The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

bolam56

I had been holding out for prices to come down before I bought my first laptop... Glad I did! My eyes about popped out of my head when I saw one for $500 (US). That's with XP Home!

I don't mind paying for quality in a desk top, but I can't see dropping big bucks on something to web surf from my comfy chair or travel with. Found a unit... "Mercury Green320" (Fry's GQ MX-3201) and bought it on the spot. It comes starved for RAM (of course) so I added a 512 MB card. Less than $600 US, out the door.

Well... Surprise surprise; the little guy works! Works great! It's got a VIA (formerly Cyrix) "C3" 1.2 GHz processor. Not the best choice for high end gaming, but I later learned this chip runs cooler than the competitors. As laptops are often troubled with overheating, I found this an added plus in my new toy.

This model just hit the market, but should be available more widely soon. I've seen it at Fry's outlet site: http://www.outpost.com/

The integrated graphics shares the pathetic 128 MB of RAM that comes with the unit, leaving only 90 MB for windows to run on, so the memory upgrade is a MUST. Splurge on a 512 upgrade, then go into the BIOS and up the "shared memory" and AGP aperture for best results.

Cheers!

raeble

Overseas laptops come with a whole host of problems. What about the warranty? Or the power adaptor? What about when customs whack VAT on top of the price? I'm sure you have to pay for anything over £18 in value.

LD

Overseas laptops come with a whole host of problems. What about the warranty? Or the power adaptor? What about when customs whack VAT on top of the price? I'm sure you have to pay for anything over £18 in value.

I generally agree, but occasionally do buy smaller (cheaper!) items, can't recall the customs level but it's on their site - around £70

Anne1954

??? Sorry I am confused and looking for help. I want to buy my husband a laptop for Christmas but don't know what to look for, what to avoid and where to look. Can some of you knowledgeable people give me some advice.

Laptop to be used for Word, Excel and e-mail, will be transported and used connected to printer at home.

Currently running Windows 2000,Office package on desktop.

Also, to use e-mailon desktop do I need a separate ISP account than desktop.?

Anne1954

Sorry forgot re. last post. Don't want to spend more than have to and certainly not more than £500.

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There's not a huge choice at this price level but I'd say get the £499 Acer laptop from Comet. This has a very decent processor for the price which will easily cope with office applications.

http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/320_220876.html

It has a good screen, enough RAM and adding a bit more if required won't cost too much (less than £30) and a cd writer, which is a must.

Comet will try to sell there 3year £199 warranty. Just tell them you can buy a 3 year Acer warrenty for £99 which includes accidental damage or £59 without it if you want to waste money/have peace of mind (depending on your view point).

You won't need a seperate ISP account for laptop and desktop.

raeble

ebuyer has an acer with better specs and £4 cheaper not including delivery. Ebuyer also has customer reviews on a lot of their products. It is currently out of stock but they seem to get new stock pretty frequently and they have loads of other laptops around the £500 mark.

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Thats excluding VAT though. The hard drive is bigger but the processors are different and my guess is the Comet option will be more powerful, though they may not be poles apart (the processor speed is not the key factor here).

Anne1954

Thanks for the help so far. If i increase my spend to £700 does this help my choiceand what should I look for ina laptop?

£$&*"($£&(

That certainly gives you more options. If the laptops going to be carried around a lot the lighter the better. I'd go for one with a Centrino processor. These tend to be lighter, run cooler and will run on batteries for longer.

The fan noise from Pentium or AMD based models is rather too much in my opinion and Centrinos/Celeron-M laptops are much more pleasent to use. The drive should 40gb at this price and there should be 512mb RAM. You can find laptops with DVD writers at this price.