The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

dwsjarcmcd

Hi,
Looking for a 'smaller' laptop to take abroad/trains etc and saw this with £150 off. Use would be primarily iternet browsing, bit of word/excell etc. Good buy/price?

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.203-5847.aspx

David

boobbby

dwsjarcmcd wrote: »

Hi,
Looking for a 'smaller' laptop to take abroad/trains etc and saw this with £150 off. Use would be primarily iternet browsing, bit of word/excell etc. Good buy/price?

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.203-5847.aspx

David

Computeractive has given 5 stars to the new acer aspire one A110L which costs just £235 but only has the Linux system or for those wanting XP home then they recommend the Advent 4211 at £280 and also given 5 stars. Both are mini laptops.

snowqueen555

the advent 4211 is a cheaper msi, but the battery is a 2200 rather then a 5000+mah.. This means that the laptop itseil will barely last 2 hours, which makes the 'portable' aspect of the laptop very poor.

the aspire one is fairly smaller, harder to type, and the cheaper version running linux was quite slow when i tried using it... The 4211 seemed to run everything fine...

Pc world and toys r us ar where you want to go if you wanna try out

eee 701
eee 900
eee 901
eee 1000h
Adevnt 4211
Aspire 1

In terms of size, I found all the machines hard to write with, bar the 10 inch laptops, the eee 1000 and the advent 4211

--

Bobby those specs look good, but I'd check user reviwes before even contemplating buying a laptop

I've done so much reading that I can't seem to find the right laptop for myself, but I think wait it out nearer christmas and there will be some bargains to be had

Lavender13

Anyone have advice re laptop for DS who is about to start A Levels, so would need it for coursework:A, but would also like to use the internet and play pc games smoothly even if the graphics aren't top notch. He would consider a desktop. Budget £600. Any tips about model/specs/etc would be greatly received.

TIA:j

Gorskino10

Lavender13 wrote: »

Anyone have advice re laptop for DS who is about to start A Levels, so would need it for coursework:A, but would also like to use the internet and play pc games smoothly even if the graphics aren't top notch. He would consider a desktop. Budget £600. Any tips about model/specs/etc would be greatly received.

TIA:j

I know LOTS about this so hopefully this will be handy for you. A Levels are what i have just finished but my course was very PC based so it all depends on programs he may need. Like i do photo manipulation,3d work, 2d animation and stuff so if he will do this then get good speed i would recommend 3gib ram memory this will be needed if he wants to play games, Hard Drive is not key but it is quite cheap so maybe 500Gb would be a great amount. Also with games is a good Graphics Card. the thing with these are that they change alot in MONTHS, like i started a list for my spec a few months latter my card was upgraded alot of times. but dont panic you can always upgrade these so getting a Nvidia is my fave make but AMD are very good too (you may understand these 2 are like Nike And Adidas Some kids like Nike more Some prefer Adidas) As i could go crazy with spec and get one for about 1 Thousand Pounds i would show you to this link,
http://forums.purepwnage.com/index.php?showtopic=78446
this is a forum like this with a spec for intended budget (sorry its in American but there same price range over here) this will help you alot

Another plan is look at a Game he has stated he like (Example of games that are very hi teck, Call of Duty 4 and Crysis)
look on the box and it will say there recommended spec for a computer to run this game. but i would say Laptops are not the way to go for GAMING if he just wants to browse internet then thats fine but for GAMING its NOOO.
But if you are looking for JUST a laptop check out the Acer range and in particular the one at PCWORLD thats 399 Pounds that would do a great job for what your looking for.

