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.

[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Chris T

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.

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

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

[handyman]

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

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

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

[altis]

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.

[handyman]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

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

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.

Originally Posted by altis

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.

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.

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.

[altis]

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.

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.

[Zee]

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

[handyman]

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?

[dragon]

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.

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.