Recommend a laptop
 

A friend at work is replacing her ancient Win98 desktop with a new laptop and is looking for some guidance.

The new machine will be used for MS Office-type work, plus viewing DVDs and storing photos. No games and no video editing.

The budget is £400 - we're looking for cheap but reliable, not oodles of oomph but enough to do the job. What do you think?

And while we're at it, what are the relative merits of the various flavours of Vista? I see some offers with 'Home Basic'. I don't like the sound of that much, although I have no idea whether it would restrict her at all.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Don't Aldi get some good specced machines in for about that price ?

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Vista basic is just the front end no Aero and no multimedia extras. It depends on use if its just for an office machine then basic would be ok . Home premium has the media centre extras

http://www.shopacer.co.uk/pp/Acer_As...LMi_Vista.html something like this maybe

http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_Asp.../version-1.asp or maybe this

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

The Aldi one would have been our choice had we not signed up for Orange broadband and got £300 off a lappy from Currys.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

can you upgrade the BB offer Mark? or are you stuck with the pants cap

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

That first link looks just the ticket Zingle ... I'll ask her what she thinks.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

I'd go with summat like a reconditioned Dell D800 from their outlet or fleabay. This has a widescreen - great for DVDs - and good support. If you're storing photos then look for one with a large a large HDD and a DVD writer for backups too.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

I signed up for the unlimited one.

Currys offer £300 off any laptop and you can chose the package you want. Pc world offer £300 off a couple of laptops and it is the basic package only.

Worth noting that the offer also includes 3 months half price on your selected package.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Reconditioned sounds interesting - do you have a link?

She's a bit of a techno-virgin so I wouldn't want to push her towards eBay. TBH I'd be a bit cautious myself of buying anything really high value off there, especially something electronic with moving parts ...

On the subject of eBay, can anyone tell me what the average selling price of a 2nd-hand MS Office CD is? The office net nanny won't let us near it. I have been trying to persuade her to save a fortune and go with Open Office but she's not convinced.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Dell outlet - stuff that people have ordered, then cancelled.

Worth checking a few times a day, as it changes all the time.
Dell Outlet

Also, Mesh are doing something similar to the Acer that Zing recommended earlier Mesh at £459.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Some to chose from on ebay:
http://computers.search.ebay.co.uk/dell-d800_Laptops

What I do is stick W2K on there and then Office97 which, again, can be had quite cheaply. I've done this already with two D800s and I'm about to have a go at a third.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Thanks, but the number one must-have here is that there is no fiddling about. It has to work out of the box, at worst maybe a CD to stick in to load up an office suite.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

I highly recommend these Vostro's

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...dt1&l=en&s=bsd

Dunno if she minds getting it from PC World

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&show_all=true

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Just spotted this http://www.woolworths.co.uk/web/jsp/...p?pid=50822571

£299, with Vista. Planning on picking one up tomorrow to use as my 2nd pc.

Thats unless anyone can post something better?

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

http://www.hotukdeals.com/?merchant_...rder_by=Newest

Usually some good prices on Dells found via that site.

Some have the business version of vista on though, I think what happens with some of those deals is Dell basically knock the equivalent of the VAT and shipping off the price of the business machine and let a home user have it for the same price it would cost a business. :D

I got my desktop though one of the offers listed on that site, Infact I did it over the phone and they seemed happy to sell it for the price i was getting the website to come up with (even though the evalue code if entered on the search would go to the bussness store)

My mate also ordered a desktop though one of those links and did it online and had no problems ordering.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Link

Toshiba for £297
HP for £298

Probably a better bet than a Medion from woolies

Ok so not dual cores etc, but perfectly adequate for Office type stuff

don't forget the Dells

LINK
Change to 1 year warranty to get £387 - and that is for dual core ( and you can still have XP)

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

If you dont mind an AMD cpu then how about a dual core proccessor and 2GB of ram for £376.07

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dells...003&s=dhs&fb=1

again change to 1yr warrenty ;)

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

What's wrong with an AMD processor?

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Nothing, but aren't the core2's slightly more energy efficient which if running on batteries could make a difference...

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

Did you get sorted Chris?

I got one of these the other day.

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...uct&sku=401567

It's a beauty.
Mate works at Currys so I got it a bit cheaper than £399, but they're selling out of them within days. It's their top seller.
17" widescreen, core duo, Vista Home Premium.
Quick bit of tweaking in the OpenGL settings and it runs Counter Strike better than my desktop.

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

She hasn't bought one yet, but I'll let you know!

Re: Recommend a laptop
 

PC World have a sale on at the mo. Duo Core for £400