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The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

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Comments

  • Ah! Totally awesome advice Chili! Faultless - I think I'll take you up on that! Very many thank yous!
  • chili2001
    chili2001 Posts: 342 Forumite
    Glad I could help! icon7.gif
  • TaBunny
    TaBunny Posts: 1,831 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Hi can't anyone help me find a laptop for my daughter, for internet use and doing some word pro for homework, I really want it to be under or as close to £300 as poss prefer xp but vista if have to
    :p
  • Hi, was wondering if someone could tell me if this laptop is any good for me at all.
    I need it for general internet surfing and typing up college work and need a dvd drive.
    Any help will be greatly appreciated as i'm really not clued up on things like this. I've got upto £300 max at a push to spend on it if thats any help :rolleyes:
    Sorry i can't do a link to it yet but if you go on ebay and put 260402418784 in as item number it should come up.
  • chili2001
    chili2001 Posts: 342 Forumite
    snow-ball wrote: »
    Hi, was wondering if someone could tell me if this laptop is any good for me at all.
    I need it for general internet surfing and typing up college work and need a dvd drive.
    Any help will be greatly appreciated as i'm really not clued up on things like this. I've got upto £300 max at a push to spend on it if thats any help :rolleyes:
    Sorry i can't do a link to it yet but if you go on ebay and put 260402418784 in as item number it should come up.

    Its not that bad for the price, but the CPU is a little slow and its always a gamble buying a refurb no matter what they say about a guarantee. Its still Ebay! I would say if you stretch to £350 you could get a better overall (brand new) laptop like this: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164844
  • chili2001 wrote: »
    Its not that bad for the price, but the CPU is a little slow and its always a gamble buying a refurb no matter what they say about a guarantee. Its still Ebay! I would say if you stretch to £350 you could get a better overall (brand new) laptop like this:




    Hi, thanks for quick reply, yeah i know what you mean about ebay! That one does look a fair bit better than the one i was looking at and could stretch to £350 for that one so will prob order that one.
    Thankyou for your help, your briliant!!!! :T
  • Mandark
    Mandark Posts: 181 Forumite
    edited 25 August 2009 at 6:18PM
    TaBunny wrote: »
    Hi can't anyone help me find a laptop for my daughter, for internet use and doing some word pro for homework, I really want it to be under or as close to £300 as poss prefer xp but vista if have to
    Hi there.

    What Laptop magazine which I buy from time to time thinks the Toshiba Satellite L300 series (entry level model) is one of the best around the £300 mark. You'll get a slowish processor, although it's still better than those ones in little netbooks, 2Gb RAM needed for Vista and a smallish, by today's standards, 160 Gb hard drive. But it gives you full laptop power meaning it will run full screen video (unlike many similarly priced netbooks and the like) for £310 (+£10 delivery). And much better than anything from emachines. You might find some new L300s cheaper if you do a search.
    http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/asp/versions.asp?rewrite=Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_L300-1FK_Laptop_with_2GB_RAM_PSLB9E-02U003EN2GB&pagetype=version&page=
    Prof planning and public rights of way person. Studies all things tech!
  • Hi,

    This is going to sound really thick, I'm looking for a laptop for work, which is mainly at home, but need to escape from the kids to a quiet room. I will need wireless connection, which I think I have through Orange Livebox? I think that I will need at least 2Gb to run some of the software I have to use and MS office etc. My question is, what is the difference between Gb Ram and Gb Hard drive. It seems that laptops have small i.e. 1-8 Gb Ram but much larger Gb Hard drive. Will I need say 4 Gb Ram to run these software programs or will a Reasonably large Gb Hard drive suffice.
    Sorry to be such a technophobe, but I don't want to go into PC World and show my ignorance and end up with something that does not suit my needs. :confused:
  • chili2001
    chili2001 Posts: 342 Forumite
    Hi,

    This is going to sound really thick, I'm looking for a laptop for work, which is mainly at home, but need to escape from the kids to a quiet room. I will need wireless connection, which I think I have through Orange Livebox? I think that I will need at least 2Gb to run some of the software I have to use and MS office etc. My question is, what is the difference between Gb Ram and Gb Hard drive. It seems that laptops have small i.e. 1-8 Gb Ram but much larger Gb Hard drive. Will I need say 4 Gb Ram to run these software programs or will a Reasonably large Gb Hard drive suffice.
    Sorry to be such a technophobe, but I don't want to go into PC World and show my ignorance and end up with something that does not suit my needs. :confused:

    Its not a silly question if you don't know!
    A lot of people can get confused between the size of the RAM (Random-access memory) and the size of the hard drive.
    I've seen many people go to throw their computer out because it has become almost unusably slow and when I sugest a simple RAM upgrade to speed things up they tell me that there is plenty of space left in the hard drive!
    Basically, the RAM is a volatile type of memory which will store all your running programs and processes while the pc is running. Once the power is switched off all infomation is lost.
    This is why a pc with little RAM will peform slowly because when it runs out of physical RAM it will use the hard drive as "virtual RAM" which slows it even more!
    The hard drive is just a vessel that holds the operating system and all your other programs, documents and media. This differs from RAM as the information is not lost when the power is switched off.
    I would say that a minumum of 2gb of RAM is sufficent to run Vista and your programs unless you have any heavy duty editing software. You can add usually up to 4gb depending on your laptop but Vista will only reconize 3gb on the 32bit version. Get the biggest hard drive you can for your cash, but an external USB hard drive could be added easily if you have a lot of photo's and music. Good to backup on as well.
    Lastly, please DONT go to PC World. They have a very agressive sales technique and will try and sell you a hundred things you don't need.
    Try looking at these computer online specialists and you won't go wrong: www.ebuyer.com www.dabs.com and www.laptopsdirect.co.uk
    Let me know if you need anymore help? :beer:
  • chili2001
    chili2001 Posts: 342 Forumite
    edited 25 August 2009 at 11:50PM
    If anyone wants to see how their CPU mesures up under testing have a look at: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+%40+9750+%40+3.33GHz
    Makes interesting reading, notice there is no AMD chips in the top 21! They really need to sort themselves out to give intel a run for their money!
    Damm. Now I want an Intel i7 975 not cheap at nearly £800! :eek:
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