The Laptop review

Great value Dell 1545 laptop

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:31:52 +0100

Just a quick sale notification for anyone who wants an excellent value desktop replacement laptop and hasn't seen the TV ads. The Dell 1545 with 3Gb DDR2 RAM and Vista Home Premium is going for just £399.97 on the Dell website at the moment.

I'd say it's great value for home or office-based use. Heavy for travel.

Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 (2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB Cache)

Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium

3GB Memory. (Enough even for Vista)

250GB Hard Drive

Sony VAIO NS20E laptop - a sprinkle of style and sense

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:59:53 +0100

The Sony VAIO NS20 is a basic laptop from Sony VAIO which offers a refreshing sparkle of style and features to an otherwise rather dull budget laptop market.

Sony VAIO NS series

For just £450-500 you get solid laptop with a slim profile for good looks and portability. Its smooth rounded corners and edges give the VAIO NS an elegant and attractive feel. Gentle curves also keep exterior dimensions to a minimum and ensure that this laptop is really easy to slip into a bag or carrying case.

Excellent picture quality
With a good-size 15.4” widescreen display, the VAIO NS allows you to fully appreciate your multimedia entertainment without compromising portability.

Sony "X-black" LCD technology ensures images are bright and sharp for truly realistic and natural-looking pictures. I had never seen this in action an took it for a simple branding excersise but the intense contrast and colours bring multimedia files to life vividly on screen and it stacks up well compared to a price-competitive Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. Its anti-reflective coating minimizes glare to allow enjoyment of movies, games and photo slideshows outside in the garden as well as from a wide variety of viewing angles.

Good connectivity
The VAIO NS also features a wide variety of connections including Sony's i.LINK™ for digital camcorders, a VGA (ie analogue) port which is good for most projectors an ExpressCard 34mm slot for memory cards, the laptop also accepts MemoryStick as you'd expect. Some models also featue an S-Video output for connecting up your laptop to a TV.

Solid hardware
It's well built for a budget laptop, with the kind of quality you'd expect from Sony. Its Intel Core Duo processor and 3Gb DDR2 RAM copes well with Vista and runs standard Office Suite software with ease.

And so this is where the mini-review should end. We've used them and we think they cope well with the demands of Vista Home Premium, offering a very pleasant user experience. Girls should keep their eyes open for the stunning pink models!

Silly software - but sound multimedia all round
Proprietary Sony VAIO software uses built-in intelligence to make simple work of organising rapidly growing – and potentially chaotic – collections of music and digital photos and video clips. VAIO Music Box uses a powerful ’12 Tone Analysis’ system to categorise music into different genres and moods, then automatically builds playlists that you can select to match the moment (hmm...).

VAIO Movie Story takes the work and complexity out of managing photos and video by vastly simplifying the task of arranging your pictures, adding effects and judicious editing to show them at their best, then synching the images to music. The result is a quality slideshow to enjoy and share – a long way from the original mass of pictures on the hard disk.

Sony’s trademark quality and attention to detail is evident wherever you look, from the X-black LCD enhanced screen to the clear tone of the integrated speakers and the provision of four USB ports for maximum connectivity. Along with the peace of mind that comes with the global status of the brand, this makes the VAIO NS hard to beat in its class.

Sony VAIO NS Series laptops at Cheap Laptops

Budget laptop beats the finance blues

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:38:22 +0000

The Advent netbook laptop is a low cost laptop for light home users and is ideal for word processing, accounting and browsing the Internet. Unlike most budget laptops, it is quite lightweight (1.12kg) making it suitable for carrying form place to place. The 10" Widescreen Display display is great for browsing the web and checking email, although the widescreen feature is a bit of a red herring becuase the laptop might not have quite the processor or memory performance you would like for smooth playback of movies.

The laptops uses the old Windows® XP operating system, but wait - that's not such a bad thing becasue a machine fast and big enough to run the overweight operating system would cost twice as much.

Oh yes, whilst we're on cost, that's what you want to know isn't it?

