Cheap Dell Laptop Inspiron 1.5 GHz 1300 £299 delivered. (merged) [CLOSED]

The_Negotiator

There's no descernible speed difference between the celeron-M and the pentium-M, for example:
http://www.mobilityguru.com/2004/03/09/does_everything_have_to_be_a_centrino/
or
http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=178

If overall a 10% extra battery life is worth the premium, go for the p-m. Personally I use both, my ultra portable is celeron-M...

xueta

The_Negotiator wrote:

If overall a 10% extra battery life is worth the premium, go for the p-m. Personally I use both, my ultra portable is celeron-M...

You're missing the point ... there is no premium in this case for having a Pentium-M processor. The Acer 4021 costs £50 more than the Dell machine, but for the extra money you have a faster processor 1.6GHz vs. 1.5GHz, bigger screen 15.4" vs. 14.1", dual layer DVD writer and 1 year technical support vs. 90 days.

The_Negotiator

I am talking generally, nothing more.

People might prefer the extra portabitliy of the 14.1" anyway. Who am I to say, I am just helping people get the full facts

xueta

The_Negotiator wrote:

People might prefer the extra portability of the 14.1" anyway.

No such luck I'm afraid, as the unit is the same overall size regardless of whether you opt for the 14.1" or 15.4" screen. The 14.1" version just means you have a wider bezel around the screen.

I'll stop here, as no doubt I've become very annoying ...

Roger_Rampant

"The Celeron consumer up to 25 watts, depending on the workload. On the other hand, thanks to Speedstep, the Pentium M might be able to reduce its power consumption under a low processor workload to six watts. Even at a maximum processor workload, the Pentium M's power requirements are more than 10%less than the Celeron M's requirements."

Quoted from one of your links

The_Negotiator

Then you have the screen, the optical drive (if in use) the GPU, the motherboard, speakers, network, wireless etc. etc. which means that the CPU isn't the only power using piece of kit within the machine. Hence why a 10% higher power usage of the CPu at full full workload will mean next to nothing in the big picture, hence why overall, a typical user should expect about 10-15% less.

I would go for the P-M if it were the same or similar price of course, my celeron-M will be getting a P-M cpu upgrade when I find a nice cheap CPU, simply because I like to fiddle though.

coolforcash

Thank you for all the replies following my initial question. I am extremely grateful and have learnt a lot about laptops in the last week!

As it appears that the Pentium chip is superior to the Celeron chip in order to compare like with like I have entered identical specifications (without the upgraded battery but with the 1 year warranty) of the Acer laptop to the customised Dell order online and the price quoted is £619 compared to £398 for the Acer.

Even if I took into account the Quidco cashback of say £12 (I assume they take the net amount prior to VAT) and any potential discount (as mentioned previously) of 10-15% - say £90 for the sake of argument, I would still be looking at a premium of £119 for the Dell product over the Acer one.

Is Dell that much better than Acer? I am concerned about the reliability issues of the Acer and the documented critisism (on this thread and others) of the customer services. If I was to get the three year warranty of Ebuyer for £60 it would still come in less than the comparable Dell product but sounds like it could be a hassle and I might be better off taking it to a local guy to be repaired if it's outside the one year warranty.

I had an interesting chat with a guy at PC World yesterday who seemed to think Acer ranked quite highly (behind Toshiba and Sony) in reliability and that Dell charged £1.50 a minute for any calls to their support line! Obviously he wasn't going to be too complementary towards Dell though given that they don't sell Dell products so I took it with a small pinch of salt.

As I was there I thought I'd see if I could haggle for a better offer than the Acer/Dell options. I told him that I was keen to take out the extended warranty but that the overall cost of the laptop and warranty would exceed my original budget and could he do a discount on the laptop. He said there was no room at all for discounting the laptop due to the fact that the prices had come down so much recently. He offered to throw in a laptop bag free! Hardly an incentive to pay £300 for a five year warranty!

