The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

Lady_K

mortgagelurker wrote: »

thanks gunjack, but i've already bought a dell vostro 1510 today for £400.

thanks again

Why was your vostro £400? On the Dell website the most expensive vostro 1510 is £349. I'm considering a laptop myself either HP or Dell and wondered why did you choose the vostro 1510 in the end?

The £349 one is showing as upgraded to 3gb ram, free delivery and save an extra £30 at the moment so I'm thinking about it as I know vista needs much more ram than xp and that extra would really help. I just wondered if I should upgrade anything on it?

AliceBanned

Hi
Thanks to reading this thread I just bought my hp Pavilion 17" laptop refurb from PC World - £349.99, 2GB - it is great for the money and has one year guarantee. I don't think I've lost out at all in going for a refurb - if i hadn't read the recommendations on here I wouldn't have even considered it, but from a reputable dealer it shouldn't be a problem. Delivery was free and it arrived three days after I bought it online - generally I would recommend their refurb deals.

mortgagelurker

@ Lady_K - Hi....the reason the vostro was for £400, is because i added extras, such as nvidia gfx card, 1yr accidental cover and a webcam and this totaled to approx £391. The reason i chose the vostro is because it is the best specification of components for its price. I assure you that i spent a week to try and find a laptop which could match or even come close to it's specifications, but i could not find any. Trust me, this is a very good deal and if you don't believe me, then please read here:-
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/191408/dell-vostro-1510-1-8ghz-c2d-2gb-160

Lady_K

mortgagelurker wrote: »

@ Lady_K - Hi....the reason the vostro was for £400, is because i added extras, such as nvidia gfx card, 1yr accidental cover and a webcam and this totaled to approx £391. The reason i chose the vostro is because it is the best specification of components for its price. I assure you that i spent a week to try and find a laptop which could match or even come close to it's specifications, but i could not find any. Trust me, this is a very good deal and if you don't believe me, then please read here:-
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/191408/dell-vostro-1510-1-8ghz-c2d-2gb-160

Thanx I've never really looked at the business ones before as its really for home use. Are they as good for doing photos and adjusting them etc? The warranty is a bit different on the vostro isnt it, on the home ones I would have chosen the 12 month rtb option whats the difference with this warranty?

Overall do you think the business ones are better than the home and if so whats the main advantages and are there any dissadvantages?

I don't know if I need the graphics upgrade, I don't play games on it.

Would you say if I went for one of these its best to go for the higher one that has the free 3mb ram upgrade this month and £30 off then upgrade anything else I might need?

mortgagelurker

hiya lady_k. The business laptops have a much better specification, but do not tend to have the good looks of home laptops. But hey who cares?? you want power? then the business machines mean business!

Leave out the gfx card if you don't need it, but i would highly recommend it as it was a £100 add-on a few days ago and now is half price, plus it is approx 8-10 times faster than your integrated intel gfx card. Lastly remember that once u have got a chosen gfx card, you can't upgrade it, so best to go for it if you can.

This laptop have a more than enough capacity to handle photo/video editing, so not a problem there as its got 2gb memory and a Intel C2D 1.8GHz processor and a 160gb hdd - thats PLENTY!

Also don't waste money on more ram as you won't notice any difference in speed. Lastly stick to a SINGLE 2GB CHANNEL (1 memory stick). This will allow you to upgrade your ram in the future at a cheaper price.

The business laptops have 1yr Next Business Day Onsite warranty, so much better. The way to do it is to order over the phone, tell them that you want home sales and then explain to the sales person that you want to buy a laptop (ref no: N0615108) but its for home use.

Hope this helps you.

Quassi75

As long as you live in England, you can get a Vostro Dell Laptop from as little as £169+vat. http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/vostro_nb?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

I have tried this, and you don;t need a VAT number, you don;t need a business address or anything. Just like in the UK.

FREE delivery at the minute!

mortgagelurker

thats right kdowner, but since lady_k wants a good time that will last and is value for money, i highly recommend you stick with the vostro 1510 as that is giving you the best specs for the price.

snowqueen555

the dell website adds on vat at the checkout, so the prices dont end up cheap

mortgagelurker

snowqueen555 wrote: »

the dell website adds on vat at the checkout, so the prices dont end up cheap

Umm, if you can find a deal that beats the dell vostro 1510, then please do tell me as i spent a week looking for a deal with those specs.

pjala

Thanks ML, but there was one problem that I found while looking at the specs for this - I would like the better graphics card and it says that there is a compatibility issues with the power supply and the better graphics card! It appears that you cannot change the power supply, so can only downgrade the graphics to the built in Intel.
Have you managed to resolve this in any other way?
Cheers