Recommended laptops.....

[Rebel Ninja]

I'm looking to get a new laptop and I've got a budget of around £1000. I'll be looking for it to last me for around 4 years. It'll mostly be used for assignments, internet and movies/television programmes. I wouldn't mind being able to play some games on it like Starcraft II, however gaming compatibility is not essential. Any recommendations will be appreciated. Thanks

[beatsgo]

What type of assignments are you doing? Simulations? Programming? Documents? Presentations?

[Rebel Ninja]

What type of assignments are you doing? Simulations? Programming? Documents? Presentations?

Documents and presentations.

[gct]

4 years is a long time. I think I change my main workhorse laptop every 2 years, although the secondary fun dicking-around laptops come and go whenever.

£1000 is a pretty big budget. That's more than double what I would spend on a "work" laptop, but I tend to buy low-midrange stuff. In that case just buy the newest tech you can afford, possibly set aside anywhere from £50-200 if you want to drop in some upgrades like RAM, SSD/HDD, WiFi, even CPU.

Look for something with switchable graphics - personally I am partial to Nvidia. Switchable graphics saves battery life when you're doing menial stuff, but gives you more power when you want to play games.

One more piece of advice - if it's going to be something that you transport daily, don't go over 14" screen size. 13.3" is what I use and I find it's the best balance of being large enough to work without an external monitor connection, and light enough for daily travel. Even better if it has no built-in optical drive - that's bulk that you hardly ever need to use so just buy one or two USB-powered slim optical drives and leave one at home and one at work.

My recommendation if you have the budget, check out the LG P330, it's a 13.3" powerhouse.

[beatsgo]

May I suggest the ASUS EEE PC 1215B? If you need a moderate small laptop but packs good amount of power on any applications including games, definitely check it out.

[Blackbird]

You don't need £1000 to buy a laptop unless you intend to purchase an extremely high end gaming model. Less than half that will get you a decent multimedia computer if you just want something that can surf the web and do light gaming.

You mentioned that you like to watch movies. Do you have a good external display, or do you tend to watch a lot of movies right on your screen?

How important is sound quality to you? Do you listen to a lot of music and, if you do, do you have external speakers?

How important is portability? Do you carry your notebook around everywhere, or do you mostly just use it as a desktop and only occasionally carry it from place to place?

Do you use your notebook away from the power outlet a lot? Is battery life important?

How big is your current computer's hard drive? Is it full? Do you tend to save a ton of data, and need a lot of space?

Which OS do you prefer? Assuming Windows 7/8 since you mentioned playing some PC games.

[Rebel Ninja]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

You don't need £1000 to buy a laptop unless....

I'd be watching the vast majority of movies on the screen.

The sound quality of the speakers isn't that important as I use headphones all the time.

I'd like something that is light and portable, however I'd still be looking for a 14" screen.

Battery life isn't that important, 3 hours would be good enough.

Storage space isn't a concern as I have a 1TB external hard drive, but at the minimum I'd still like 500gb of storage.

Windows would also be my preferred operating system.