One last thing re. Dell - if you take out the 90 day collect and return warranty are you still covered for manufacturers defects/faults within the first year as with most electrical goods? Surely a laptop must be designed to last longer than 90 days so there must be a right to return under the sale of goods act?

Thanks in advance for your comments and sorry for the long post!

Sid_Harper

Rule #1 with Dell - generally attempting to change the specification of a machine will cost you dear! Pentium (Centrino) is superior to Celeron but for most people will make no difference. I would buy the Acer (they ARE good machines) and spend £100 on their all-inclusive warranty that includes accidental damage for a total of 3 years and collect/return service. Dell do give a 1 year warranty but if you choose 90 day you have to send the thing back (presumably to Ireland?) if it goes wrong after 90 days - costly! (Or they'll charge you £60 to do it).

If you can, find a Tesco with the Acer 4021WLMi in stock (not many left now I'd have thought!) with 20% off and buy the Acer Advantage warranty extension from eBuyer (doesn't have to be bought same place as the laptop).

royalsteve

Sid_Harper wrote:

Rule #1 with Dell - generally attempting to change the specification of a machine will cost you dear! Pentium (Centrino) is superior to Celeron but for most people will make no difference. I would buy the Acer (they ARE good machines) and spend £100 on their all-inclusive warranty that includes accidental damage for a total of 3 years and collect/return service. Dell do give a 1 year warranty but if you choose 90 day you have to send the thing back (presumably to Ireland?) if it goes wrong after 90 days - costly! (Or they'll charge you £60 to do it).

If you can, find a Tesco with the Acer 4021WLMi in stock (not many left now I'd have thought!) with 20% off and buy the Acer Advantage warranty extension from eBuyer (doesn't have to be bought same place as the laptop).

hmmm...if we were talking desktops, then yes some people may not see much difference if using a PC for non processor intensive tasks ie. word processing or basic surfing.......however, we are talking laptops and I dont agree with you....battery life for laptops is crucial and battery life on celeron based laptops is not as good as Centino based laptops

coolforcash

Sid_Harper wrote:

Rule #1 with Dell - generally attempting to change the specification of a machine will cost you dear! Pentium (Centrino) is superior to Celeron but for most people will make no difference. I would buy the Acer (they ARE good machines) and spend £100 on their all-inclusive warranty that includes accidental damage for a total of 3 years and collect/return service. Dell do give a 1 year warranty but if you choose 90 day you have to send the thing back (presumably to Ireland?) if it goes wrong after 90 days - costly! (Or they'll charge you £60 to do it).

If you can, find a Tesco with the Acer 4021WLMi in stock (not many left now I'd have thought!) with 20% off and buy the Acer Advantage warranty extension from eBuyer (doesn't have to be bought same place as the laptop).

Thanks for your reply Sid Harper.

I have in fact already bought the Acer at Tesco for £398. Tesco have a policy that you can return electrical goods within 28 days if you change your mind. I decided to buy it then give myself the best part of a month to find a better deal! If I can't then I still have the Acer and all my options available!

I called every Tesco store in London yesterday to enquire about the Acer Aspire 3613 (I think) to get Comet to do a price-match less 10% but ALL laptops sold out in ALL stores! Lucky I bought mine last week!

I haven't actually used it yet though because I did't want to give them any excuses to refuse the refund. When I bought it the guy said it was OK to open it and use it but I've only opened the box to have a look at all the bits included for now but haven't even put the battery in let alone had a play with it.

From what you've said it looks like I'm on a winner to keep what I've got. The only concern I have is the comments on other threads re. the customer service if anything goes wrong. I'm generally pretty careful with my stuff and would probably only need the "Light" warranty. £60 seems a bargain for three years customer care but I'm wondering if it might be less hassle to either try to get some sort of repair cover as part of my home insurance (due to renew soon) or just pay for any repairs myself using a local IT guy from the paper.