£299.92 laptop at Tesco

startrekker · 10 July 2006 at 12:44PM

In the new back to school leaflet is the following.

Acer Travelmate wireless widescreen laptop

intel celeron 380
256 mb ram
40gb hard drive
Dvd re-writer
15.4 inch screen

£299.92.
Sent the wife up to our local store(I do hate shopping) None in yet but are due in.
Bargain or what?

Dead_Eye_Jones · 10 July 2006 at 12:53PM

yeah I was looking at this and also thought wow bargin, but then I thought some more and actually started to think it wasnt that great. Initially its worth considering 256mb ram isnt really acceptable, especially in a potentially hard to upgrade later laptop. XP will seem laboured and Vista, should you upgrade will barely run. I guess this will be down to your needs though, if you want a £300 email/web surfing tool then I spose it will do.

I also find that actually large PC retailers give better value for money, I did some comparisons and found that laptops can be had for bargin prices all over the place these days and the Acer's short comings started to show through.

A fair deal? Yes. A rush out and buy a laptop I didnt really want deal? No. Check out what dell and dabs are offering...

bobdauilda · 10 July 2006 at 12:56PM

doesn't sound a good deal esp as most are coming down now since dual core tech intro.

D@rkle · 10 July 2006 at 1:46PM

I know it could just be that you've not listed it, but does it state it comes with windows?

It's not bad, I have seen better.

Dell currently so some sub £400 laptops that are more robust, but as for Vista, I don't think you could really expect anything below £700 to be running it very smoothly when it's released.

Somerled · 10 July 2006 at 2:41PM

It should be possible to upgrade the memory to 512mb for about £35. Assuming I have the correct Travelmate. Tesco didnt know themselves which model they were selling. It makes me laugh that the press desk and the dept that wrote the leaflet don't know

At £327 its not too bad a deal?

gazbert_2 · 10 July 2006 at 2:48PM

I think it's a great offer, especially since it has a dvd writer. I challenge anyone to find the same or better spec for the same price.

The RAM can be upgraded easily and cheaply making it a perfectly happy XP machine.

There's no way on earth anything even remotely close to this price would ever run Vista at a decent rate, so this isn't a compelling reason not to buy.

It all comes down to what you're after. As a portable machine to use around the house and away on hols it's perfect. As a Vista ready gaming rig? Not a chance.

heymylastnameislewis · 10 July 2006 at 3:15PM

for a basic typing light internet use etc this is a great deal. for someone who will want the new windows platform or will want to do a lot of downloading and running multipal programs then maybe give it a miss as stated 256 is not a lot of ram however yes cheap upgrades are possible but this is not an easy task and you could end up paying extra for a professinal to do it. also 40 gig hard disk 4 sum 1 who says has a lot of itunes music will fill up very quickly. so something to think about there. like i say if u want a basic laptop then sure its a good buy. if u want something which u wish to keep 4 a while and upgrade etc prob best looking else where

heymylastnameislewis · 10 July 2006 at 3:16PM

also one more point does it come with windows? thats an extra 90 squid if it doesn't

nej · 10 July 2006 at 4:18PM

And does it definately come with some form of wireless? Is it built-in, or on a PCMCIA card or a USB stick?

jockettuk · 10 July 2006 at 4:29PM

nej wrote:

And does it definately come with some form of wireless? Is it built-in, or on a PCMCIA card or a USB stick?

Jersy · 10 July 2006 at 4:29PM

anyone who buys a laptop from tesco will not be a heavy user.

they are there for an impluse purchase.. oo look, theres a laptop from under three hundred notes, wouldnt that be good.

however, after staff discount, this could be useful for me. id get it for 270 PLUS i have about 20 quid in clubcard vouchers lyng around.

The only reason why i would be useful for me is that as a student it would be good for having Office which would mean that should i deciede to travel on the train each day, a minium of two hours per day, i could do assignment work,

then when i comes to May and i have finsihed my course i could sell it for 50- 100 quid to some other student for the same purpose.

also with regards to vista, maybe im alone in saying this. but i dont like upgraing old computers with a new OS. perpahps six months after the launch i would buy a new PC, ,this would allow the value of the new PCs to drop, as well having giving microsoft a few months to iron out any bugs in the s/w

£299.92 laptop at Tesco

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