The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

grumpy_old_biker

My son wants a laptop for Christmas and after much searching we have decided on a Toshiba L350D-213- on sale at Comet for £369 or a Toshiba L350-215 - on sale everywhere for £449. Both have 17" trubrite screens, AMD processors and respectively 3 & 4 gig of RAM. The bundled software is comprehensive and both run on the Windows 7 platform. Both seem competent for all manner of uses, gaming & surfing the web and I would have no hesitation in recommending them on spec & price alone. Toshiba seems to get a good name for reliability so hope this helps.:easter:

Perfects

I've read the last 5+ pages and I can't see a better laptop for my (around) £400 budget than the Acer Aspire 5732, fraid I can't post links as a first time poster.
My only concern is that maybe the graphics card won't be good enough for some RPGs, but then I don 't know much about graphics cards any more. Similarly, is the DDR RAM it uses is old news now isn't it? I thought DDR3 was the stick of choice these days.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this will be my 21st birthday present from my family.
Leo

Any help would be appreciated

JamesN

Perfects wrote: »

I've read the last 5+ pages and I can't see a better laptop for my (around) £400 budget than the Acer Aspire 5732, fraid I can't post links as a first time poster.
My only concern is that maybe the graphics card won't be good enough for some RPGs, but then I don 't know much about graphics cards any more. Similarly, is the DDR RAM it uses is old news now isn't it? I thought DDR3 was the stick of choice these days.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this will be my 21st birthday present from my family.
Leo

Any help would be appreciated

yea ddr3 has been out around a year, but you aint gonna get it for less than 400 unless you're really lucky.

brokeinwales

Hello, can anyone here help me out?
My parents and other relatives have very kindly offered to give me some money towards a laptop for my birthday next week (Probably somewhere between £150-£200). I want to buy something that won't require me to save up too much extra myself, as I am very skint. I only really want it for:

a) surfing the net and
b) word processing

I don't much care about anything else, although being able to store a bit of music and a few photo's would be nice. I don't need fancy graphics or anything, and I don't play games.

Can anyone suggest the cheapest deal that would actually give me something that works? Bearing in mind I know zilch about computers and don't do techi-speak? Are the ones you can get cheap in Tesco any good?

Cheers

redbiro

Any1 know when we can expect to see Dual core Atom come on Netbooks OR on Electric Power saving NetTops like Aspire Revo R3600 ? ?;
Is it a few months away or 3-5 years .I hear them saying USB 3 should be available by next year & with dual core a netbook would be capable in theory of any thing a Desktop could ever do ?

boobbby

brokeinwales wrote: »

Hello, can anyone here help me out?
My parents and other relatives have very kindly offered to give me some money towards a laptop for my birthday next week (Probably somewhere between £150-£200). I want to buy something that won't require me to save up too much extra myself, as I am very skint. I only really want it for:

a) surfing the net and
b) word processing

I don't much care about anything else, although being able to store a bit of music and a few photo's would be nice. I don't need fancy graphics or anything, and I don't play games.

Can anyone suggest the cheapest deal that would actually give me something that works? Bearing in mind I know zilch about computers and don't do techi-speak? Are the ones you can get cheap in Tesco any good?

Cheers

Most computers would have no trouble being used to carry out the above tasks so why not buy a second hand or refurbished laptop. You should be able to buy one from a friend or local adverts for less than £100 or even a refubished one for less than £200. Just google for the many sites offering these laptops such as http://www.thelaptopcentre.com/?gclid=CIi6-tP-hZ4CFWlr4wodnUANqQ or try others. I would think it is a good idea to have the windows XP pro installed.

supermonkey

asked this question some where else earlier, but since windows 7 is so much more efficient than vista, i presume it would easily run on an older machine? I've seen places selling acer ones with windows 7 ultimate and was surprised! Is it more efficient then xp? I have an xp laptop about 5 years old, would it be worth upgrading.

JamesN

supermonkey wrote: »

asked this question some where else earlier, but since windows 7 is so much more efficient than vista, i presume it would easily run on an older machine? I've seen places selling acer ones with windows 7 ultimate and was surprised! Is it more efficient then xp? I have an xp laptop about 5 years old, would it be worth upgrading.

i doubt it. It would'nt easily run on an older machine, plus we have no idea what spec your laptop has. It being 5 years old doesnt give much, was it £2,000 or £400 5 years ago?

JDPower

redbiro wrote: »

I hear them saying USB 3 should be available by next year & with dual core a netbook would be capable in theory of any thing a Desktop could ever do ?

Er no, there's more to why a desktop performs better than just processor (and usb which is irrelevant to that IMO)

boobbby

supermonkey wrote: »

asked this question some where else earlier, but since windows 7 is so much more efficient than vista, i presume it would easily run on an older machine? I've seen places selling acer ones with windows 7 ultimate and was surprised! Is it more efficient then xp? I have an xp laptop about 5 years old, would it be worth upgrading.

Run the upgrade advisor to check if it will run on your laptop

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b544e90-7659-4bd9-9e51-2497c146af15&displayLang=en