Ok so today I am going to tell you exactly what you get for your £350/400 from Pissy World and other box shifting organisations when you buy a 'cheap' laptop.

First thing to remember is in the space of 2 years laptops have gone down nearly 65% in price, however laptops are being mis-sold left right and centre ON PURPOSE. Please DO NOT GET CONNED INTO BUYING A £400 laptop that can only do as much as a £150 laptop and NO MORE due to horribly cut down technology just because you see some shiny interface. Microsoft are a company in partnership with hardware vendors and they SPECIFICALLY LIMITED THE SHINY NEW VISTA INTERFACE ARTIFICALLY TO 128MB INTEGRATED GRAPHICS. Please read on for THE TRUTH about what it is you are getting for your money and with our honest advice you can make an INFORMED AND ACCURATE decision as to what a laptop will cost that actually meets all your requirements. So here goes I will keep this as non-technical as possible as it is the casual purchaser that is consistently being ripped off!

The great Windows Vista Aero Glass/Integrated Graphics swindle.....
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Here is a classic tactic to confuse people, most laptops are sold running the brand new Windows Vista Premium package with a shiny transparant glass AERO interface look and feel which leads you to believe you are purchasing a laptop with very sophisticated graphical ability. THIS IS A LIE! All cheap laptops, ie any laptop not specificially marketed as a gaming laptop includes a horribly cut down integrated graphics solution. THESE ARE ONLY GOOD ENOUGH TO RUN WINDOWS 98 LEVELS OF GRAPHICALLY INTENSIVE APPLICATIONS. So you will find out the hard way that when you install something even slightly taxing from say 2003 it won't even run or at best will run at about 5 frames per second and instantly make you feel sick.

If you want a decent laptop that CAN DO MORE THAN WATCH YOUTUBE VIDEOS/SURF THE INTERNET/RUN MICROSOFT WORD you will have to specifically ask the salesman the following three questions and ask to be shown where on the specifications this is detailed.

Can the graphics card in this notebook do
1. HARDWARE TRANSFORM AND LIGHTING?
2. HARDWARE PIXEL SHADER 2.0 SUPPORT?
3. HARDWARE DIRECT-X 9.0c GRAPHICAL OPERATIONS?

If the answer is not 'YES' to all three questions then you are buying a very expensive piece of rubbish worth about 50 pence and you should WALK AWAY AND DO MORE RESEARCH!

The great AMD dual core swindle.....
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Here we go, DUAL CORE this DUAL CORE that on every advert, however you will notice that a lot of cheap laptops that mention this will either be AMD X2 TURION processors or even worse CELERON-M INTEL rubbish. These processors are already out of date, extremely flakey and about as powerful as a Smart car in computing term. Avoid these like the plague as they will be barely faster than a 2 year old Centrino laptop of equal processing power and USE EVEN MORE BATTERY TIME UP.

The great screen resolution swindle.....
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Ok so you buy your shiny new laptop with a glossy screen, and everything looks great. EXCEPT the resolution of your new 17" super cheap £450/500 laptop won't even display a single frame of a 1080p HD movie. You have just bought a 'bargain' who's screen resolution is NO BETTER THAN A 2003 LAPTOP and yet this is meant to be your new cutting edge laptop.

Why does it matter? Well firstly the icons on Windows Vista are so massive that unless your new Widescreen laptop supports the 2004 cutting edge resolution of 1920x1200 pixels your Windows desktop will look like something designed for a 5 year old!

Secondly not only will you be unable to appreciate 1080p resolution videos all over the internet (A REASONABLE EXPECTATION GIVEN THESE HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR 2 YEARS ALREADY) but your laptop will be WASTING EVEN MORE PROCESSING POWER CONVERTING YOUR VIDEOS TO A LOWER RESOLUTION AND BLURRING THEM UP IN THE PROCESS.

Summary....
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So if all you want is a laptop to play regular DVDs, run Microsoft office, watch YouTube videos and write the odd email/surf the internet then be my guest and waste your money on a 'new cheap laptop' however if you want a laptop which is actually MORE POWERFULL AND CHEAPER TOO then just do a little research or seek out an honest knowledgeable laptop merchant and steer clear of these box shifting con-merchants please.

Only last week someone I know personally was sold the current 'amazing special offer' ACER £400 widescreen AMD laptop in PC World. They specifically asked the salesperson 'will it run the latest games and does it run Battlefield2 from 2005?" the salesman answered 'yes' being the idiot they all are in these places and the laptop was purchased. Now I have a £300 DELL notebook right here second hand mint condition with a 1080p screen a Centrino 2.1Ghz processor and a 2006 128mb Nvidia graphics card. This DELL boots Vista faster, it runs Vista faster and it will have a go at playing pretty much any game up to 2007 and runs Battlefield 2 at 25-30 frames per second smoothly. Not bad considering laptops designed for gaming sold today are £1000+

The ACER 5520 in question for £400 runs Vista sluggishly (although we did reconfigure it to go faster for the gentleman for free!) barely plays 720p HD videos and runs Battlefield 2 at about 10fps if you're lucky. So much for your DUAL CORE LATEST TECHNOLOGY LAPTOP AT A BARGAIN PRICE! This and every other cheap laptop being made now is an utter piece of crap so unless you want a doorstop with a folding middle section just use your brains and do some research before getting ripped off people!