Sub-£350 powerful laptops discussion

TakeThis

m5rcc wrote: »

Dell Inspiron N5110 Core i3 2350m, 4GB RAM 500GB HD - £280

Good enough. Details here

pensivegerbil

Can't see anything wrong with this (Compaq Presario CQ56-102SA, brand new for 229GBP) for my 65yr old Ma who wants to skype with her long-distance son. She'll also be doing a little word-processing, emailing, surfing but not much else.

Anyone willing to talk me out of it and offer up a better alternative?!

TakeThis

pensivegerbil wrote: »

Can't see anything wrong with this (Compaq Presario CQ56-102SA, brand new for 229GBP) for my 65yr old Ma who wants to skype with her long-distance son. She'll also be doing a little word-processing, emailing, surfing but not much else.

Anyone willing to talk me out of it and offer up a better alternative?!

I'll talk you out of it. Brand new with a 3 month warranty?

If on a tight budget, there is this TOSHIBA Satellite C660-1FE for £203.98. 12 month warranty, as opposed to 3.

For a tenner more, you can get the superior TOSHIBA Satellite C660D-1CV. I recommend this one for your Ma.

Straykitten

Avoid Fujistsu and Acer - they're crap! And despite HP/Compaq's supposedly good reputation I had a VERY bad experience with a laptop I bought - not just that it was completely faulty, but the terrible customer service I had to deal with. AVOID! Best to spend a little bit extra for that peace of mind. Try instead, Asis or Dell, who offer a higher level of reliability and customer care.

Mind you, if you can really splash out, get a Mac!

Straykitten

pensivegerbil wrote: »

Can't see anything wrong with this (Compaq Presario CQ56-102SA, brand new for 229GBP) for my 65yr old Ma who wants to skype with her long-distance son. She'll also be doing a little word-processing, emailing, surfing but not much else.

Anyone willing to talk me out of it and offer up a better alternative?!

Only a 3month warranty? That's ridiculous. HP/Compaq have terrible customer service in my opinion - fix the symptom, not the problem (3 hard drives in less than a year and the 3rd one started doing strange things straight away. there's obviously something causing all these har drives to fail. Do they care? Do they heck!) I reckon you should go with TakeThis' advice and get a Toshiba - they seem pretty reliable and they offer a normal warranty. 3 months! Ridiculous!

Skeenfleent

silvercar wrote: »

I need to replace my desktop, and I'm thinking that I wouldn't lose anything by getting a laptop instead. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse and a newish acer screen that I could plug into the laptop when needed, so what would my loss be?

My current desktop is 8 years old, spec is:

MS Windows XP
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
991 MB RAM(think this was upgraded from the original)
NVIDIA GeForce2 Integrated GPU.

I don't know what half that stuff means, the computer was built by a mate who know longer builds computers for people so it would be a question of buying something off the shelf.

Could I get something better in a laptop for around £350? I don't want refurbished and I don't want Dell.

Used for emailing, internet and the odd facebook game. I have noticed that the current machine is slow on games and multi-tasking so do want something faster. Could I do that on a budget of £350 for a laptop or am I better getting a desktop?

I run about three computers slightly above this spec and if they're slow it's because I've got 20 tabs open at once and the web designers all put flash on their pages, which will slow anything down eventually... If you call that 'multitasking', then sure, you need all the CPU and RAM you can get, but 2GHz and 1GB is fine for basic web browsing - displaying x amount of data doesn't suddenly get more taxing on the computer over time, all else being equal.
Just avoid opening too many things at once - the faster your computer, the lazier your habits can get, and so the speed you think you need is relative, not absolute, whilst the speed actually required remains absolute if you use your computer with a little discipline. Discipline saves money, right?

The point being, and others reading take note: you probably just wasted money on a new laptop just because you saw everyone else has a newer laptop (and the portability aspect), and were seduced.

I hope you actually use the portability aspect, because if you think that a 2GHz Athlon XP with nearly 1GB RAM can't shift the few MB/s of data that it takes to browse the web, write a word document, play an mp3 and download some torrents (for example), at the same time, in Windows XP - then you're deluded - possibly by self-corrupting software, AKA 'Windows'. It gets slower over time. You re-install and it gets better again, then you image the drive and the next re-installation takes 20 minutes, so can be done regularly when slow-down occurs. IF it occurs, as each system's use and setup is different.

You might also have needed to clean dust out of the PC's case and various vents, which can slow things down if heat builds up due to ventilation blockage.

If your hard drive is full, clone it to a bigger one, and / or back up important files to DVD-R. If they're not important, then delete them and find your computer generally works better.

The only hardware you probably needed to upgrade was the graphics card, if newer software required it (although I have the same on one of my PCs and it's not slow at all for browsing and multitasking) and for just £30 on ebay or in CEX, added to the above PC, you could have a gaming card that would be somewhere between a PS2 and PS3 / XBOX360 in graphical output, at over 720p resolution - and that's powerful 3D games, not your 2D flash games on Facebook...


