My Top Lap Top! (Samsung V25 XVC 2533)

Member Name: angeelu

Product:	Samsung V25 XVC 2533
Date:	12/02/04 (1119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does the job!, Stylish, Good specification

Disadvantages: There are cheaper alternatives, though not necessarily as good!

started a new job as a trainee teacher at the start of January, so towards the end of last year I decided I wanted to invest in a laptop computer as the training programme I am doing (GTP for anyone who's interested) and the teaching position I now do (I'm an ICT teacher) would both benefit from me being able to have my own resources in a portable state that I could work on at home or at school.

I shopped around for quite a while before deciding on this particular model. My only criteria whilst searching for a laptop was that it had to have Pentium 4 and Windows XP as well as a CD writer. Anything else would be a bonus.
I first came across a version of the Samsung V25 in Staples that I very nearly bought, however, after closer inspection I noticed that the V25 in Comet had a bigger hard-drive but was the same price, therefore I made my purchase from Comet at £999.99.

This isn't going to be one of those over the top tech-y reviews that only the advanced computer nerd will understand so don't worry!

LOOKS
Ok, we've all heard the saying about not judging a book by its cover, but come on... at the end of the day, if you're going to be using your laptop every day, it's probably better if you think it looks quite nice?! This laptop is predominantly a matt silver colour. The entire casing is silver, and when closed it does look quite smart! The only feature on the outer casing is the Samsung logo in a shiny chrome style lettering. When opened up, the silver theme continues for the power button, hot keys and mouse pad, but the keyboard is black.

FEEL
As with most laptop type computers, the keys are very flat, which may get a bit of getting used to if you normally use a standard keyboard with your desktop PC. The mouse pad is very reliable and easy to use - it allows the user to tap the pad for the equivalent of left mouse button, as well as being able to use an actual button (this feature can be di
sabled if you don't like it). There's also a scroll wheel that works just the same as the equivalent on a standard mouse.
It weighs 5.76kg, which is quite light in comparison to many laptops, although admittedly not the lightest. It certainly makes it portable enough to carry around without your arms dropping off!

WHAT IT'S GOT
The processor within this laptop is the Intel Pentium 4. For those who are technically minded, the processor speed is 2.8GHz.
It has a 40 GB hard drive, which is more than plenty of storage for the average user, and has 512mb of RAM.

The screen is a 15.1" XGA TFT. The screen fills the whole top half of the laptop as opposed to having a border around it, therefore giving maximum screen size in relation to the overall size of the monitor. The clarity is excellent and cannot be faulted as far as I am concerned - it's certainly much better than looking at my desktop monitor.

The laptop has a DVD & CDRW combo - that is, you can use both DVD's and CD's in the same drive - you can also copy and write to both DVD's and CD's, which is certainly a very useful feature. There's no floppy drive on this laptop, although there is space to add your own should you wish, however, as you can write to CD's and DVD's then I certainly don't miss the presence of the floppy drive.

I know very little about graphics cards and the likes within PC's, but I can tell you this includes the Intel Extreme graphics card up to 64mb. Unfortunately this means nothing to me, but as it's managed to show all the graphics I've needed it to show I can't fault it.

There are two USB ports on the computer - I thought this would be fine, but to be honest, I kind of wish there were 3 or more having had a few situations recently that have meant me swapping plugs in and out in order to complete what I was doing.

The operating system it comes pre-installed wi
th is Windows XP - personally I get on with this fine and really quite like it, though I know there are plenty of people who are not so keen on it.
It also comes with Norton Anti-Virus preinstalled - whilst this is a great anti-virus program it's a bit disappointing that you have to pay a yearly subscription to it (about £13/year) - although you do get the first few months free.

The laptop holds about 2 hours of charge when it's fully charged up, and has a little smart indicator program built in so you can see an icon in your task bar showing the battery life slowly draining away - hovering your mouse above it shows roughly how long you've got left in minutes before you'll need an alternate power source. You can use the computer whilst it's charging up, but it does make it take slightly longer to become fully recharged.

I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't an instruction manual in the box when I bought the laptop. It was obvious that there shoudl have been one, as there was a loose page inside that said something about please read this along with page 57 of the instruction manual. However, after I'd got switched on I found that there was an instruction manual on the computer itself - this is really handy as opposed to having to fish out a big book when you're wondering about something. Obviously this isn't much good if your problem is that you don't know how to switch it on, but I'm pleased to say I can manage that without a manual!

I did get a few other pieces of software along with the laptop, however I'm not sure whether they come as standard with the laptop or not, so won't go too into depth about them. Included amongst them was Nero (a program for burning CD's/DVD's), PowerDVD (a program for watching DVD's) and Ulead Photo Explorer (for viewing and editing digital photographs).

THE VERDICT
All in all, I am exceptionally pleased with my laptop. I fee
l it offers excellent performance and reliability. I know that it's quite likely you can buy similar spec laptops for less money, but if you're just after a good spec laptop that you can buy from the High Street then this is certainly one I would recommend. It looks great and it works great... what more could you want?!

(Please note, I believe my laptop is the V25 XVC 2800, which is slightly higher spec than the 2533, but there's hardly any difference).

5 stars!

Thanks for reading.

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