Advent laptop £279 but no DVD drive

The Advent 4211 C is currently available from PC World for just £279 - Wow!

Specs
This laptop comes with Intel’s newest and smallest ever processor, the Intel Atom as used in the eeePC. It's good 1GB Memory which isn't going to be great for games but will run the XP Home operating system without any trouble.

Unfortunately, like the eeePC it doesn't come with a CD or DVD drive! Again, this can be a good thing. A more solid laptop for starters, less to go wrong... OK that's the only reason but it's a valid one.

A generous 120GB hard drive provides ample space for storing music, photos and documents. Its also got 3 USB parts too, so you can plug in an external hard drive or DVD drive.

Additional features include a built in webcam, microphone and Bluetooth, so it's a good tool for Skype, NSN and any other program you choose to use to catch up with friends and family online.

Advent 4211 C Netbook now £279.99 from PC World

Entertainment laptop runs rings round HD video

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:27:48 +0000

The HP DV5-1110EM is a perfect Entertainment Laptop with Blu-Ray DVD drive and Radeon HD3450 graphics card it is equally adapt at watching movies or playing games.

HP Pavillion DV5-1000 series entertainment laptop

The laptop is powered by an AMD Turion X2 processor with 2 processing cores running at a respectable 2.10 Ghz for churning through video like a knife through butter. 3 GB DDR2 memory provides ample space to process and display video or games, although you might want to consider upgrading the OS to something state of the art (like Windows XP... haw haw) rather than using the Vista Home Premium that it is sold with.

Storage is in the form of a 250 GB hard drive, which is above average for a laptop, reflecting its multimedia / home cinema credentials as an entertainment laptop.

You can plug the laptop into your surround sound system to enjoy 3D sound for games, movies and music. 4 USB connections will allow you to plug in your iPod, printer, Skype handset and one more device - so its a sensible balance. If you're interested, it's also got an infra-red port which are rarely used but actually pretty good for syncing a basic Nokia or Sony Ericsson phone.

Many HP laptops have an S-Video output so it's a little dissapointing, but you can connect to many new digital flatscreen TVs with the laptop's HDMI (digital) output.

In most circumstances you'll be more than happy watching your DVDs or the BBC's marvellous iPlayer on the 15.4" High Definition display, but sadly this entertainment laptops lacks a TV output!

Weighing in at 2.65 kg you wouldn't rule this laptop out for business jetsetting, but that's not its purpose in life. For one thing it's also pretty large (259 mm * 357 mm *349 mm) but its high performance graphics and fast processor are also pretty tough on the battery life.

All in all a good little portable media laptop at a good price from a brand you can trust. It's available in Black / Silver from PC World priced £599 inc VAT.

Acer Aspire 5920 Laptop

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:07:34 +0100

The Acer Aspire 5920 is on sale at PC World UK for just £399.97 at the moment and just it's worth every penny. Shipping with Vista Home Premium, this affordable laptop has just about everything home-office buyers could ask for in a solid budget notebook. With a generous 3Gb DDR2 RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2MB L2 Cache (4mb cache models are available) this little laptop is more than fit to cope with the trials of Vista and still pack a punch.

Acer have continued their car obsession of Ferrari and Lamborghini laptops with this suitably robust and clean design from BMW Designworks.

Acer Aspire 5250

The Aspire 5250's 250 GB SATA Hard drive allows you to store over 60,000 songs or 200,000 photos, with good read and write performance. When you've filled it up, there's a dual layer DVD drive which can back up up to 8.5 Gb to disc in one shot.

As you would expect from ACER, there's also a handy 5-in-1 card reader, supporting Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick® (MS), Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD) formats.

This is an excellent little package from ACER, perfect for the home or light traveling home office user. Watch the spec, just like any laptop there's alot more than one Aspire 5250 to chose from!

Laptop packs a punch for 300 pounds

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:32:26 +0100

The Extensa 5220 Value series from Acer is a light, compact laptop with "big" laptop performance at mini-laptop prices. It's great for short travel, weighing just 2.9 kg and is alos a good laptop for browsing the internet, checking your email and downloading music.

