and in fact often works ok on here, but when it fails on a page, it repeatedly fails on the page.

This is Firefox under Linux.

I never use the back button on here, it's got embeded navigation options as it is so I don't ever feel the need.

No problems with the back button here; I'm using Iron under Windows 7.

Firefox 5 & 6 the back button functions are "different" to behavior seen in versions 3 & 4.

Well, there goes Steve Jobs, if we ignore the whole "chairman of the board" thing.

Hell of a career.

I use Chrome for browsing but have been having some issues lately on sites such as Hotmail and iplayer.

Basically the links on Hotmail have stopped working (i.e. Inbox, Delete, Read) and on iplayer I cannot play any videos (the play button does not appaear, just a black rectangle where the video usually is).

There may be issues with other sites too but I don't tend to go online all too often so I'm not sure.

Anyone any ideas why this is, or rather how to fix it? I thought possibly a Flash Player issue? I am experiencing the same problems when on firefox too which suggests it must be a software issue?

Starting Uni next month, so need to invest in a laptop.

Football Manager 2012 (when it comes out), internet, Windows Media player, and Office programs are all I will really be using.
Want to be able to play FM at a decent speed, with a good few leagues loaded etc.

Won't have a massive budget (less than £400), can anyone recommend a decent place for laptop shopping? Never bought a laptop before, only computer I use is the family desktop.

You want lots of RAM for FM, a decent speed hard drive too, CPU isn't critical but check graphics requirements for FM12.

Tesco, PC World (yes I know) and Comet have some decent deals on Toshiba and Acer, You should be looking at a decent Core2Duo CPU, 3-4GB RAM, Windows 7 64bit and 320GB Hard drive as a basic machine, anything else is a bonus.

DO NOT buy software before you go to Uni, students get massive discounts there are always good offers around for freshers, the full office suite for £49 was one last year.

Cheers mate, that will make things a bit more clear.

I like the look of [url=http://www.ebuyer.com/268391-acer-aspire-5750-laptop-lx-r9702-072this one[/url for the price.

I might be wrong on this but isn't the CPU precisely what you would need to run a lot of leagues on Football Manager?

That's a reasonably decent deal and should do all you want.

But any modern CPU will handle anything FM will throw at it, the bottleneck is RAM, the more data you can hold in RAM the better.

There's always Software4Students that can be used in advance of starting Uni. Full office is under £40

Aye that's who I was on about, last time I looked it was £69 must have started the offers early, don't you have to have an @ac.uk email addy to use though?

I think there's a few other TLD's you can use, but they're all education related.

Not for Microsoft software, parents can buy on a student or pupil's behalf.

I got it just through my daughters school being listed

I have a non-HD computer and a HD hand held camcorder with a ton of footage in HD. I'm able to view the footage by connecting the camcorder to the TV, but i really want to get some of the footage onto disk.

Are there any recommended programmes out there that will convert the HD footage I have into standard definition via my PC? the camcorder footage is stored to SD card.

Yours,

Phil O'Stein

Last of the Luddites...

What?! You want to store the video on the computer? Why would you want to downgrade it to SD?

If you have an SD card, and you're computer is relatively new, you can just slot the SD card in, at which point you will be able to view the video files in Windows Explorer and save them where you like (or view them).

No need to worry about the quality of the recording.

Aye, you really need to explain your rationale behind converting to a different format.

As Enicomb says, just store the files on the PC's hard disk and view on the PC (with an appropriate media player) or transfer onto SD card to view on HDTV when required (or connect the PC to the TV). If storage space is an issue then buy an additional internal or external hard drive.

Thanks for the comments.

The situation is that I recently took my daughter to Florida and filmed things on a HD handheld. I've now been asked by both grandparents of daughter if they can have the footage on DVD so I need to get the footage onto a format that they can play through their standard DVD. I've no intention of downgrading the footage, I just want to create copies of the footage in a definition friendly to their DVD players.

Again, I can't express just how clueless I am on these matters.