Gorskino10

susanann wrote: »

I have a budget of between £200 and £300. I need a laptop for internet, word processing, music downloading, msn, e-mail and maybe some very basic free games on the internet. Its for the kids starting GCSE's etc. I have been told to go for 2GB because vista needs a lot. There are so many out there different processors etc any idea on which one is best

(Sorry i know this is double post :A)

Ok well for that low budget i would say the BEST you can get is a Acer, They have a great customer support and there build quality us remarkable. check out PC World they have a few thats cheap in the Acer Range although i HATE big shops like these they have Better deals than some websites.
But with 2Gb its in that middle of kinda slow so to help your PC/Laptop DO NOT install Vista and run on XP as there is still lots of programs not compatible with that yet and XP used less of your SPEED.
But apart from that any Laptop with 2GB Memory and around 2Ghz with enough HD to store your music etc.. at moment i couldnt find an Acer but when your spending that little you can get a Laptop which is made poorly at would last months, Looking for a Referbished model would lower its price.

snowqueen555

i would agre witht he xp comment... vista is bloated, and purposely so. They want people to buy more expensive, more powerful OS, but the xp system do can pretty much the same, and you can download extra bits to keep xp working for th enext few years to come!

Lavender13

Gorskino10 wrote: »

I know LOTS about this so hopefully this will be handy for you. A Levels are what i have just finished but my course was very PC based so it all depends on programs he may need. Like i do photo manipulation,3d work, 2d animation and stuff so if he will do this then get good speed i would recommend 3gib ram memory this will be needed if he wants to play games, Hard Drive is not key but it is quite cheap so maybe 500Gb would be a great amount. Also with games is a good Graphics Card. the thing with these are that they change alot in MONTHS, like i started a list for my spec a few months latter my card was upgraded alot of times. but dont panic you can always upgrade these so getting a Nvidia is my fave make but AMD are very good too (you may understand these 2 are like Nike And Adidas Some kids like Nike more Some prefer Adidas) As i could go crazy with spec and get one for about 1 Thousand Pounds i would show you to this link,
http://forums.purepwnage.com/index.php?showtopic=78446
this is a forum like this with a spec for intended budget (sorry its in American but there same price range over here) this will help you alot

Another plan is look at a Game he has stated he like (Example of games that are very hi teck, Call of Duty 4 and Crysis)
look on the box and it will say there recommended spec for a computer to run this game. but i would say Laptops are not the way to go for GAMING if he just wants to browse internet then thats fine but for GAMING its NOOO.
But if you are looking for JUST a laptop check out the Acer range and in particular the one at PCWORLD thats 399 Pounds that would do a great job for what your looking for.

That helps alot, thanks. Re A levels he is doing History,Geog, Politics and English so not sure what programmes he will need ( we have microsoft office, student and teacher edition already). The info re ram memory really helps, am I right in thinking a Duo 2 core is best?

TIA

Igol

the only thing im confused about is that the first one says dual core which the boyfriend says i need, whereas the other one doesnt say dual core. they have the same name its just the dual thing. if somebody could help me out and tell me if they are the same thing i would appreciate it a lot, as 30 is quite a saving for a new student money saver
thanks[/quote]

In a nutshell a single core chip pretends that its doing 2 things at once. Using the internet and digitising your record collection for example. It just manages its time well so you dont notice that its not actually capable of doing that.

Nowt wrong with that its what we've all had for years.

Dual core chips and now quad core actually can do 2 things at once so they're quicker at processing and switching between the net, photo-editing software and wordprocessing package will be a lot smoother.

If your not going to be using 2 big processor time hungry programmes at the same time and dont feel that you need to be at the cutting edge, single core will do the job fine.

JDPower

whiterose11 wrote: »

I found a laptop that i liked and the boyfriend said was good (dont understand much of the techie stuff lol) at this site

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Asus_...9C/version.asp

330 + 10 delivery

typed the name into google to see if i could get it cheaper anywhere else and found this site

http://www.simplyasus.com/ASUS_X50N-AP179C_410225.html

310 and free delivery. the only thing im confused about is that the first one says dual core which the boyfriend says i need, whereas the other one doesnt say dual core.

They are both the same, ie BOTH are dual core (the processor is a Turion X2, in AMD terminology X2 is dual core )