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My daughters laptop has given up. she's just started uni and would need one for her work and also to watch catch up tv and download music. So fairly simple needs. I don't need anything too fancy. Budget c£400. Any ideas.

400 is a good budget, will have a look whats around.

Thanks

http://www.ebuyer.com/544655-acer-aspire-e1-laptop-nx-m09ek-015

Good spec, although IMHO avoid Acer as they always have dodgy screens (due to where the wire goes from the screen to the motherboard). I've had 2 Acers and the screen buggered up on both within 2 years.

Personally, I tend to trust Asus...so this is decent for the money:
http://www.ebuyer.com/538431-asus-x550ca-laptop-x550ca-xo086h

Make sure you get an i3 anyway!

I have never had a problem with Acers TBH and I have bought them for 20+ people but you go with what you know.

Yes Asus is a better make and at minimum an i3 or i5 but go for as much ram as possible, I know its cheap to buy but get one with at least 6 or 8gb for Windows 8.

Thanks - will have a good look at them tomorrow.

Good processor is the important bit in a lappy- if you've not got enough ram/hard drive space it can be upgraded easily- average Joe ain't upgrading a processor, least not without it costing more than a new laptop in the first place.

As others have said, decent i3/i5 processors are there for £400.

i.e. http://www.ebuyer.com/523540-hp-250-g1-laptop-h6e24ea-abu

HP's are pretty reliable, not known any crazy things going wrong with any I know.

I'd say the most important upgrade for an every day user would be a solid state hard drive. Speed gains are very noticeable.

Went with your suggestion jj. Have Acers and like them. If this one goes to shit where do you normally sit.

In front of my PC :) hope it is good for you as the spec is very good the only down side is Windows 8 but they are all pretty much 8 now, I personally think its pants but you can configure it to look and behave like 7 if you so prefer.

#Bump

Anyone know of any decent deals for a windows7 laptop? Want to get office on it, it's for the youngest so don't want anything too flash, budget up to £300  :)

The misses wants one of these: http://www.sony.co.th/productcategory/it-personal-computer?site=hp_en_TH_i&hpid=Vaio%C2%AETap11:owned:hp:mktpanel

Are they any good?

I have recently got a laptop from pc specialist. They are brilliant and very reasonable prices for their specs

+1 to that. I got a beast for less than £600

It's quite easy to pick up a beast, all it takes is numerous jagerbombs in a town centre bar.


The jagers aren't for the beast either.

And back to technology.

Looking for a new laptop, primarily for me to play Football Manager and look at the TEF. Mrs Donkey will use it for research and spreadsheets. Budget is lower than most who've asked at about £250 - £300. All help gratefully received.

Just bought.an.Asus with 4GBP of ram from pc world £279

In news you are all desperate to hear, Mrs Donkey now has a new laptop. It will be fine for our purposes.

4 quid of ram? interesting.

Without meaning to sound condescending and this is not way aimed at you only but there's more to a Laptop/PC than how much RAM it has.

:) yep, ram being one of the cheapest components of a lappy, 4gb(p) being as little as £25.

not £4 ?

Christ I remember being dead chuffed when the average price dropped to around £25/MB, so I could finally afford to get a 4MB SIMM for just under a ton. I'm sounding like a nerdy Reg here aren't I?

I've never forgiven a certain free newspaper for missprinting an advert that said 16MB was only £160 insted of £360. Ruined my illusion that I'd be the envy of the Computer Science class :)

What it was like to have ambition when we were younger eh? Reach for the stars, young Batch, reach for the stars!

You'll never believe it, but I was a bit of a geek with no social skills. Whereas now..oh.

Anyway First rule of Computer Science (club), nobody talks about..

Nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds

Oh hell yeah. And proud of it. Geek pride!

Shhhhhhhhh

my first PC has 2mb of ram and cost(my dad) £2.5k

Looking at getting my mrs a laptop for Christmas, was going to go down the Apple route, but are they value for money at £900 when you can get a Sony (Vaio Fit 15 E SVF1521A1EW.CEK 15”) for £350.

She'd only use it for coursework a bit on line, shopping, facebook etc and probably do some stuff with photos.

Depends what way you look at it. The OS, in my opinion, is infinitely better, although not immediately to anyone used to Windows.

The main benefit though, which certainly justifies the price, is the durability. The build is unmatched by anything on the market. (The service is also pretty special, should you require it.)

My current one is only 2.5 years old, but it's like new. The keyboard doesn't flex, the mousepad still works, the screen is still uniform and crisp, the battery still lasts 6 hours. It also still fetches around £900 on eBay, as they hold their price really well.

It has never been reformatted, tweaked or fiddled with. You open the box, you turn it on and it'll remain the same, within reason, until such time as you sell it.

Also, if you get a backup drive, then the security offered by the built in backup app (Time Machine) is superb.

But, for balances sake, and before those people who've never used a Mac and love Windows chime in, no it's not value for money if that's all she's going to do. If she was involved in any kind of coding, design or development then it'd be a no brainer, but for just doing basic stuff, it's only good value if you expect to keep it for a long period.

What Barry said.

Build quality is immense, nothing even close to it that I've seen. Mine is 3 years old, few scratches but otherwise it's pretty much the same as the day I bought it. Most other brands of laptops are falling to pieces after that amount of time.

The bundled software is pretty good as well, far better than what you get with Windows.

Add on the high resale value and over a 3 year period there isn't much, if any, of a price difference.

Apple sucks

nice - are you going to share them?

I have converted about half a dozen people (mostly OAPs) from Windows to apple and everyone one of them has said they wished they switched sooner... Price was always a factor for them so bought them second hand units... some pretty decent deals out there, pcked up a 6 month old iMac 27inch with 16gb ram in perfect condition for £1200...)

iPad Air .... Whats the deal? Any good?

Seem to vary wildly in terms of price so any recommendations?

If you want pictures of my kids then errrr...

Anyway thanks for all the information, plenty to think about.

Why so expensive?

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/460000/images/_463071_nudge.jpg)

I have just seen the light and changed - thank god  :pint:

Also soon to be an OAP  :suicide:
 

Well this didn't happen did it

The wife is looking at getting a laptop for around £400, but I find the whole thing very confusing, so I'll start with one question, but may come back with another 20 or so.  What processor should I be hoping to get for that, and is intel better AMD??

Most would argue there is not much different between the two but i prefer intel

Intel used to be miles better than amd, and although Intel is still better it's not considerable as it was.

I've owned both AMD and Intel and prefer Intel. Realistically with the processors avaliable for £400 there's not going to be a vast gulf of difference, but I think Intel is optimised better for windows.

I have no evidence to support that.

For that kind of money you're looking at high-end i3, you might even find an i5. If you get confused about the variants of i3/i5 processor (i.e. is an i3-300 better than an i3-3120) then a website like notebookcheck.com will be your friend.

Just bear in mind an Intel mobile chip will be outperformed by even the cheapest desktop chip in most cases.

[quote  then a website like notebookcheck.com will be your friend.
[/quote]

cheers for that i's very helpful.  By the way how is the book coming along?? 

True.

In a laptop a mobile chip will last much longer and run cooler and won't drain the battery as fast. Pros and cons.

Yeah maybe that didn't come across too well. But what I meant was the question isn't as simple as AMD vs Intel and i3 Vs i5 vs i7 etc etc. Particularly as most of the benchmarks and hype tends to be focussed on the desktop processors.

General rule of thumb is intel is bestest.