Sub-£350 powerful laptops discussion

Carlitos

Core 2 Duo indefinitely over Pentium Dual Core.

But anyway, the laptop I'd recommend to you my friend, is this Toshiba for £428;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Satellite-15-6-inch-Processor-SuperMulti/dp/B00336EFZE

Though you said you didn't need i3, I imagine you wouldn't be obliged to it if it was around the right price. And well, there it is. It's got everything you want (bar the 3gigs of ram), and a better processor than you're likely to get with anything else. The higher spec Core 2 Duo will be faster than this, (not by too much) but they deal with data differently, and the i3 does it much more efficiently.

Also, if you see this in time than this might be worth getting;

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270580806895&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_1552wt_754

It's the next model up from that one on Amazon, with 4gb of RAM running on the i3 processor but for only £410, although as the description says, is a 'Customer Return, Open Box'.

So yeah anyone who wants to snatch that up, should go for it, because it's a fairly good price, and should come with a 64bit OS, which will be worth it.

Purpleclutterbuck

I have in a moment of weakness agreed to buy my 16/17 dd a new laptop but I'm struggling and gradually sinking under all the techie terms.
I've scrimped together £400 but she wants an all singing all dancing one!
As far as I can tell she wants :
A built in web cam/to play music, dvd's and burn cd's and have a coloured case with a large memory and play Sims3 - I'm unable to give an idea of spec really but she keeps looking at the Dell Inspiron and is considering an IT course in september.
I know it will need a large/widescreen and be fairly robust as I know my daughter!
Please excuse the garbled details but I only have a fortnight to find and buy something and would be very, very grateful for any pointers
Many thanks

Norman-B

Purpleclutterbuck wrote: »

I have in a moment of weakness agreed to buy my 16/17 dd a new laptop but I'm struggling and gradually sinking under all the techie terms.
I've scrimped together £400 but she wants an all singing all dancing one!
As far as I can tell she wants :
A built in web cam/to play music, dvd's and burn cd's and have a coloured case with a large memory and play Sims3 - I'm unable to give an idea of spec really but she keeps looking at the Dell Inspiron and is considering an IT course in september.
I know it will need a large/widescreen and be fairly robust as I know my daughter!
Please excuse the garbled details but I only have a fortnight to find and buy something and would be very, very grateful for any pointers
Many thanks

I'm the last one to give advice (on matters I know little about) but I am looking at a Dell 1564 in Carphonewarehouse. It is £399. This might be suitable for your lass. Perhaps one of the techie guys and gals can give you more ideas.

anotherhugefan

Thanks a lot Carlitos. Both look good to me. My only query over the first one would be whether 2gigs matches the speed of an i3 processor?? The second one looks perfect, but have no experience of the argos returns on ebay...if it's new and just a case of opened box then I'm always up for a bargain, but is that the case?

Shrimply

Purpleclutterbuck wrote: »

I have in a moment of weakness agreed to buy my 16/17 dd a new laptop but I'm struggling and gradually sinking under all the techie terms.
I've scrimped together £400 but she wants an all singing all dancing one!
As far as I can tell she wants :
A built in web cam/to play music, dvd's and burn cd's and have a coloured case with a large memory and play Sims3 - I'm unable to give an idea of spec really but she keeps looking at the Dell Inspiron and is considering an IT course in september.
I know it will need a large/widescreen and be fairly robust as I know my daughter!
Please excuse the garbled details but I only have a fortnight to find and buy something and would be very, very grateful for any pointers
Many thanks

This seems crazy, if your daughters considering an IT course, shouldn't she be the one who's working out the best deal and dealing with the technical details?

My parents would of given me the £400 and told me to get the laptop I wanted, if I needed any more than to add it myself.

I've got the base model of the 1564 that dell offer, £429 for an extra 1gb ram compared to the carphone warehouse deal. And I got a 3% student discount, plus it appears to have tracked through quidco even though it shouldn't have ( so will just wait and see). Its a nice feeling machine all in all, I've found plenty wrong with it,but I can pick faults with anything. You'd have to pay more to get it in a colour other than black though and it never seems worth it to me.

