Looking for the ideal laptop for me?

[Haz]

I'm 14 looking for a laptop. Under £500. (a UK version) Will be used for many things (watching movies,photoshop, social networking, homework etc) You could say that I have a very decent knowledge about laptops and I need one which would have over 2ghz, 4gb ram+ for multitasking, windows 8 and a stlylish design. By the way I'm not a huge fan of the tablet/laptop combinations so please don't recommend any of them. I love the asus company I have to admit-but they're laptops are out of my budget now however feel free to tell me if you can find one. I know you cant expect much from this type of budget but I want a nice sleek looking laptop which will last me for a few years. Thanks in advance

[edit1754]

It's not going to do you much good to set requirements that you don't know are what you need. I'm looking more specifically at the 2GHz requirement. Clock rate, or "Gigahertz", is not a representative measure of CPU performance. Many factors go into what ends up being the real-world capability of a CPU, and clock rate is only an extremely small part of that. For one thing, you've got CPUs with differing number of cores, and certain tasks will perform better on CPUs with more slower cores than fewer faster cores. Even with that aside, you'll probably find a 2.1GHz-rated Core i3 to be faster than a 3.06GHz-rated Core 2 Duo (both 2-Core chips). But the bigger picture of the whole thing is this: The CPU is not the keystone defining aspect of how good your computer is, despite the marketing aura surrounding the chip. There are many things you need to be concerned with at a lower budget like this before you start worrying about, of all things, the processor.

That said, one thing you DO want to place some concern on is the display. Many of the displays you'll find in sub-£500 laptops have low resolutions for the size (e.g. 15.6" 1366x768) not letting you fit much onscreen and making things onscreen rather large. Furthermore, most LCD panels made for laptops with such size/resolution combinations are low-grade LCD panels that suffer from grayish blacks and an overall washed-out look due to poor contrast, as well as severely-limited viewing angles. In a day and age where 14" 3200x1800 and 15.6" 3840x2160 displays are making their way into the laptop market, and in a day and age where you can pretty much expect a decent display in a sub-$300 tablet, nonsense displays are further losing their already diminished acceptability and relevance. The laptops I'm about to recommend come with decent displays: 15.6" with 1920x1080 resolution, good contrast/colors, and reasonable viewing angles.

http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thi...ries/e540/
- Start with the cheapest base model (the £449 one)
- Click-open the configuration option labeled "Display" and select one of the two options labeled "15.6WFHD" (15.6" 1920x1080). Either will do, and the listed color is merely the cosmetic of the lid, and nothing to do with the actual panel. Don't buy the Edge E540 in any configuration that includes the default "15.6WHD" (15.6" 1366x768) display.
- Don't worry about upgrading the CPU and whatnot, as CPU isn't a general-case concern, and the default selection here (i3-4000M) is more than sufficient for general use.

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/ultraNoteII-15/
- Display: Select the 1920x1080 IPS option.
- CPU: Not an essential upgrade, but selecting the i3-4000M will get you the notably faster integrated graphics, in case you decide to try out some light gaming.
- Memory: Select 4GB. It's odd that they offer 2GB.
- HDD: I usually suggest the 500GB 7200RPM or 750GB 7200RPM.