Features

Intel® Celeron 540 Processor Technology
1GB DDR2 RAM / 80GB Hard Disc Drive
DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM
Windows XP Professional (great for business users)

Cheap portable laptop

The laptop is powered by an Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.10GHz Processor with 1 MB L2 cache, which is good for around £300. It ships with 1GB RAM which is fine for Windows XP, should you wish to upgrade to resource hungry Vista at a later date then it is very affordable to upgrade to its max capacity of 2GB by ordering DDR2 laptop memory from suppliers such as Crucial.

This cheap little Cheap Laptops">laptop has an 80GB SATA-150 hard drive, which can load up large files quickly.

The 5520 has Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet compatible) networking for use in the office or with a fast home multimedia network. For wireless use it has a wireless card that supports both old (11Mbps) and newer IEEE 802.11g (54 Mbps) networking.

Measuring 15.4", the screen's graphics are provided by an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3100 which will do a good job with anything less than a full blown 3D shoot 'em up.

An 8X DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive is ideal for up to 8.5 Gb backup of files to DVD. For smaller file transfers between computers and devices such as mp3 players and cameras the laptop also has a multi-card reader that is compatible with SD, Sony Memory Stick and
Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard and xD-Picture Card.

The laptops comes with a 1 year warranty and a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007 that lasts for 60 days. Of course, you can still use the wonderful Office 2003 with XP so there's no need to use it if you don't want to!

MESH laptop offers high preformance

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:16:41 +0100

The MSI PR600 Plus laptop from MESH offers high computing performance at a relatively cheap price of just £529 (£450 ex vat).

Affordable performance MESH laptop

Specification:

Windows Vista Home Premium (Good for most users, some may wish to consider upgrading for more features / control)
Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 Processor (2.0GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
2GB DDR2 667MHz Memory (Fast memory)
160GB SATA Hard Drive (Fast hard drive for laptops)
15.4" Widescreen ACV (stands for "Amazing Crystal Vision")
Bulit in extras including a 1.3 megapixel webcam and multi-memory card reader

MESH currently offer this already cheap laptop with a free carry case, USB Mouse and best of all a 2 Year collect and return warranty for UK Mainland customers.

Visit MESH to find out more

TravelMate 7730 released

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:19:05 +0100

Acer, has announced the new TravelMate 7730, a professional notebook designed for professional business users looking for multitasking efficiency, enhanced productivity and solid wireless connectivity.

Acer TravelMate 7730

Acer has strived to fine-tune the details of its TravelMate line and has improved both the ergonomics and performance, making the TravelMate 7730 the ideal tool for SMB users looking for a professional notebook that offers the utmost security for critical data, exceptional performance and perfect communication in a streamlined and ergonomic design.

Exceptional performance
Equipped with Intel Centrino Processor Technology, the TravelMate 7730 is driven by the latest Intel® Core™2 Duo processor, the Mobile Intel GM45 Express chipset (which makes you wonder why they don't provide some DDR3 RAM) up to 4 GB of DDR2 667 MHz memory, to speed up response time and easily handle multitasking and productivity demands. Depending on the model, the TravelMate 7730 comes with either integrated 3D graphics, featuring Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500MHD, or discreet NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT/9300M GS graphics to boost graphic performance for best-in-class 3D graphics and high definition multimedia performance.

Moreover, the 17" WXGA+ high-brightness wide screen display can accommodate considerably more information, allowing users to view spreadsheets, charts and emails in native widescreen resolution thus increasing productivity.

One or two large Serial ATA hard disks (up to 320 GB) offer generous storage and allow the system to boot up and load applications faster. Extra storage options are given by a multi-in-one card reader and a DVD-Super Multi optical drive that provides more than enough space to store and manage files and folders of any size.

With support for Intel® Turbo Memory 2 GB application start-ups are accelerated by twice the speed thus reducing idle times and helping you get more done in less time.