Carlitos

Purpleclutterbuck wrote: »

I have in a moment of weakness agreed to buy my 16/17 dd a new laptop but I'm struggling and gradually sinking under all the techie terms.
I've scrimped together £400 but she wants an all singing all dancing one!
As far as I can tell she wants :
A built in web cam/to play music, dvd's and burn cd's and have a coloured case with a large memory and play Sims3 - I'm unable to give an idea of spec really but she keeps looking at the Dell Inspiron and is considering an IT course in september.
I know it will need a large/widescreen and be fairly robust as I know my daughter!
Please excuse the garbled details but I only have a fortnight to find and buy something and would be very, very grateful for any pointers
Many thanks

So it needs to;

- Built in Webcam ---> No problem, most laptops have those now
- Play Music ---. All laptops can play music, so no problem there.
- Play DVDs and burn CDs
- Coloured case
- Large Memory (I assume you mean the hard drive and not RAM)
- Play Sims 3 ---> This is where it may get a bit problematic, due to the graphics card.
- Large screen ---> 15 inch will do?

Now, looking at the one Norman B posted, everything is great except it doesn't have an optical drive, or in other words, it can't play DVDs, burn CDs or run the Sims 3. Unfortunate, because other than that, it looks quite good.

I'll have a look around, but unfortunately, having the coloured case does seem to limit to you to Dell.

Carlitos

anotherhugefan wrote: »

Thanks a lot Carlitos. Both look good to me. My only query over the first one would be whether 2gigs matches the speed of an i3 processor?? The second one looks perfect, but have no experience of the argos returns on ebay...if it's new and just a case of opened box then I'm always up for a bargain, but is that the case?

Well, the RAM would be fine for the processor yes. With the RAM, it's more of a case of whether it'll be enough to do all the tasks you want it to do. What are you looking to use the laptop for?

And the second one is not an Argos return, it's a return to a different ebay 'shop', who is registered as a business seller. Looking at there feedback, they have a pretty good record. 99.7% is not too bad, so could be a safe bet. It does say they have a 30 day return policy.

Here is there returns - "Any faulty item will be replaced or fully refunded at our discression - we can't always offer a replacement service with used spares, as some parts may be rare and difficult to obtain a replacement for. For non-faulty items that you no longer need, or is incompatible with your equipment, we reserve the right to charge a restocking/testing fee of 10% of the value of the item. Postage is not refundable in this case"

I don't wish to sway you just in case anything does go wrong, however I will say that this was the laptop I was going to snatch up, before I found out I had a few more bob to play with.

Purpleclutterbuck

Shrimply-I know it may seem crazy to you and she has been looking at tech details of various laptops but she and I acknowledge that with her mild learning difficulties, dyslexia and dyspraxia(and I should have perhaps mentioned it ) that it might be a better idea to get some other people's suggestions who are more experienced- thanks for the idea of student discount though and you are quite right about any colour as long as its black but she does like the purple/blue etc cases!
Thanks Carlitos and Norman B for your ideas as well - the only other thing is a qwerty and number panel keyboard but I think that she may have to forgo the colour option to get a reasonable laptop and I'm very loathe to go to PC World which is where her friends have suggested!

bully1234

Hi, I am looking for a new laptop and have upto £400 to spend. Saw a Compaq CQ61-435 in Comet. It is 15.6 widescreen, 3gb RAM, 250Gb, webcam and microphone, windows 7 and Intel pentium. I know nothing about Compaq and can't find any customer reviews - can anyone give me advice on whether this is a good computer to buy? People have advised me to look for intel pentium, but want something that has webcam and built microphone as well. Any advice?:j

Norman-B

Quote,
Now, looking at the one Norman B posted, everything is great except it doesn't have an optical drive, or in other words, it can't play DVDs, burn CDs or run the Sims 3. Unfortunate, because other than that, it looks quite good.

I'll have a look around, but unfortunately, having the coloured case does seem to limit to you to Dell.[/QUOTE]




Oh dear, I'm off to Specsaver tomorrow!:o