The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

StockportGerbil

Folks :-
Following on from my question of earlier (what PC to get my mum) we agreed the budget could go a little higher and I got her the refurbished Medion N9718 (sadly not listed now) for £229.99 plus a fiver delivery from the medionshop (www.medionshop.co.uk). It turned up in five days and I have to say for my mums purposes I think it's very good.

It came in what apeared to be new condition. It runs vista (supplied / installed) and office 2003 (not supplied) quite happily and while it's a little bit plasticy I thought it was OK. It certainly appears to be value for money.

At present if you go to the medion shop website and go to clearance 15.4" laptops the N9714 seems the closest in spec; but the one I bought had 2Gb of memory, but cost a tenner more.

I hope that's helpful to someone.

Kevin

killwilly

I am a great fan of Sony products, two televisions and a DVD recorder. However, when it comes to laptops I would buy Acer every time, but not included in the poll.

boobbby

killwilly wrote: »

I am a great fan of Sony products, two televisions and a DVD recorder. However, when it comes to laptops I would buy Acer every time, but not included in the poll.

I agree with with ALL the above remarks!!

BB

frank_r

acer are the best value for money these days I reckon - followed by Dell.

I bought my acer of laptopsdreict.co.uk a few month back. Great laptop - terrible customer service. Oh the joys of shopping online...

Mandark

drivebyargument wrote: »

What is the perfect laptop under £500 to play the new FOOTBALL MANAGER 2010 game please...

I realise this is a very specific question and apologise for that !

Hey, fellow Football Manager fan!! With Football Manager there's two things that you need in a computer:
1) decent processor power because the game is a serious number cruncher. It also depends on how many leagues you want to run. But I'd look for an Intel Core Duo laptop.
2) If you're going to use the 3D match engine then you'll need reasonable graphics capability. For judder free viewing I'd suggest any laptop with 256 meg or more separate graphics memory.

Also I'd recommend getting a 6 cell battery with it as FM session as you know are long and if you're going to be using it away from a charges then you'll want more than 2-3 hours.

Try a custom build of a Dell 1545 for starters should get what you want for about £450. See last 3 or 4 pages on this thread for examples.

barnyg

rev_henry wrote: »

Hmm, interesting. Maybe its for the best they sold out then. I emailed them the other day to ask if they were anticipating getting any more in stock. Their response: Thank you for your enquiry. We are unable to give any indication of stock.
Not even an apology or explanation. Just cba.
Pfft. I'm trying to give you £300 for heaven's sake, you obviously don't want it, I'll take it elsewhere.

I recently bought a refurb Fujitsu laptop from them for my daughter. Superb spec & excellent condition £200.00 less than the Argos new price. The problem with them is they have no control over what they get in so can give no guarantees, according to one of their staff I was talking to at their shop in Stanley Co. Durham.

koppite79

Bought one of the Dell Inspiron 17's that are on sale in CPW

£313 after quidco

Intel Pentium Dual Core T4200 2.0 Ghz, which scores really well on testing
2gb memory (can be increased to 8gb)
17" HD widescreen
250 GB hard drive
Bluetooth
1.3 MP webcam
Windows 7 upgrade free

Picking it up from store tmrw so will post a quick review, but the feedback from others and the spec is just incredible for the price!

Well happy!

nickliv

http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPF-Hewlett-Packard-HP-Pavilion-ZD8369EA-P4-3-2Ghz-1Gb-100Gb-DVDRW-17

I'm looking for something to replace this spec with (Insurance claim underway, replacement most likely option) - like for like spec wise apparently.

Mandark

nickliv wrote: »

http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPF-Hewlett-Packard-HP-Pavilion-ZD8369EA-P4-3-2Ghz-1Gb-100Gb-DVDRW-17

I'm looking for something to replace this spec with (Insurance claim underway, replacement most likely option) - like for like spec wise apparently.

I think you're going to have to look more at price than spec. They don't do those old P4 based laptops any more. And you wouldn't want one if they did. Trust me, that's similar to my old laptop as well. Big, heavy, hot and slow by today's standards. How much do you have to spend? My HP laptop was worth a grand when I bought it which would get you a fantastic laptop today. But even £500 can get you a decent dual core system with good graphics capability.

nickliv

Cheers for that.

Apparently it has to have the same 'features' but not the same specs. (I would be astounded if you could get hold of another [STRIKE]radiator[/STRIKE] P4 machine now)

The old one was 17 inch, with a full size keypad, with a numerical pad, and had wireless, bluetooth, and a lightscribe drive.

I'm guessing that these are pretty normal in modern machines, possibly with the exception of the lightscribe drive.

I am used to being corrected though, and am prepared to be.

If they want me to run vista, I shall hold out for any extra RAM I can get, as it's (reputedly) so power hungry.