cheap bank holiday laptop

veralum

I have searched the forums but cannot find any good current deals for a good cheap laptop (dell has finished) but I figure someone must have seen a good bank holiday deal!

I need one for my daughter who is off to university this summer, must be wireless and have a dvd/cd wrtiter

any ideas? sub 500 quid

davilown

veralum wrote:

I have searched the forums but cannot find any good current deals for a good cheap laptop (dell has finished) but I figure someone must have seen a good bank holiday deal!

I need one for my daughter who is off to university this summer, must be wireless and have a dvd/cd wrtiter

any ideas? sub 500 quid

dell business section - basic 1300 laptop, add dvd writer and better battery £363 inc delivery. I have one and for uni work they are highly recommemded!

:beer: monster

Little_John

PCworld have a toshiba on offer with a centrino cpu which will give you the power unfortunatly it lacks memory and dvd writer but it is a toshiba and build quality is better than the Dell's
it is £499

another good one I have found is another tosh from Dabs the M50 only a celeron but so is the Dell

If you have £500 to spend go for either the tosh m50 or the dell 1300 but get the top one in the 1300 range with the centrino/pentium M processor it will be alot quicker then any celeron laptop and it comes in at about £440 in delivery

Kilty_2

Right, so a Pentium-M in a Dell 1300 running at 400Mhz FSB will be " a lot quicker " than the celeron running at its native FSB of 400mhz? I think not.

I would NOT waste the extra money on a Pentium M in this base because it is designed to run at 533mhz FSB not 400mhz.

The performance of the Celeron-M is not to be sniffed at, with the 1MB L2 cache it puts in a very respectable performance for the £350 it cost.

My advice to the OP is to wait until Thursday, new Dell offers, the 1300 might come back on at £350.75 with 15.4" screen and 6 cell battery, just like the one I am typing on now.

And dont knock the Dell build quality until you have tried it, build quality of this cheap Inspiron is excellent and blows Acer out of the water (although I do agree Toshiba is superior)

One bad thing I can say about it is the weight of 3KG might be a problem for some people, but it doesnt affect me

Slapps

i have this 1 and find it quite good

http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_314412.html
hope it helps you

Slapps

quoia

Don't know how this compares but saw it in one of yesterday's papers.
Fits your basic description and at £399 inculdes "dual layer DVD" (a bonus ?)

Gateway Intel Celeron M 1.5GHz wireless laptop with dual layer DVD re-writer and 14” widescreen.

http://www.toysrus.co.uk/Product.aspx/TruHome/TruComputers/TruComputersLaptop/870625

kimbo72

Well I'm going to uni this year and I'm planning to buy this tomorrow, its got a great spec for £499- 1gb RAM and 100gb hard drive. My Dad has an Acer laptop and he's not had any problems. Plus if you go through Quidco you'll get the delivery charge back plus a pound or so!

http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_314447.html

Little_John

Kilty wrote:

Right, so a Pentium-M in a Dell 1300 running at 400Mhz FSB will be " a lot quicker " than the celeron running at its native FSB of 400mhz? I think not.

I would NOT waste the extra money on a Pentium M in this base because it is designed to run at 533mhz FSB not 400mhz.

The performance of the Celeron-M is not to be sniffed at, with the 1MB L2 cache it puts in a very respectable performance for the £350 it cost.

The big advantage of the Pentium M is the 2MB of L2 Cache the bus speed and performance increase is neglible(sp) but the extra cache will show.

As for the build quality of Dell laptops it is questionable, I know loads of people with them and they have survived a drop as long as the lid is closed the keyboards arnt very well made and keys pop out pretty easily but dell will replace these if the laptop is under warrenty. I know people that have droped toshiba's and they are almost bullet proof I agree on Acer they are !!!!e the hinges fall apart if you open them too quickly as did the older Sony's

Kilty_2

I'd say that with £500-£600 to spend then a good Toshiba or HP could be had, or a Dell Inspiron 6000 from the Dell Outlet.

I was looking for laptops between £3-500 and opted for the Dell Inspiron 1300 at £350.75 because performance wise it was the best I could get in that price range, when you take into account battery life as well as performance.

Having used this Celeron-M for a few weeks now I would reccomend them to anyone, much faster than would be expected, the Pentium M with 2MB cache might be faster but IMO it will not be £100 faster

Kilty_2

kimbo72 wrote:

Well I'm going to uni this year and I'm planning to buy this tomorrow, its got a great spec for £499- 1gb RAM and 100gb hard drive. My Dad has an Acer laptop and he's not had any problems. Plus if you go through Quidco you'll get the delivery charge back plus a pound or so!

http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_314447.html

1h 30 minutes battery life, are you sure that meets your needs for using at Uni?

Couple that with the truely AWFUL build quality and you will be replacing it fairly quickly.

veralum

how about this one from savastore?

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10287135&pid=45&tid=220