Connectivity
Wherever you go, the TravelMate 7730 offers solid wireless connectivity thanks to Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5100/5300 (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N) Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® network connection, featuring MIMO technology, supporting Acer SignalUp™ with Nplify™2 wireless technology, in addition to LAN, modem and Bluetooth® 2.0+EDR connectivity.

Videoconferencing
The TravelMate 7730 can be specified with a VoIP Bluetooth phone and Acer Video Conference Manager Pack that, together with the integrated Acer CristalEye camera enables you to set up videoconferences wherever you are.

Security
True user identity controls are guaranteed by the Acer Bio-Protection digital imprint reading solution which supports Pre-Boot Authentication (PBA), one of the most secure control programs for mobile platforms on the market and Acer FingerLaunch, which offers a secure way to launch programs or authenticated documents with a simple swipe.

Physical security is managed through DASP technology which combines innovative hardware and software solutions to protect the notebook hard disk from hits and falls: Acer DiskAnti-Shock Protection, a special material plate able to absorb hits and insulate the hard disk, helping to prevent disk damage.

The TravelMate series comes preinstalled with Microsoft Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Home Basic. Furthermore, additional preinstalled software includes:

Watch out for the flimsy built-in tools and fickle extras, but look out for excellent features and value with TravelMate laptops.

Acer Empowering Technology (Acer eDataSecurity1, ePower, eRecovery, eSettings Management); Acer Bio-Protection1; Acer Crystal Eye1; Acer GridVista™; Acer Launch Manager; Adobe® Reader®; Corel® WinDVD; McAfee® Internet Security Suite; Microsoft® Office Ready 2007; NTI Media-Maker™; NTI Shadow™.

All Acer notebooks come with a standard 1 year Carry In (International travellers warranty - ITW) which can be extended to 3 years’ cover with the Acer Advantage service that also covers accidental damage to the notebook.

We'll post more information once we've got our hands on one. In the meanwhile, the TravelMate 7250, for example, can now be picked up for just 389.99 and has 2Gb RAM and Vista.

12000 laptops stolen a week from US airports

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:06:55 +0100

A survey by the Ponemon Institute in the US says that around 637,000 laptops are lost each year at US airports. This is a truly incredible number number - that's one lost every minute.

It says:

Close to 10,278 laptops are reported lost every week at 36 of the largest US airports, and 65% of those laptops are not reclaimed, the survey said. Around 2,000 laptops are recorded lost at the medium-sized airports, and 69% are not reclaimed.

Laptops are most often lost at security checkpoints. Why the found ones are not reclaimed is another issue, because the security implications are frightening. If you are lucky, your laptop may be cheap, but what about the personal details stored on your hard drive?

The survey was paid for by Dell, (neatly timed because they have just launched a security service that uses technologies such as GPS tracking to recover lost laptops).

HP offers 10 percent off for Easter

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:57:07 +0000

HP are offering 10% off & Free Delivery sale over Easter (Friday 21st March to Monday 24th March). Seeing as you can pick up a HP Compaq laptop from £435 this makes for some cheap laptop deals!

Just use the Voucher Code:

HPEASTER

Happy Easter from the HP Business and HP Consumer stores.

ASUS gives-us bang for buck with X53SR Laptop

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:31:43 +0000

The Asus X53SR laptop is a great all round laptop, with a powerful Intel Core 2 Duo Processor for superb performance, & a great graphics card providing an excellent viewing experience.

ASUS bargain laptop

It's quite high performance for a cheap laptop, but it doesn't look great and has a relatively short battery life. However, if you want better "bang" you have to fork out more hard earned "bucks" so it's a good all rounder. I wouldn't recommend it for the high powered exec, but if you want a practical, powerful desktop replacement that you can shove in a drawer to save space or a machine for light travel it's a bargain at just £549 inc VAT from PC World this Easter - that's £250 off.

