The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

j1mgg

just got sent this from buyit247.net

Brand New Dell Inspiron 1501 Laptop - Offer Price £449.00

Description

The Inspiron 1501 is designed to deliver everyday entertainment with its support for affordable dual core processor technology, ATI Radeon graphics, and extended battery life in a 2.81 Kg. light package. The 1501 is optimised for mobile computing without sacrificing performance, and provides everyday multimedia & productivity with a 15.4" wide-aspect display

* Processor: Turion 64 x 2 TL50 (1.6GHz, 256K)
* Hard Drive: 120GB (Sata, 5,400rpm)
* Memory: 1024MB (2 x 512MB) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
* Optical Drive: DVD +/- Rewriter
* Graphics: ATI Radeon Xpress 1150, 256MB Hyper Memory
* Wireless Connection
* Operating System: Windows Vista Home Basic
* Screen Size: 15.4" Wide Screen XGA TFT, 1280x800
* Warranty: 1 Year Collect and Return

Price: £415.00 (£353.19 Including VAT at 17.5%)

I thought this was a very good price

The top price differs from the top so some haggling could be used

Balagan

Try HP online - currently £285 ex-VAT:

It's not top of the range, but it does the job!

HP 510 Notebook

* Processor: Intel Celeron M 360 (1.4GHz)
* Hard Drive: 60GB (5,400rpm)
* Memory: 512MB DDR2
* Optical Drive: Multibay 2 DVD +/- Rewriter
* Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
* Wireless Connection
* Operating System: Windows XP Home
* Screen Size: 15.4" WXGA BrightView (1280 x 800 resolution)
* Warranty: 1 year pick-up and return

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/21675-283229-283229-283229-12434650-12924046.html

Great price in my view!

Megamini

Hi,

I just thought I should let you know that the other day I stumbled upon a website that has special offers for many of the webs big retailers...

Among the links on the pages I noticed that you can get a Laptop for £329 including delivery.

Last week, there was a message on the site saying that the website will be updated weekly with new offers and promotional codes.

The address is: http://www.netdude.talktalk.net

Regards,

Megamini

toasterman

They ain't got any, but it this a misprint -> http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-1540/btnResultSort.x%3d372/btnResultSort.y%3d2885.aspx ?
£178 for a (not badly specced considering) laptop?
That should surely be more like £278?

toasterman

Balagan wrote: »

Try HP online - currently £285 ex-VAT:

It's not top of the range, but it does the job!

HP 510 Notebook

* Processor: Intel Celeron M 360 (1.4GHz)
* Hard Drive: 60GB (5,400rpm)
* Memory: 512MB DDR2
* Optical Drive: Multibay 2 DVD +/- Rewriter
* Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
* Wireless Connection
* Operating System: Windows XP Home
* Screen Size: 15.4" WXGA BrightView (1280 x 800 resolution)
* Warranty: 1 year pick-up and return

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/21675-283229-283229-283229-12434650-12924046.html

Great price in my view!

Plus another ~£50 off for revoking the Windows EULA agreement....if you're Linux-inclined. I wish I could get my head round it but I just end up confused with a big headache

malcolmoliver

Bigpockets have this:-
Toshiba Tecra M1 Centrino Laptop 1.6Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, 40Gb, DVD, Wireless, Win XP Pro for 289.99 inc VAT.

They seem to be refurbished but not a bad price.

Karen1980

I've bought a Acer Aspire 9301 from tesco today its great. £499. 17 " screen , 120 GB hard drive its really good!

thebarefootchef

stuwright10 wrote: »

Dear all,

My first post! - if you after buying an Apple Mac, call their sales team and tell them you're a student. Just net search a Uni and give that address and you get a good 10%off!

Stu

Rubbish Stu,

You need to quote a student number as well.
I don't know if they check it or not.

Best value cheap lap-top has to be this when it's released to the public...
Better pictures here

Apologies if 1LPC has been posted before.

silverfoxuk

I'm helping my dad get his first home laptop. He dosen't play games, but will use office apps a lot and maybe for viewing/emailing photographs, burning the odd CD, browsing internet etc.

He's not had a home computer before so has no software - I thought he might as well get vista & office 07 pre-installed, ms apps is what he's used to from his work. He's got a wireless modem & broadband in readiness for the laptop, so the laptop needs to be wireless ready too.

£500 budget, I'm keeping an eye on Dell but haven't seen any great offers, Tesco looks good but they sometimes get their spec descriptions wrong.

Any advice/info on where I should be looking for the best offers? He's ready to buy today!

toasterman

silverfoxuk wrote: »

I'm helping my dad get his first home laptop. He dosen't play games, but will use office apps a lot and maybe for viewing/emailing photographs, burning the odd CD, browsing internet etc.

He's not had a home computer before so has no software - I thought he might as well get vista & office 07 pre-installed, ms apps is what he's used to from his work. He's got a wireless modem & broadband in readiness for the laptop, so the laptop needs to be wireless ready too.

£500 budget, I'm keeping an eye on Dell but haven't seen any great offers, Tesco looks good but they sometimes get their spec descriptions wrong.

Any advice/info on where I should be looking for the best offers? He's ready to buy today!

Unless his office is extremely modern he's not going to be used to Office 2007. I work in IT support, and it took one of my colleagues a while to find how to do some fairly basic stuff as they've hidden half the buttons by default. It's quite a lot different to Office XP/2003.

I think you're seriously going to struggle hitting your £500 budget as from the looks of a quick search online, OEM Office 2007 is nearly £200 for just the licence. Doesn't include the discs - just the right to use a disc to install it.
The basic edition of Office 2007 seems to sell for about £120. Again, excluding discs.
Office 2003 not really any cheaper, although discs are included for the same price.

I'd take a look at Openoffice.org - it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I find some things in it actually easier than in normal MS Office.

And try and make sure you get him 1gb of ram.
Dell are selling laptops with Vista, with only 512mb, with big text next to them on the same page saying that "Vista performance can vary widely with 512MB of system memory. Dell recommends an absolute minimum of 1GB system memory for running Genuine Windows Vista"!!