The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

littleange

I'd go for a core 2 duo for the extra £100 over the celeron

Bascule_2

speedy_gonzalez wrote:

That's one of the ones I'm considering. I haven't heard much about Gateway's aftersales service though, which I'd be interested in.

Yes the warranty is not the best. I'm also looking at this one against the Gateway:
Asus F3F Laptop - F3F-AP132C £589.97
Processor: Intel Core Duo T2250 - 1.7GHz (x2), 2MB L2 Cache
RAM: 1024MB DDR2-667MHz - Low Cost Double Memory Offer - Call For Details!
Hard Drive: 120GB SATA
Screen: 15.4" TFT with Colour Shine
Optical Drive: DVD±RW
Graphics: Integrated Graphics supporting 128MB
Wireless LAN: 802.11b/g - Call for advice on Wireless Networking
Warranty: 2 Year Collect and Return - Upgradeable to 3 Years!
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
Built-In 1.3 MegaPixel Camera

Pros:
Much better warranty
Slightly bigger hard disk
Carrying case + mouse
Integrated webcam

Cons:
Slightly older proc (but not bad)
No MS Works
Bit more expensive

*sigh* never easy is it when you're a money saver? Can't just say "hang the expence" and get the biggest and best!

jameswick

Hello all...

Just wondering if you can help... I'm in the market for a new laptop as my desktop's gone up the spout. I do a fair whack of audio editing and use adobe photoshop elements 5 a fair bit, as well as listening to music and going on t'internet. Just wondering what I should go for? I've seen this: http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=363294&tab=specification#spec

and this: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/notebooks_better?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs (the one at 599)

Any suggestions as to which is best for me - I'm looking not just at value but also reliability, speed etc.

Thank you in advance. It's a minefield out there!

Hey_Dude

fitorbust wrote:

Have just ordered this one

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-3601.aspx

and the spec seems great - better than the Acer and the reviews are good.
£399 seems a good price and you can use a tesco code to get either 1000 or 500 extra clubcard points if that is your thing!!
L x

Damn - this one seems to be £450 now.

Spec looks good though for the price.

Worth buying? £450 is my absolute limit!

Duder

spike87

Not bad, but you can get a Core Duo processor for less.

Hey_Dude

spike87 wrote:

Not bad, but you can get a Core Duo processor for less.

Can you point me in the right direction?

MTIA

Duder

spike87

Keep checking places like:

http://www.dabs.com

http://www.ebuyer.com

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk

One will pop up eventually. I purchased one from dabs at the beginning of Feb for £399, went through Pigsback and got £50 worth of vouchers so in the end it worked out at £349!

wakandem

The cheap end of the market is so dodgy. You can get cheap laptops from Aldi, Asda, Tesco etc but at the end of the day the laptops are not built that well, get too hot & do not last that long. Stay well away from any 2nd hand laptops as they will be overpriced and worn out.
Dell laptops are generally robust work horses that will go on and on. There has also been some thought put into the design & build. For economy I wouldn't recomend anything else

emc

Has anyone had much trouble with dead pixels on their new laptop?

I've seen a laptop suppliers website offering a charged option for a check of the laptop before despatch, including a check for dead pixels.

Does this imply that

(1) this company sends out laptops without checking them, and

(2) people who buy from this company without paying the premium for the check are more likely to receive a laptop with dead pixels?

swizzle_2

Toshiba Equium A100-027 Pentium Dual Core 1.6GHz / 1024MB / 80GB / TFT15.4 / DVDRW / Windows Vista Home Premium £485

Showing on Pricerunner as 1 of most popular products.

It has a firewire out- but will it be up to the job of editing from my camcorder and burning to dvd?

Also want it for general stuff.

My budget is £500 and I would like Vista home Premium