The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

patchwork_cat

My son has spilled a drink on his 3 year old laptop - Dell inspiron 6000, centrino, 1gb, 80mb hard. He is 15 and doing GCSE's and online gaming ( although this will reduce we hope!!). Ironically my contents with accidental damage insurance is due up in 4 days. We don't know whether to claim as excess is £100 and quote will increase by £100 if we lose 5 years claim free.

What price are we realistically talking for an non reconditioned one and where is the best deal - prob, dual core?Thankyou

What does everyone think of this http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_L300-12H_PSLB1E-00U015EN/version.asp

pepsi_max2k

Important news regarding cheap laptop hunting...

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

Nothing officially confirmed yet but apparently many / all G86 and G84 based graphics chips (eg. 8400M, 8600M) have a very high failure rate, so try to avoid for now.

HP are currently extending warranties to +2 years on many affected laptops:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=c01300427#c01300427_dv94

The news only broke a couple days ago though so expect further updates, clarifications and possibly recalls later on.

Update: The Inq may be overreacting on the extent of the issue, but there's deffinately heat issues with the 8 series, and those HP models really should be avoided. I'd still stay away from 8xxx graphics until Nvidia confirm the extent of the problem.

pepsi_max2k

Neighbour's PC World (well, dixons, but only cos PCW refused to ship it ) refurb came today Just got back from setting it up for them, and would both add to the PC World complaints from here, and say it's a damn good deal if you can put the effort in.

1. From boot, vista post setup, reboot, bsod (UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_ERROR). !!!!!! I say? 2 hours later and I figure it was a corrupted C partition, gawd knows how, and lucky for me HP include a simple util to both repartition and reinstall vista + drivers (which could save a week of work) which appears to have fixed the problem. Took a while getting there (tried Vista recovery environment first, no use but had a console which couldn't access C: due to crc errors) but anyway...

2. Visual defects are virtually nil (still had sticky plastic protective covering on the top). It's the right laptop (always a plus), it appears to look fine, pretty much appears functioning fine (no errors in device manager), even came with a remote control but I've had like 10 seconds on it at the vista desktop though so gawd knows if there's any other issues. but basically...

other than the slightly major issue at the start, it seems fine. Hopefully that's the one and only big issue with the thing. so, deals to be had from DSGi, just don't expect to not have to fix owt yourself at some point

Io07

georgemac wrote: »

I also just missed out on the John Lewis HP laptop deal, which was a cracker, especially with the 2 year gaurantee - the model has now been removed from the website.

http://www.johnlewis.com/230479200/Product.aspx this is the exact same laptop except this one has 3 gbytes or ram instead of 2 gytes - I am now hoping they reduce this one too!

Hi
just thought i'd let people know, I managed to get the DV6799 from John Lewis after all:j
I called my local store and tho' they didn't have any in stock they took my details down and ordered it in for me from some other store which had it!
Picked it up y'day; for £499 its amazing! and its not red (was praying it wouldn't be too girly!) its more of a deep mahogany brown!
waiting for it to charge, to set it all up!:T

ThinkingOfLinking

Before I bought my laptop I asked around for recommendations and one guy I met who repairs them for a living said Toshiba is the one brand he has never had back. I got mine for £379 from John Lewis, with a £10 off voucher I found on here, bought through Quidco for another £22 something off. Works very well. The model is a Satellite something.

rubia1409_2

batthink wrote: »

Why not a Asus Eee? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=959&catid=1070

Or an MSI wind:
http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=168086&partner=froogle

Or a Dell or Lenovo, not sure what the cheapest deal is but the build quality and reliability are worth the extra in the long run.

Is the Asus Eee really good? I know nothing about laptops, but want to buy one. I travel alot, and although I have a desk top at home I want a laptop to take with me for when I'm bored in a hotel room somewhere in the world. I want cheap and light weight, to be able to use Skype, access the internet and occasionally download work stuff. Would the Asus be good for that or would anyone recommend something else? Also, I don't understand all this 1Gb or 4Gb stuff! I think it's about the memory size?! What do I need to look for there? Thanks in advance.

stamford

Bigpockets Core duo 17" 2gb ram, 120gb hd 12 months refurb/as new £299

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/product.php?lang=&product=GATEWAY011

sysadmin

batthink wrote: »

Or an MSI wind:
http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=168086&partner=froogle
.

Just to let you know the Advent 4211 from PCWorld is a re-badged MSI Wind and allot cheaper

Link

Lilgurn_2

Product description Pavilion DV6529EA
CPU / Processor Athlon-64 X2 TK53 1.7GHz
Hard Drive Size 120GB SATA
RAM / Memory Size 1024M DDR2
Optical Drive(s) DVD-RW
Video(s) Integrated
15.4" WXGA
Network LAN, Modem, WiFi
Audio / Sound Integrated
Additional information Remote Control, Card Reader,
Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium

This is currently on bigpockets for £444.99 (inc. VAT) and it has a 12 month refurbished warranty with HP

stamford

Lilgurn wrote: »

This is currently on bigpockets for £444.99 (inc. VAT) and it has a 12 month refurbished warranty with HP

Brand new Tosh

* Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-55 / 1.8 GHz ( Dual-Core )
* RAM - 1 GB (installed) / 4 GB (max) - DDR II SDRAM - 667 MHz ( 2 x 512 MB )
* Hard Drive - 120 GB
* Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Business
* Screen - 15.4" TFT active matrix 1280 x 800 ( WXGA )
* Optical Drive - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM
* Warranty - 1 year warranty

£422.46 inc VAT £8 delivery

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=20408&category_id=310&manufacturer_id=290&tid=psafhe-00t00een