The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

lofty_2

Found a nice laptop from Acer Notebooks.

Under a Grand b4 vat.

2.0ghz Centrino
512mb ram
80gb hd
15.4" monitor

http://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/asp/product.asp?recorprod=1&product=148&cat=79&ph=&keywords=&recor=&SearchFor=&PT_ID=

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Have Staples sold laptops for a while, Their support might not be very good if its a new thing to them. Remember the problems with them back during the free speakers promotion!

I wouldn't expect to much support from Staples except to get it fixed if it goes wrong. However for £70 you can take out Acers own 3 year support for repairs and free telephone support.

lofty_2

been thinking more about rock direct now as they offer warrenties on the monitor as well so im told. acer charge €100 + tax on monitor repairs and their the most vunerable part on a laptop i find.

Boojum

Just had an email-shot from Aria advertising a Digimate M5725 laptop with the following spec:

AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ processor
512 Mb cache memory
40 GB HD
256 Mb DDR SO-DIMMs
CD-RW/DVD
14.1" screen
VIA KN-266 ProSavage 8, integrated AGP 3D video
2 year warranty

all for special offer price of £464 including VAT

Is this a good deal?

Boojum

lofty_2

looks ok for the money likes...

Bargainbabe_2

Just had an email-shot from Aria advertising a Digimate M5725 laptop with the following spec:

AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ processor
512 Mb cache memory
40 GB HD
256 Mb DDR SO-DIMMs
CD-RW/DVD
14.1"  screen
VIA KN-266 ProSavage 8, integrated AGP 3D video
2 year warranty

all for special offer price of £464 including VAT

Is this a good deal?

Boojum

Excellent deal, wish i had seen this a couple of weeks ago!

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It doesn't include an operating sytem though si it's not quite the bargain it seems.

AUSTIN_3

Hiya, I am trying to find the best deal for a laptop. My husband wants to rush out and buy the first one he can find, this obviously horrifies me.

He wants to be able to watch DVD's, play his football manager game(requires 60gb hardrive, 512 mega ram and needs a 2gb? processor) neither of us are particulary computer boffs, he has also stated he wants a 3 1/2 inch floppy for his college work. I would a modem as well but I am aware that the above things might be expensive. Can one of you IT gods advise please, I lookedat the ones on laptops direct but I have trouble reading through the specs

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What sort of budget do you have? There are plenty of options though fewer with a 60gb drive. A modem will come as standard. You'll be lucky to get a floppy drive these days. Personally I can't see the point of having one as a CD writer is standard these days and you can get CDs quite cheap these days. If you need a floppy you can get an external drive that will plug into a USB port for £20 so don't worry if it hasn't got one.

Other questions are - do you want a light quiet laptop with decent battery life? In which case one with Pentium-M processor is recommended (those wih Centrino technology). Many of these have processors with speeds less than 2Ghz but the performance is well beyond a 2Ghz Pentium.

AUSTIN_3

Wow, I didn't expect a reply so quickly, We have a budget of up to £700, maybe £800. I really don't want to spend that much but I supose it's an investment. My husband has it fixed in his mind that he wants a floppy drive but I think that cd roms are the way ahead. I have looked around and the centrino looks good, the one I have looked at is the ws 1.8 ghz but thats sooooo expensive, from novatech.