I'm not a laptop expert by any means, so I'm hoping for a bit of advice.

I need a new laptop to take to races (and to use a bit at home, but it's mostly in circuit paddocks on battery).

A long battery life is important - don't want the battery to die halfway through looking at my datalogging.
A decent screen size is important, but 15.6" seems standard and would be fine at ~1366@768...
A build in card reader - especially one for SD cards would be brilliant (MicroSD would be even better, but I guess they're rare, so I can use the adaptor card).

BUT!!!!

I would like to be able to use it to download and playback onboard footage. Perhaps even use it to overlay the datalogging onto the video. At the moment it would be no problem, as I've not standard definition cameras. But I want an HD camera (although probably not used at 1080p, more likely 960p at 60fps!!! ), so the laptop needs to be able to cope with that.

Windows 7 would be nice, but I'll accept XP. Vista would be removed in favour of XP or 7.

The closer I get to £300 the better, but I realise that that is asking a lot. I definitely don't want to pay more than £500 if I can help it.

I found this, but it's not a great CPU and it's only onboard graphics which probably can't cope with 960p videos.

Don't know where to start really, so thought I'd ask advice from you guys.

If you work for or own a company that wishes to sponsor a club level team by supplying a free laptop that can do this - covered in stickers of your company, plus some on the car - then that would be wonderful. Get a "Created using an xxxx laptop" on all my onboard videos or something...

E:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/182580?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/189066?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158887?

P.S. I've normally built my own PCs, so I haven't the feintest idea which 'brands' are good or otherwise...

I know it's a stretch from your specifications, but on the job I've made good experience with Panasonic Toughbooks.
Being able just forget about the fact that you're dealing with sensitive electronics is worth a lot when you're lying under a car and reading some sensors while adjusting something mechanical.
I guess you can take this post as a hint to add "robustness" to your selection of assessment-categories.

Vain

Something like this should do :

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176091

For your budget you don't really have laptops that will last ultra long, because those have LED screens, which consume alot less power, and those are usualy alot more money, unless you buy a cheap one.

For the graphics card, something ATI 4xxx, or gForce 8xxx (preferably 9xxx) will do for even 1080p movies.

for the cpu, a duo core, around 2GHz is also good. And 2+ GB Ram is fine too.

If you can search something with such stuff, you will be good.

I hope I helped. If you got any other questions, feel free to ask me.

I'd also say ensure you buy a second battery and have it charged, or get it charged if needed at the circuit office/media centre

Quote from Vain :

I know it's a stretch from your specifications, but on the job I've made good experience with Panasonic Toughbooks.
Being able just forget about the fact that you're dealing with sensitive electronics is worth a lot when you're lying under a car and reading some sensors while adjusting something mechanical.
I guess you can take this post as a hint to add "robustness" to your selection of assessment-categories.

Vain

ToughBooks are great, but they are quite expensive, certainly looking at a min of £500 at the very very best, so not really worth it.

So, laptops (remember this is my day job )

Battery Life - what are you aiming for? Cheap laptops are all very very standard - all have about 2-2:30 hours battery life at best, down to about 1:30 with the backlight on full doing anything demanding. If you want more, it gets expensive...

Screen - 15.6" is the norm, but you have choice - would a tad bigger (16, even 17") be more convenient, or would something a little more portable be easier?), or is 15.6" the ideal?

Card reader wise - pretty much every branded laptop has an SD slot, yet to see anything with a MicroSDHC slot, tho.

For HD - anything with a dedicated nVidia / ATi card will do it fine. My netbook (Intel Atom + 9400M nVidia card) will play 1080P content fine... Intel X4500 does HD, but it's not always silky smooth and will drain the battery much faster.

LED screens don't seem to make a massive difference, tbh - yes it may shave off a watt or two, but the choice of WiFi card or HDD can do the same, which means its hard to judge.

Recomendation wise, it's hard to give you a model number etc as price on "cheap" (sub£400) laptops is *the* most important factor.

I wouldn't say brand matters - i'm not keen on Toshibas, and HP annoy me, but in terms of reliability we get similar return rates on most units we sell..

