Looking to buy a laptop... any thoughts?

[JohnSwitzer]

I'm looking to buy a laptop for my girlfriend and would be interested in your reccomendations.

I'm looking for something to browse the web with, download and play music tracks, word processing, spreadsheets, read Acrobat files, save and view digital phtographs and I'd be keen to play FlightSim on it too on the odd occasion. Software pre-requisites would be some form of anti-viral protection, MS Word, MS Excel, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a Media Player, MS Outlook, MS Internet Explorer.

Got £600 to play with which I know isn't much, ideally I'd be looking to buy within the next and may be interested in some form of flexible finance (i.e. so I can settle any loan well before the final payment).

Thanks in advance

John

[T0MMGZR]

Got a sony laptop from ebay.com not .co.uk cost me £600!! cost new in the UK £1400.

But the bad side is importing the thing, cost me £100!

Check out ebay or try ebuyer.co.uk!!!

[anthony]

I would go for a Dell laptop. You can get an Inspiron 1000 which consists of a 15" screen, 512mb Ram, 40gb HD, DVD Read/CDRW Drive, 3 year return to base warranty, Celeron mobile 2.2ghz CPU for £573 including v.a.t. and delivery.

We have used Dell laptops for around 5 years in work with no major problems. The 3 year warranty is vital though. Laptop repairs don't come cheap.

Anthony.

[Stu]

Avoid Sony like the plague. They are far too much hassle and over priced.

Dell's and HP are pretty good. IBM's are bomb proof but expensive.

Personally I would buy an Acer laptop. Made by Benq who supply about 25% of the worlds computer components and make the best TFT screens on the planet.

http://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/Acer_...aptop/prod.asp

Aspire 1362LMi looks like it meets your needs and has various finance options including buy now pay in 12 months https://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/asp/finance.asp

AV is free from Grisoft anyway (AVG).

[Caz]

I'm using a company Toshiba Tecra M2. The newer versions come with bluetooth but mine has inbuilt wireless, infrared, CD burner and 256MB RAM (now has 1GB at my own expense). I run a lot of memory intensive programmes such as SQL plus I have customized the thing to the hilt including skins and the like and it runs like a dream. I have no idea how much they cost new but we have 30 over here and no problems as yet. I asked my colleagues recently for recommendations for a mate and they all suggested Toshiba.

[T0MMGZR]

Originally Posted by Stu

Avoid Sony like the plague. They are far too much hassle and over priced.

What's wrong with sony, mines great. i had one for over 3 and half years no problems!!!!
Yes the software bugs you some time but when you have a sony mobile the card slot makes life easy!

[lichwolf]

dells are fine til they go wrong - at which point their customer service is pants - you'll spend hours on the phone trying to get them to send someone to fix it......

HP
Toshiba
SONY (as far as I know)

All ok - I would never buy Dell, I spend too long on the phone to them, and see too many PC's not working straight out of the box. In my opinion poorly assembled with lousy quality control.

[Caz]

Originally Posted by lichwolf

dells are fine til they go wrong - at which point their customer service is pants - you'll spend hours on the phone trying to get them to send someone to fix it......

Which is exactly why I wouldn't buy one. Heard they can be fussy too about upgrades and replacing parts which break. Have used Sony with no problem and same goes for HP.

[geeza76]

do all HP's take ages to load or is it just mine?

[Russ]

I bought a cracking PIII 800 laptop off eBay for £270. It's quite compact and the CD-ROM etc are on the docking station which means that for travelling the laptop section itself is really light. I installed XP on it and it runs like a dream for web apps, music and office stuff. £600 is an awful lot of money for something that doesn't need to be all powerful and play games. I would just use eBay to search, find a one-day auction and catch a bargain...and use the web to look up reviews. Long winded I know but you really will grab a bargain that way.

Thing to look out for is whether the person you buy from adds VAT afterwards, usually still a bargain to be had but just double check!

[T0MMGZR]

Originally Posted by lichwolf

HP
Toshiba
SONY (as far as I know)

for upgrading i would buy a toshiba,
I have tried to get my old sony upgraded, but its like . i would think the same would be for HP

for style i would buy the sony and have seen some nice looking toshiba too!

But check out the site stu gave and would argree that is the best i have seen for under £600!!!

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by geeza76

do all HP's take ages to load or is it just mine?

Mine takes a fair time (as you saw yesterday) but that's coz there is quite a bit running in the background at boot plus it's showing it's age now, what with a 20GB HDD - tiny by todays standards.

Just looking for another HP machine as we speak.....

[jonspurs]

Two good laptop brands to look at would be Fujitsu-Siemens and Acer.

Head over to WhatLaptop and their forums.

http://www.whatlaptop.co.uk
http://www.whatlaptop.co.uk/Forums/Default.aspx

Jon

[Dr Dave]

Acer - I'm sure they're a good brand but a mate has had multiple troubles with a mid-range Acer of late, under three months old - it's kinda put me off Acers.

[technozen]

I have found Fujitsu Siemens very reliable too....I have to order 4 for woork soon.......been looking at this from Dabs...

We get a good trade price....and no UK VAT!!!!

[CRNeo]

We've had problems with the sony vaios in work, I think they have put style over reliability on some of the vaios... also I've found the sony website difficult for drivers n stuff for a lot of models and support isn't that good either.

We get IBM Thinkpad R51s now and dey are da bomb, we got loads now and not a single problem with any of them.

Also recommend the dells too, and you can get some cracking deals at dell online, check out www.hotukdeals.co.uk they sometimes have some promo codes and you can get amazing deals at dell.co.uk

Cheers