Need to buy a laptop - any recommendations for my sort of needs?

Somerset

Ok, I need to be able to surf the web looking at sites like MSE. I don't really download much or use it for music.

It needs to have excel & word (hopefully already installed). I need to be able to use it for work.

A decent battery life would be useful too, as I often work where there's no mains power.

Also, I need to be able to download photo's onto it (from camera & phone) and I need to be able to print directly off it - a laptop plus printer deal would be ideal.

Any recommendations or thoughts ? I've currently got an IBM Thinkpad which is fine but lacks excel/word plus it's pretty knackered now. I'm fairly non-teckie, and don't really know what's around/good etc. I really don't want to just walk to PC World (for example) because I'd be like a lamb to the slaughter. So if you guys can recommend a good laptop that will do the surf/excel/word thing described above, I can start checking & comparing prices etc.

Thanks in advance.

tomsutton529

it would be cheaper to get a free word procesor and maybe a new battery for your thinkpad. I always get people asking me about new computers and my first question is always "whats wrong with the old one" then after a few mins putting them straight about a few things it boils down to one of there mates getting a new machine thats better and faster which specs match those of a multi-national companys server bank.

ive had my laptop for 5 years now and the only thing thats gone wrong is that ive had to solder the power socket back onto the mobo. and it had a new hard drive a few months ago.

just something to think about there...the word procesor (and spreadsheets etc) is called open office.....

http://www.openoffice.org/

Somerset

Well my current Thinkpad isn't the best. It works, but I've got a puppy - a couple of times he scrabbled across the keyboard and I've got three keys missing (you have to press the bare unit rather than key to get the symbol). plus a while back the 'nipple' disappeared. You can still move the cursor, but it's all a bit tatty now.

The main problem is the excel & word. I have stuff on my O/H's desktop (which isn't the best) but it's inconvenient that I can't work off my own machine as and when. It would be better if I could just input from wherever directly onto the laptop rather than bring everything home to input via the desktop. So it made sense to get a new laptop with excel & word already loaded, so it had everything I needed. I asked in a computer repair shop a while back about 'acquiring' excel & word for the Thinkpad but they said the software? licence fees wouldn't make it worthwhile.

I'm not sure about the 'openoffice' you mentioned. Can it deal with word & excel or do I have to reinput all the info in this format? Sorry, I said I was a computer dork ! Plus I'm not sure of the memory on this Thinkpad so not sure if it could take the openoffice stuff.

damo24

They are not the cheapest laptops around but if you can get a good deal on one I would recommend an Acer. If you shop around you can extend the warranty to 3 years including accidental damage.

As for Open Office it will open and save Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. It's free and as it's open source there are thousands of people providing add-ons for just about anything you could want.

£$&*"($£&(

Even the cheapest laptop would be fine. There are HP and Toshiba laptops with T1600 celeron dual core processors which would be a good choice. Open Office will be fine but you can also get the Microsoft Office Home and Student edition for £60 or less (you might find a trial version installed). An example at at PC World would be:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0690413247.1238088050@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccchadegldlfikkcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=206076&category_oid=

verbyl.belch

I'd recommend (again) a Dell Vostro System. See the thread here http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1583873

Already the dell listed has a better spec than the pcworld one and has ON-SITE support - a real plus.