Recommendations:
Compaq, Sempron, 2GB / 160, 82 ... in stock in some stores)

Packard Bell - AMD Athlon, whi ... uprised by the condition.

ATM there seem to be very few laptop deals, though. If you go on eBuyer etc expect to spend about £400 for something decent...

Also, lets not forget my £275 11.6 netbook does everything you'd need, has a 4 hour ish (not as good as the NC10 ) battery life and has inbuilt 3G...

Quote from Jakg :

Battery Life - what are you aiming for? Cheap laptops are all very very standard - all have about 2-2:30 hours battery life at best, down to about 1:30 with the backlight on full doing anything demanding. If you want more, it gets expensive......

i'm no laptop pro here but batteries range from £35 to (about)£150. the more expensive, the more charge they hold.

Quote from Jakg :

Card reader wise - pretty much every branded laptop has an SD slot, yet to see anything with a MicroSDHC slot, tho.......

I'm sure this would do the trick

Quote from Jakg :

LED screens don't seem to make a massive difference, tbh - yes it may shave off a watt or two, but the choice of WiFi card or HDD can do the same, which means its hard to judge....

wouldn't that mean that the battery would last longer if less power is being used?

Quote from Jakg :

I wouldn't say brand matters - i'm not keen on Toshibas, and HP annoy me, but in terms of reliability we get similar return rates on most units we sell.....

so, brand does matter?

Quote from Jakg :

Also, lets not forget my £275 11.6 netbook does everything you'd need, has a 4 hour ish (not as good as the NC10 ) battery life and has inbuilt 3G...

can your netbook read CD's with no extra equipment?
pointless trying to sell a £275 netbook when there's better ones out there for nearly £100 less.
most phones these days have 3g. buying a data cable for your phone would cost alot less that having 3g as an extra on your netbook.
do you work in PCWORLD by anychance?

double post.
here's one from ebay. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Advent-1 ... ps_EH?hash=item439d0a8795 loads of change from your budget. you could buy a better battery and a card reader for £1.
this one is a bit more but still in budget: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Acer-Asp ... ps_EH?hash=item1c0fe10548
here's another one with builtin TV-out (again, still in budget) http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ADVENT-K ... ps_EH?hash=item4a9d9bde42
a thinkpad well within your budget: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LENOVO-I ... ps_EH?hash=item4cece871e8
the only thing to really think about when buying 2nd hand is the battery.

Quote from dadge :

i'm no laptop pro here but batteries range from £35 to (about)£150. the more expensive, the more charge they hold.

True - but can you get a new battery for *insert specific model of laptop here*? Acer One Netbook? Easy, £40. NC10? 9 Cell, £45, easy. My new Compaq netbook? No Chance.

I'm sure this would do the trick

Yeah, but he already said he could use an adaptor if needs be (so he probably has one).

wouldn't that mean that the battery would last longer if less power is being used?

Yes - but while an LED screen may use 1w less, a better Wireless card could also use 1w less. Most laptops use the cheap-o Wireless G ones, and some use Broadcom Wireless N ones which are a little bit better, but no real difference power wise. An Intel 5300 Wireless N on the other hand will use about 1w less usually, but your never going to know what WiFi card is in there till you buy it. Same as the HDD - cheap laptops come with cheap HDD's, and cheap HDD's aren't always that power efficient. Replacing the Fujitsu drive in my NC10 with a Seagate 5400.6 again knocked about 1w off the power consumption, but your not going to know what drive is in there until you buy it. Plus a laptop uses about 15-20w idling, so saving 1w is only a 5% battery life boost - or about 5 minutes...

so, brand does matter?

Not really. HP / Compaq annoy me because they whitelist Wireless cards but at the end of the day that will bother very very few users.

can your netbook read CD's with no extra equipment?
pointless trying to sell a £275 netbook when there's better ones out there for nearly £100 less.

