Are there any decent laptop deals about?

motorguy

sputty01 wrote: »

Surely everyone knows someone capable of getting their hands on an OS for free *cough* *cough*. Rumor has it that a certain copy of windows 7 run's on their like lightning . Besides that laptop is £100 cheaper than anything i can see of the same spec anywhere.

Ebuyer conveniently forgot to mention thats a Celeron processor, meaning the laptop is seriously over RAMed and relatively underpowered. Heres the same machine with a fully legit Windows Vista and a FREE upgrade to Windows 7 when its available for just £329

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?cs=ukdhs1&kc=305&oc=N0054511&x=11&y=9

It has a reasonable 2GB RAM but an extra 2GB is £20 or so delivered from Crucial.com, taking the RAM to 3GB as you have to take one of the 1GB sticks out.

You can shop via quidco and get approx £14 back on the laptop and £1.40 back on the RAM.

That brings the 3GB version (which is more than ample) from a branded company with Vista pre installed, all drivers installed too for £335. If you really must have 4GB RAM, add another £18 or so to this.

If if you use a pirate copy of Vista, you're still only saving about £20 or so and have all that hassle.

motorguy

Leopard wrote: »

For those whose naughty but understandable intention is to run Mac OS X on it, being spared the additional £50 expense of a Windows OS that they would simply junk is a useful saving...

If thats your thing then cool, but otherwise it doesnt make much sense.

arrallas

The refurbished laptops from PC world can be great bargains. I have bought 2 now and they have been perfect. They are fully packaged/guaranteed and are indistinguishable from new (they may just be shop returns). Look at the Advent 5511 as an example at £329 (sorry, not allowed to post the link)

payless

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.206-4038.aspx
Brand new
decent intel processor ( ie not Celeron ) , 3gb memory, brand name- Toshiba
at £379 ( they have a similiar AMD Athlon at £20 less, but I went for the intel)

and with £9 for ordering via quidco, and 758 tesco points its close to your target price

superjaggybunnet

check out laptop prices at https://www.europc.co.uk

Their prices always look good.

Donnie

If it's just for book keeping and you want a similar spec to what you have, then go with the Argos Clearance Shop as mentioned before. The Toshiba Satellite L300D - 202 at £245 will fulfill your needs.

Specs here. As new condition with a twelve month warranty.

Donnie

Alternatively Medion have last year's model, the Medion MD96850 available for £205. Though with only with 90 days warranty.

Nice specs if you don't need a built in webcam.

Genuine Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium
Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core T2390 Processor
1.86 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, FSB 533 MHz
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 based on PCI-Express technology
High definition audio with 2 integrated loudspeakers
15.4" TFT WXGA widescreen display
1280 x 800 pixels
16:10 cinema format
250GB Hard Drive
3GB DDR II RAM
8 x Multi Standard DVD-/CD writer with DVD-RAM and Dual Layer support
4 in 1 memory card reader
Wireless LAN 802.11n-draft with up to 300Mbit/s
802.11b/g compatible
Fast Ethernet 10/100 Mbit/s onboard
Keyboard with integrated keyboard
High performance battery
Interfaces

4 in 1 memory card reader
1 x Express Card Slot 54
3 x USB 2.0
1 x eSATA/USB 2.0
1 x VGA
1 x TV out
1 x LAN (RJ45)
1 x Microphone
1 x Line in
1 x Line out
6 channel analogue audio out (analogue + S/P-Dif)
Software

Genuine Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium
Ahead Nero Burning ROM 8
incl. Nero Recode 2
Warranty

90 days

https://www.medionshop.co.uk/ > Clearance

Emma77_2

I have just bought a brand new Toshiba at Asda for £300 quid! Warrenty for a year and Toshiba pretty good. x

motorguy

Emma77 wrote: »

I have just bought a brand new Toshiba at Asda for £300 quid! Warrenty for a year and Toshiba pretty good. x

Any details of spec or a link?

Leopard

None of these seem to have Gigabit Ethernet, though; they're all 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, which is frustratingly slow for transferring data.

I know Apple gets a lot of stick for being "overpriced" in this sub-forum but all Apple laptops have had Gigabit Ethernet for years. Once you get used to that, 10/100BASE-T "Fast" Ethernet comes as an unwelcome shock.

And if a laptop does have only 10/100BASE-T Ethernet you'd at least want it to have wi-fi at a decent speed.