The Fineprint
This Asus X53SR laptop has a DVI port, so you shouldn't have a problem hooking it up to an HD TV using a HDMI adapter. This could be great if you haven't invested in a DVD player, or perhaps want to watch HD Prison Break from the err ...Internet...

Unfortunately, the HD DVD drive is what it says on the tin "HD" ie. Toshiba's standard that recently lost out to Sony's Blu-Ray. Still, you're not paying extra for that and it will read all your software and "Fisher price" DVDs no problem so what's there to complain about?

Processor: INTEL CORE 2 DUO T5450, 1.66 GHz. Not bad for a laptop
Memory: 2048 MB DDR2 (fast) DRAM. Enough for a basic Vista machine
Storage: 160 Gb hard drive
CD / DVD:Super Multi DVD1RW (reads and writes to CDs and DVD-RW)
Battery life:2.5 hrs (manufacturer)
Weight2.95 kg

Asus X53SR laptop

MacBook Pro and Air

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:18:02 +0000

Apple have launched the world's thinnest notebook, called the MacBook Air. It isn't a cheap laptop - but we thought you'd like to hear more.

MacBook Air UK

The MacBook Air has a fresh, brand new ultra compact thin design. Accoding to Apple, the Air is the thinnest notebook computer available, and indeed it's remarkably sleek. At its widest point, it's a hair over three-quarters of an inch (that's 1.94cm) and it's very light, weighing in at exactly 1.36kg.

The new model Macs are equipped with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, offer larger hard drives and ship with 2GB of memory as standard in most models. All MacBooks and MacBook Pros can now house up to 4GB of memory, making them ideal for the multimedia apps such as Photoshop and Cubase that have long made Macs the creative man's (and wo-man's) tool of choice.

A far cry from the modest little EEE PC we just brought up. But, if you need a powerful and reliable tool for multimedia on the road here's the lowdown.

MacBook Air

Light, small and super thin.
Base processor is a 1.6 Core 2 Duo.
2 Gb memory
80 Gb hard drive
5 hours batt
13 inch screen

£1,199

Needless to say at less than 2cm thick, the MacBook Air doesn't have a built in optical drive. Instead, you can use a remote optical drive which makes living without a built-in drive much easier than the traditional docking station alternatives (if you've had a docking station, you'll know what I mean).

Here comes the cheap bit. Education offers. Students and teachers can save up to 8% on Macs and up to 80% on Apple Software products!

ASUS make it Eee-sy with the Eee PC

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:33:25 +0000

Play, relax, and entertain on the go with the ASUS Eee PC.

Today I'm talking about the Eee PCPC701 - a smart little Linux-based laptop.

Linux! Arghh!

You say... but give it a shot. It's cheap as chips and easy to use, opening up a brave new world with easy Web access on the go. This smart little box is great for web browsing, checking email and social networking. You can even make calls with skype or instant messenger. The Eee pc is also great for students and schoolkids, with pres-installed features a host of tools to facilitate student homework.

Eee PC the flexible friend

Eee it's a PC

Speaking of students, it's shock-proof design. Best not to through it at the teacher, but it's a tough little box and it'll take aknock or two more than your average low cost laptop.

The little laptop is powered by an Intel Ulta Low Voltage Celeron M Processor, which gives it a respectable battery life. It's quoted as "900MHz capable", in other words they don't ship at top speed but you could clock it by visiting BIOS.

The Eee PC features built-in wireless networking, sound and a media reader for Secure Digital (SD) and MultiMedia Card (MMC). Shockingly , your new best friend also has a built-in webcam and 2 year warranty.

New best friend - have you lost it?
Well, take a look. The ASUS Eee PC is very compact, just 7" and weighs less than 1 kg allowing you to be truly mobile. Bumps and shocks are no longer issues. And like a dog, it's dependable - it uses a solid - state disk for unparalleled shock protection and reliability. Eee PC will not fetch your paper, but BBC News looks pretty good even at 7".

Fact: The new ASUS Eee PC actually weighs less than a Harry Potter novel!