Can it read CD's? no. Did Tristan say thats what he needed? no. Can a £100 less netbook (were talking the Carphonewarehouse Compaq's here) play HD content? No.

most phones these days have 3g. buying a data cable for your phone would cost alot less that having 3g as an extra on your netbook.

My 3G card didn't cost extra, and while I can use my phone with my netbook (nowhere near as simple as just "plugging it in" until I rooted, tho), it's much easier to have an iPhone SIM built in so that I can connect to the intarweb in 2 clicks. Plus Tristan has an un-jailbroken iPhone, so wont be able to tether without paying O2 an extra £15pm...

do you work in PCWORLD by anychance?

Well, yeah. But all those are being sold below cost so I fail to see why that would make me biased? They are all "as new" condition, and they are very well specced for the money. Plus I expect a laptop being used in the paddock will get scratched up etc anyway...

And as for your laptop suggestions:
Advent - Wont play HD, and is quite slow. Plus, Advents of old weren't made terribly well, the battery will of been 1 hour 30 minutes when new (and deteriorated a lot since then) etc.
The others are all on the slow side and close to the cost of the Sainsburies one I posted.

ThinkPad looks pretty tasty tho.

Thanks for the advice, suggestions and help so far. Laptops are way out of my comfort zone.

Not that interested in Notebooks as the small screen won't lend itself to datalogging traces very well.
Not that interested in large (>15.6") screens either as battery life will diminish, and that might be a factor in some paddocks where there is no access to mains. We might take a generator or an inverter (for car 12V - 240V) this year, so battery life MIGHT not be an issue.

I'm quite taken with Acer laptops in terms of a) looks and b) they tend to come up in a lot of searches around the price/spec I'm after. Googling suggests they are considered okay by many. Little things like USB ports on the right are nice (for mice; most laptops seem to have them on the left, so you lose most of your wire going around the laptop).

Hadn't thought of looking on eBay. Will spend more time on it hunting.
Went into PC World at the weekend. One or two that seemed okay in the price range, but not quite what I was looking for.
Spare batteries would be nice, but not having one isn't a deal breaker.

99% of new laptops have 2 USB on the left and one on the right.

Seems so petty, but it's something that's annoyed me about a lot of laptops in the past

Acer and Asus laptops are good for the simple reason that they understood that there's a market for laptops that don't look retarded. Most current laptops from the big brands (HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc) look so incredibly retarded, that you definitely wonder if they put any money on anything else than a crazy design. Which leads those things to be generally crap.

I like the old basic laptop look. Acer is a brand that grew on me. It's the whole "new corporation that overpowers the old one" thing all over again. As for Asus, they seem to be good at everything they do. I personally own an Asus motherboard, as well as a monitor, and both have been working flawlessly for months.

i don't see the point in you spending money to buy a new laptop to take it into a pitlane where it's bound to lose its newness within a few hours. 2nd hand + new battery is the way to go imo.

Fair point. Need to find one that meets my needs, catches my eye and isn't too old/knackered. If I can find one with Windows 7 and a spare battery then even better (but I would put my old copy of XP on it if I can't have 7).

What is the minimum spec for playing 1080p (incidentally a quicktime mov I believe, if that makes any difference)? Is it a case of anything 'new' today would cope, or is it still taxing? I know the current laptop and my work PC (both circa 2003) can't cope...

To get a silky smooth experience - any modern dedicated GPU.

The latest X4500 Intel cards will do it just, but you get high CPU utilization (so lower battery life) and you will gets lots of dropped frames, too.

Quote from tristancliffe :

What is the minimum spec for playing 1080p (incidentally a quicktime mov I believe, if that makes any difference)?

thats a wide field
basically you can either go with something that has enough cpu power to do it on the cpu alone (anything dual core with a core 2 or newer above ~1.5ghz should be able to pull it off depending on codec and bitrates) or go with hardware acceleration which is where things get rather complicated depending on the dxva capabilities of certain cards
generally the safest bet to get smooth playback is to go with a quick cpu and nvidia to back it up which also gives you a chance to accelerate playback through cuda instead of dxva

to extend battery life or to even remove the need is car battery and an inverter, cheap and lasts for hours.