The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

Monkeeboy

I am interested in the latest offer from Currys for the e machine. It seems to have decent spec for the money but has low battery life of just 1.5 hours.

Has anyone got any experience of these machines good or bad.

Also any ideas on negotiating a good price with them as I may be looking to buy two.

:rotfl:

espresso

Monkeeboy wrote: »

I am interested in the latest offer from Currys for the e machine. It seems to have decent spec for the money but has low battery life of just 1.5 hours.

Has anyone got any experience of these machines good or bad.

Also any ideas on negotiating a good price with them as I may be looking to buy two.

:rotfl:

Why buy an emachine when you can buy a well known brand for a similar price? You do not get a user manual with these computers!

bandraoi

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/index~modelcode~TOS-P200-10O.htm

Now I'm looking at this one, the spec I want just keeps going up!
I can go through topcashback for 2%, buy it on my slow stooze credit card for 6months interest free/earn about 2.5% in the meantime.
I can't find any decent codes though and it seems like there's a 10% one that's just expired, and another 10% one expired about two months ago.

Think waiting might be an idea.

Monkeeboy

espresso wrote: »

Why buy an emachine when you can buy a well known brand for a similar price? You do not get a user manual with these computers!

Cheers espresso

I realise that at this price something has to give, but the spec is pretty good for the money.

Have you seen branded machines with similar spec including a pentium core duo for this price. If so I am very interested.

I note what you said about not getting a manual. Do you get an online manual instead or nothing at all?

MTW_2

Have you tried the comet clearance site. I brought an Acer Aspire (rrp 499) for £380.
Some are refurbed, others are ex display. The site works on a bidding basis.

stecast

I swear by this site for laptops, i brought a, Acer Aspire 5052AWXMi after shopping around i think this was the cheapest i found and not really knowing much about laptops the sales assistent was great, she knew what she was talking about and told me the best was to go about it without trying to make loads of money out of me she actually tryed to save me money, very rare these days.
For £349.97 i got,

Processor: Powerful AMD Turion 64 MK-38 - 2.2GHz
Hard Drive: 80GB
RAM: Now with 1GB Fast DDR RAM!
Screen: 14.1" TFT Widescreen
Optical Drive: DVD Re-writer (DVD±RW Super Multi Double Layer)
Graphics: ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 integrated 3D graphics
Wireless LAN: 802.11b/g - Call for advice on Wireless Networking
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
3 x USB 2.0 Ports
5 in 1 Memory Card Reader (easily transfer data from memory cards)
Warranty: 1 Year Collect and Return (Europe-wide)- Upgradeable to 3 Years for only £49 - Call for details!

WWW.LAPTOPSDIRECT.CO.UK,
The sales assistand i got was called Gail, if you don't know what your looking for then call her, she is very helpfull
Direct line is 01484448948

System

My son is considering replacing his old laptop and tells me he went into Computer World (I think) for a browse. He saw a model (?) for about £350 on Vista.

When approached by an assistant, my son asked "tell me why I should NOT buy this machne?". After a bit of thought, the assistant said, don't buy it if you have a lot of software designed for XP, because it won't play them. He added that most laptops come with Vista now. Is this so ?. and if not, maybe you could advise where someone should look if he wants to upgrade his machine.

I should add that he is not on-line currently, due to a house move 2 months ago and he's moving again next week, so he is unable to research this himself.

Monkeeboy

Cheers for that

I have heard comment that Vista is not as stable as XP.

I note that Dell offers a choice when configuring their machines.

Incidentally, I checked out the Dell website and found that they play around with their prices quite a bit. I have a Dell desktop bought some years ago which has been excellent so thought I would check out their prices. The best prices seem to be on the small business pages but you need to add VAT and delivery which bumps the price up a fair bit. The delivery is the sting in the tail as this is £60 (a rip off). As I am looking for two machines I had hoped I could get them for only one delivery charge....no fear they want £120 delivery. I might give them a call though to see if they will haggle.

Any more advice welcome. I am looking for something like

Pentium Core Due processor
15.4" screen
1gb memory
at least 80gb hard drive
DVD rewriter - minimum 4x

littleange

I upgraded to Vista, and had a lot of problems with graphics card drivers on my dell laptop, seems nvidia haven't bothered to make any yet so I reinstalled XP

I'll upgrade again in a year or 2 when its all polished

bfsog

My girlfriend has moved away for Uni and I am thinking of getting her a laptop.

Im more of a software type of guy, when I am reading specs for laptops what am I looking for if I want that laptop to be wireless (for Internet, as in connecting to routers wirelessly) is it just 802.11b/g ?

Cheers