Easy on the pocket - Priced at £186 and £219 inc VAT the Eee PC is one of the lowest priced notebooks on the market. The cheap little laptop is:

Easy to use - The new ASUS Quick launcher & one click intuitive user-friendly interface
Easy to carry - Weighs less than 1kg and it comes with a free carry case.
Easy on the pocket
Intel Mobile processor
512MB RAM / 4GB Hard disk space - this is DDR2 RAM so it's fast!
SD(HC)card reader
802.11 b/g wireless connectivity
Integrated Webcam
2 Year Collect and Return warranty

These laptops sold out in the US over Christmas, now the early adopters over here are picking them up.

I love it. I like Linux, but I'm no expert and it works for me. If you want a business laptop replacement it's not for you because it's a Linux box and you probably find it difficult to stay compatible with a Windows-based office using MS Office suite. If you're looking for a multimedia or gaming machine it's not for you because it's only got a 4Gb hard drive.

But if you have schoolkids, want to take note in lectures, work in IT or want a faithful companion for browsing the web you've just found it.

Got your Asus Eee PC for just £218 here and join the consumer revolution!

Blu Ray Sony VAIO under £1000

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:19:11 +0000

Sony's digital entertainment laptop with a Blu-ray disc drive, HDMI connectivity, high powered processor and an incredibly large hard drive. This small laptop is a multimedia special, ideal for watching high resolution Blu-Ray DVDs (not surprisingly being pushed by Sony) which are higher resolution that standard DVDs and in competition with High Definition (HD). The WXGA (Widescreen high resolution) screen and huge hard drive reflect its multimedia capabilities - although bear in mind it isn't stricly (err.. at all) legal to rip a DVD onto the large hard drive!

Other than the fancy features the memory is generous - 2 Gb of very fast DDR2 667 MHz RAM. That's even enough to run Vista - which you might aswell get used to because it's going to be standard soon enough - and to tinker with 5 mb photos from your 10 Megapixel Sony digital camera. Speaking of cameras, this cheaper than usual premium Sony laptop has the obligatory MemoryStick drive.

A dual core processor ticks another box, although pretty standard these days. It does, whoever have an 800MHz FSB - this means it is free from a common bottleneck when communicating with the rest of your computer.

One for the desk drawer or young professional's IKEA room plan. Not half bad for under £1,000 inc VAT.

Here's the spec: Sony VAIO Intel Core 2 Duo T7300

15.4 WXGA
2GB RAM
Huge 200GB hard drive
Blu-Ray optical drive (reads high resolution DVDs)
Vista Home Premium

Sony @ Cheap Laptops

Sony releases 16Gb Memory Stick Duo

nospam@example.com (Robin) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:30:33 +0000

Yesterday, Sony announced the expansion of its high-definition recording options with the introduction of 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo™ media. This large-capacity flash storage device is ideal for Sony’s new Handycam® camcorders based on AVCHD™ technology as well as the latest high-resolution Sony cameras (Cyber-shotTM & α). Users can store up to 110 minutes of high-definition video recorded in 1920 mode, almost 6 hours of HD video when shooting in 1440 LP mode, and more than 4000 still pictures in 10 Megapixel resolution.

Sony 16Gb Memorystick

The 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo media, is the optimal recording media for HD content because of its ability to quickly and easily transfer large amounts of video content between devices. The 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo media can be removed from the camcorder and inserted directly into the Memory Stick slot of a PC or laptop or in a compatible adaptor. In Europe, for the initial launch promotion, it will be bundled with a handy USB adaptor - making it even easier to transfer files from your devices onto your PC for editing and sharing content.

The 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo™ media will be available in March 2008. It could prove a useful asset for laptops, adding portable storage, media transfer and low latency diskspace.

Tip: If you're thinking of getting a 16Gb Memorystick then look out for the following:

Does your device support such large memory?

Is your device compatible with "Memory Stick PRO Duo" - it's evolved a few times?

Do you need Memory Stick or would waiting a few months for a cheaper alternative do better?