You didn't need to spend £350, only a tenth of that and maybe even less!

This is for anyone else reading this who might waste money - this is moneysavingexpert.com, not 'thriftylaptopaddicts.com', right?


There's good software out there if you learn where to find it and what it looks like. (Clue: avoid Microsoft, Adobe and Apple as they use marketing instead of efficient coding).

Never underestimate the ability of bad software coders and mis-configuration to undermine good hardware. Never.

A few minor tweaks, a health-check at your friendly local (qualified, well-reviewed) IT Technician / shop and/or a minor hardware upgrade - at worst still spending under £50, in this case, and you're good to go.

Or learn how to DIY, this kind of stuff is pretty easy these days.

Save money or don't, it's your choice.

Skeenfleent

gailcarty wrote: »

Only a 3month warranty? That's ridiculous. HP/Compaq have terrible customer service in my opinion - fix the symptom, not the problem (3 hard drives in less than a year and the 3rd one started doing strange things straight away. there's obviously something causing all these har drives to fail. Do they care? Do they heck!) I reckon you should go with TakeThis' advice and get a Toshiba - they seem pretty reliable and they offer a normal warranty. 3 months! Ridiculous!

Batches / large runs of hard drives can have inherent faults, unfortunately. Or the manufacturer of the laptop didn't provide enough cooling / has a fault in their design that impacts upon the hard drive as a symptom - OR maybe you're just bashing your laptop about a lot! If so, I recommend a solid-state drive (expensive as hell, but no mechanical, moving parts).

JDPower

Skeenfleent wrote: »

I run about three computers slightly above this spec and if they're slow it's because I've got 20 tabs open at once and the web designers all put flash on their pages, which will slow anything down eventually... If you call that 'multitasking', then sure, you need all the CPU and RAM you can get, but 2GHz and 1GB is fine for basic web browsing - displaying x amount of data doesn't suddenly get more taxing on the computer over time, all else being equal.
Just avoid opening too many things at once - the faster your computer, the lazier your habits can get, and so the speed you think you need is relative, not absolute, whilst the speed actually required remains absolute if you use your computer with a little discipline. Discipline saves money, right?

The point being, and others reading take note: you probably just wasted money on a new laptop just because you saw everyone else has a newer laptop (and the portability aspect), and were seduced.

I hope you actually use the portability aspect, because if you think that a 2GHz Athlon XP with nearly 1GB RAM can't shift the few MB/s of data that it takes to browse the web, write a word document, play an mp3 and download some torrents (for example), at the same time, in Windows XP - then you're deluded - possibly by self-corrupting software, AKA 'Windows'. It gets slower over time. You re-install and it gets better again, then you image the drive and the next re-installation takes 20 minutes, so can be done regularly when slow-down occurs. IF it occurs, as each system's use and setup is different.

You might also have needed to clean dust out of the PC's case and various vents, which can slow things down if heat builds up due to ventilation blockage.

If your hard drive is full, clone it to a bigger one, and / or back up important files to DVD-R. If they're not important, then delete them and find your computer generally works better.

The only hardware you probably needed to upgrade was the graphics card, if newer software required it (although I have the same on one of my PCs and it's not slow at all for browsing and multitasking) and for just £30 on ebay or in CEX, added to the above PC, you could have a gaming card that would be somewhere between a PS2 and PS3 / XBOX360 in graphical output, at over 720p resolution - and that's powerful 3D games, not your 2D flash games on Facebook...


You didn't need to spend £350, only a tenth of that and maybe even less!

This is for anyone else reading this who might waste money - this is moneysavingexpert.com, not 'thriftylaptopaddicts.com', right?


There's good software out there if you learn where to find it and what it looks like. (Clue: avoid Microsoft, Adobe and Apple as they use marketing instead of efficient coding).

Never underestimate the ability of bad software coders and mis-configuration to undermine good hardware. Never.

A few minor tweaks, a health-check at your friendly local (qualified, well-reviewed) IT Technician / shop and/or a minor hardware upgrade - at worst still spending under £50, in this case, and you're good to go.

Or learn how to DIY, this kind of stuff is pretty easy these days.

Save money or don't, it's your choice.

Wow, quite the judgemental superiority complex you got there!

m5rcc

Medion Akoya E6221 Intel Core i5-2410M Processor 4GB RAM 640GB HD 15.6" for £299

grumpycrab

m5rcc wrote: »

Medion Akoya E6221 Intel Core i5-2410M Processor 4GB RAM 640GB HD 15.6" for £299

Good spec for the price. Lots of driver issues (read the reviews).

Great if you like fiddling and/or have loads of time.