Laptops from £100 !

tdodd

Another thought, for me personally I insist on a touchpad for my laptops - I can't stand the nipple/trackpoint thingy. All the older IBM and Toshiba laptops did not have a touchpad but the Dells and HPs should have.

Also, IBM, in their infinite wisdom, designed their laptops without a "Windows" key. God knows why but that's another reason to forget IBM. Having said that, if those things don't bother you then IBM are supposed to have the best reputation for build quality so the thing might hold together longer than the others but a hard drive is just a hard drive and the drive in an IBM could fail just as easily as any other brand of laptop.

squirrelz

Watch out for the batteries on 2nd hand laptops - they only last a few years, and replacements can be up to £100.

Recent ones with lithium ion batteries tend to be better, but even those can fail.

tdodd

Good point about the batteries. My 8 year old Dell Inspiron 7000 is still going fine and will last ~2 hours on the original battery but my 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron 8000's battery went ropey after a couple of years and now will hold 0 charge. In fact I've removed the cells completely in order to lighten the laptop a bit and just use the casing of the battery to fill the gap that would otherwise be left.

Horlock

My only tuppenceworth is that you need a decent wordprocessor to write a novel - or otherwise opt for a text editor. Nothing like writing a 500 page document to discover a certain overpriced WORDprocessor can't handle the job. Otherwise could always do the job properly using latex on a linux box which any of these laptops could run happily.

rdwarr

I used to make a living selling used laptops on eBay. Feel free to PM me for some impartial advice if you have any questions. I promise I won;t try to sell you one but can spot a good deal.
I used to do all my work (programming, graphics, word processing, internet) on a laptop I got with my job in 1995. It cost £4500 then but would cost £20 now. It will still do the same jobs it did then though!