Sub-£350 powerful laptops discussion

anotherhugefan

Carlitos wrote: »

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.

Oh, thanks for clarifying re ebay and argos - d'oh! Seller does seem to have a good record; just don't want to get stung with a dodgy one as I don't have money to burn!
My usage is mainly browsing, emails, iplayer, but am going to be teaching so will probably have to expand that a bit! No gaming or video editing (as metioned).

witchypoo

Purpleclutterbuck wrote: »

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!

hi your daughter has very similar requirements to mine! I have a thread here somewhere getting help. I seem to be focusing on the Dell Studio range, they seem to come with numeric keypad as far as I know, but you have to keep a checkon the graphic card offered. It seems 1gb ATI Radeon HD 4650 or HD 5650 are good bets for playing Sims 3. Just check through the spec on their site before you commit and if in doubt check with the techies here!

Carlitos

anotherhugefan wrote: »

Oh, thanks for clarifying re ebay and argos - d'oh! Seller does seem to have a good record; just don't want to get stung with a dodgy one as I don't have money to burn!
My usage is mainly browsing, emails, iplayer, but am going to be teaching so will probably have to expand that a bit! No gaming or video editing (as metioned).

No problem! and 2GB should be enough. If you really wanted to, you could buy a 1gb more ram and install it, to bring it up to 3gb? I don't know if this is something you'd want to do.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-ValueRAM-Memory-DDR3-Non-ECC/dp/B000R4L1S4/ref=sr_1_34?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274869215&sr=1-34

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dane-Elec-Value-Laptop-Memory-PC3-8500/dp/B003DVOXSS/ref=sr_1_49?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274869262&sr=1-49

JDPower

Carlitos wrote: »

No problem! and 2GB should be enough. If you really wanted to, you could buy a 1gb more ram and install it, to bring it up to 3gb?

That is assuming there is a free RAM slot and the 2GB isn't the usual two slots each with 1GB

tootsie215

Can anyone help with advice on this Toshiba L350 262 17"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Satellite-L350-262-notebook-SuperMulti/dp/B002XZLY8M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274912671&sr=1-1 (hope I did this right)

Its £350 which seems to be the cheapest around for a 17".

Its for my Father in Law who is 85 and will only use for surfing and maybe watching videos but unlikely to download anything.

my only concern is that its celeron but I'm def not a techie so maybe it will not make any difference to my FIL.

next best prices I've seen (in Tesco) is £400 ish.

Grateful for any advice

Many thanks

jaydeeuk1

Wife plays Sims 3 and is nice and smooth on my low powered athlon dual core 1.2ghz and radeon 3200 at 1366x768 (near min details, 20fps with lots happening on screen, 30+ otherwise). Any laptop with graphics chipset at least equal (such as 8400GS, 9300GS upwards) will be fine with whatever cpu its attached to.
And the pentium dual core, esp the T4300 is a fair bit quicker than the early core 2 duo's so don't just discount something because of the name. Even the dual core celeron is pretty decent chip nowadays for general office and internet stuff, a hell of a lot quicker than an atom or the athlon in my ultraportable.

lisjam

Can anybody advise on the following laptop

Sorry about the detail but cant post a link as new user!

Compaq CQ71- 401 T3100, 3GB, 250GB, 17.3", Windows 7® Home Premium Laptop

Catalogue number: 207-5252

Audio Features On Board
Battery Life in Hours 5.5 to 6.0
Blank Discs Case Included No
Bluetooth No
Brand Compaq
Built-in Webcam Yes
Card Reader Type 5 in 1, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Multimedia Card
Colour Black, Silver
Dial Up Modem No
External Sata Interface Yes
Finger Print Reader No
Firewire No
Graphics Chipset Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M
Graphics Type Shared
Hard Drive Size in Gb 250
Hard Drive Type 2.5" SATA 5400rpm with 8MB Cache
Laptop Colour Black
Memory Size in Gb 3
Memory Slots Free 2
Memory Slots Total 2
Memory Speed in Mhz 533
Memory Type DDR2
Number of USB Ports 3x USB 2.0
Operating System Microsoft Windows® 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Optical Drive Compatible Type Dual Layer Rewriter, DVD, Lightscribe
Os Recovery Discs Included Yes
Output 3.5mm Stereo Headphone / Line Out, HDMI (HDCP Compliant), VGA 15-pin D-Sub
Power Adaptor Included Yes
Processor Intel® Celeron®
Processor Bus in Mhz 533
Processor Cache 1024 Kb
Processor Model Number T3100
Processor Speed in GHz 1.9
Product Depth 41.2 cm
Product Height 3.61 cm
Product Weight 3.05
Product Weight Units kg
Product Width 27.7 cm
Remote Control Included No
Screen Size 17" (43.2cm)
Screen Type OLED
Software Loaded Recovery partition (including possibility to recover system, applications and drivers separately),Recovery CD/DVD creation tool, Symantec™ Norton Internet Security™ 2009 (60 days live update), Notebook Help & Support, HP Setup, HP Advisor, HP Support Assistant, Cyberlink DVD Suite, Cyberlink Power DVD, Cyberlink YouCam, Cyberlink MediaShow, Windows Media Center, Windows Live™ Applications, Norton Online Backup (30-day Trial Version), Microsoft® Internet Explorer, Windows® Live Messenger, Adobe® Reader, Adobe® Flash Player, Microsoft® Works and Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 (60-Day Trial Version).
TV Tuner None
Wired Networking Port 10 / 100 MHz Ethernet
Wireless Built in 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n

Any good?

kathybinns

I am looking at this one on ebuyer. I have never had a Compaq. Does anyone have any advice or better value suggestions? Will be used by daughter at uni and she would want it for coursework, watching movies, surfing, social networking and an integrated webcam but would not be playing any powerful games. Price is £387.98.
Thanks

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186603

motherbear

We'd be very grateful for advice on buying our first laptop.
It would be used for :-
My daughters college work i.e. ms word, powerpoint (travel & tourism course), listening to and downloading music, watching dvd's and general web surfing.
Would prefer built-in webcam and at least 15" screen size.
Weight & battery life not really an issue as only for home use.
TIA

value4money_2

Asda looks like it has a very good laptop deal:

Lenovo G550 for £397;

15.6"
T4400 2.2
4GB RAM
320gb hard drive

Does anyone know if it has 64bit windows though?