Help with a laptop purchase pleease

JEMJAR

Hello, hope someone can help, my dad wants a laptop but he is a complete novice hasn't got much to spend and will only use it for internet and downloading music occasionally. Can anyone advise/recommend what would suit and are refurbished laptops any good?
Thanks

Conor_3

To be honest, pretty much anything will do what he wants. If it has Vista on it, make sure it has at least 1GB of RAM. Wifi is also pretty much a requirement nowadays. Steer clear of Advents as they still have issues with cracking hinges.

hamtt

JEMJAR wrote: »

Hello, hope someone can help, my dad wants a laptop but he is a complete novice hasn't got much to spend and will only use it for internet and downloading music occasionally. Can anyone advise/recommend what would suit and are refurbished laptops any good?
Thanks

Stick to the big name brands (IBM, HP Compaq, Dell, Sony etc) and stay well away from brands like Advent, Medion, Gericom etc. The build quality and reliability of the latter is well below par. Dont be tempted by big numbers and flashy adverts for them.

With regards to the big brands, IBM are best reliability wise, but the laptops dont look too pretty as their primary customer base and taget market is the business sector and the prices arent too cheap.

HP Compaq are now targetting the home market with their Pavilion range but to be honest I dont know much about them.

Sony (IMO) are overpriced and full of "waffle" which more than anything just slows the computer right down for the sake of looking pretty.

We specialise in refurbishing and selling Dell laptops. We get customer returns driect from Dell and sell them on eBay (ndc-uk, we have a feedback of over 7000) and on our own website www.ndc.co.uk

Generally the Dell laptop are split into the following categories:

Dell Latitude Laptops - Plain looking but sturdy and well build - targetted for the business sector (www.ndc.co.uk/latitude)
Dell Inspiron Laptops - The mainstream laptops aimed for the home market, coming in various colours, sizes and configurations (www.ndc.co.uk/inspiron)
Dell Vostro Laptops - Basically some of the Inspiron models rebranded and put in a black casing to make them look more corporate for the business sector (www.ndc.co.uk/vostro)
Dell XPS Laptops - The creme-de-la-creme, with fancy lights and cutting edge design and optional high end graphic cards these are aimed at the power users and professional gamers (www.ndc.co.uk/xps)

Basically what you are describing, pretty much any current laptop will do. It all just depends on how many extras (like integrated webcams) you want and how much future proofing you want. You pretty much get what you pay for. so I guess it all comes down to your budget!
:beer:

jaydeeuk1

New laptops are that cheap, there's not much point in going for a refurb.
Price around £250-£275 will do everything you need easily. Processor speed won't make much difference if you only intend to play music and surf the net, so I 'd advise go for which ever has the larger hard drive, followed by better screen/keyboard.

hamtt

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

New laptops are that cheap, there's not much point in going for a refurb.
Price around £250-£275 will do everything you need easily. Processor speed won't make much difference if you only intend to play music and surf the net, so I 'd advise go for which ever has the larger hard drive, followed by better screen/keyboard.

Cheap laptops tend to have cheap motherboards, the "invisible" but most important part of the laptop. What good is having big feet when your heart cant pump blood to them properly?

mikegahan

Try the Ebuyer website as there are many on display and you can easily see user views and recommendations. I bought a samsung thre recently and it was great. - the Samsung R60. However it is no longer available at a cheap price.

I would recommed the Lenovo N200.

http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?strSearch=&bolShowAll=true&intStoreID=5&intCatID=10&intMfrID=739&bolShowAll=true

Although it is not a well known name it is an IBM design and more importantly it is equiped with XP pro which is much kinder to laptops. This would have been my second choice. But any of the Fujistsu Siemens lower price machines would be a good deal as the build quality is generally good. Buy new as you can get a good basic machinefor £300 £350, and it will come with a years guarantee and be a higher spec than a refurb

k1rkyc

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141514 is great for the price!

and an extra 1GB of RAM

jaydeeuk1

hamtt wrote: »

We specialise in refurbishing and selling Dell laptops. We get customer returns driect from Dell and sell them on eBay (ndc-uk, we have a feedback of over 7000) and on our own website www.ndc.co.uk

Generally the Dell laptop are split into the following categories:

Dell Latitude Laptops - Plain looking but sturdy and well build - targetted for the business sector (www.ndc.co.uk/latitude)
Dell Inspiron Laptops - The mainstream laptops aimed for the home market, coming in various colours, sizes and configurations (www.ndc.co.uk/inspiron)
Dell Vostro Laptops - Basically some of the Inspiron models rebranded and put in a black casing to make them look more corporate for the business sector (www.ndc.co.uk/vostro)
Dell XPS Laptops - The creme-de-la-creme, with fancy lights and cutting edge design and optional high end graphic cards these are aimed at the power users and professional gamers (www.ndc.co.uk/xps)

That post made me laugh, no wonder you disagree with what I said if you're trying to sell your own laptops to the OP!
Its also against the rules on this site to self promote your own site.


Anyway JemJar, absolutely nothing wrong with most budget brands. A lot share the same motherboard chipset or are just rebrands under a different name, a bit like Renault and Nissan share car technology.
Chipsets in cheaper laptops tend to be based on more mature chipsets, and therefore quality and reliability is good. Acer are an excellent budget brand and have laptops at under £300 which will do exactly what you need.

chunter

hamtt wrote: »

Cheap laptops tend to have cheap motherboards, the "invisible" but most important part of the laptop. What good is having big feet when your heart cant pump blood to them properly?

Cheap "new dell" laptops also have a year's warranty.. .

300 quid delivered..

Athlon 64 X2 Mobile Technology TK57
Windows Vista® Home Premium
15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display
1024 MB 667MHz Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM
120GB (5400rpm) SATA Hard Drive
DVD+/-RW Drive
PRIMARY BATTERY 6 cell Lithium-Ion Battery (53 Whr)

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=uk&cs=ukbsd1&l=en&oc=N0710004&s=bsd&sbc=rf_spider&m_30=139043&dgc=AF&cid=5213&lid=122757

jaydeeuk1

Chunters post looks quite good. Decent battery too which is unusual for low price lappy (another reason to avoid refurbs). Only thing you might want to do in the future if you find it's running slow is boost the memory to 2gb, but for what you need I probably wouldn't bother.

hamtt

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

That post made me laugh, no wonder you disagree with what I said if you're trying to sell your own laptops to the OP!
Its also against the rules on this site to self promote your own site.


Anyway JemJar, absolutely nothing wrong with most budget brands. A lot share the same motherboard chipset or are just rebrands under a different name, a bit like Renault and Nissan share car technology.
Chipsets in cheaper laptops tend to be based on more mature chipsets, and therefore quality and reliability is good. Acer are an excellent budget brand and have laptops at under £300 which will do exactly what you need.

I seriously beg to differ. Its not a case of promoting our own work. The major difference between big brands and budget brands is the proprietory ownership of the technology. Laptops are manufactured by companies you probably have never heard of (such as Compal, Gericom etc), not by HP or Advent. The big brands do their own designs on PCBs and most of them use Compal for the manufacture.

Compal is not the cheapest but has the better standard of work. These laptops are not rebranded or sold as anything else. 80% of advent laptops are Gericom laptops or Uniwill. Gericom basically design a standard laptop and will sell it to anyone under a different casing aswell as their own brand.

Budget companies such as Advent, Medion use their pricing as the selling point, hence the technology is "squeezed".

Big brand companies sell the laptop with service & support as their primary selling point. They invest alot more in R&D and design of the laptop, they have a brand and reputation to protect.

For example, the Uniwill 755 was rebranded as a Packard Bell Easynote H5, Fujitsu S series aswell as Uniwill itself and Medion. This you wont see with the big brands.

Furthermore you try getting a spare part for an Advent laptop, they have no support structure at all. On the other hand, any part for any HP laptop (even ten years old) is available from Westcoast, their parts distributor.