The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

rustywallet

I am looking for an affordable laptop but would like one that is very light weight too. Does anyone have any ideas?

John_Gray

I'm afraid these are (almost) mutually-exclusive objectives. It costs money to design laptops which are lighter than the average (which is usually a fraction below 3 kg).

See, for example, the review of seven "ultra-portables" in this month's (December 2005) Personal Computer World (pp 85-94, if you're reading it in WHSmith!), where the weights were 1.85-2.0 kg. The cheapest was £911 inc VAT, the dearest was £1699. Compare my post above, which was £399 for a variant of 3 kg IBM Thinkpad R50e...

John

rustywallet

thanks john, I'll take a look.

Burlesque_Babe

Each day I'm hoping for that bargain..........I'm desparate now for a new laptop, but the stubborn streak in me (apparently I haveone!) refuses to buy one at the moment, just in case a sub-£300 appears for Christmas!

What is the cheapest one around at the moment? Does anyone know?

delluver

keren29 wrote:

Each day I'm hoping for that bargain..........I'm desparate now for a new laptop, but the stubborn streak in me (apparently I haveone!) refuses to buy one at the moment, just in case a sub-£300 appears for Christmas!

What is the cheapest one around at the moment? Does anyone know?

6 weeks or so ago Dell were selling their Inspiron 1200 for £325 all in. So there might be a chance. Hang in there.

Burlesque_Babe

That's the kind of thing i'm hanging in for.......but.....I have to ask a really stupid question......all the Dell laptops have a USB floppy for an extra £40 or so. If I don't add one to the price, I guess I won't be able to use floppies? Is this now standard with new laptops? The cheap Acers etc - do they have floppy disc drives with them as standard (or am I being thick in some way?!!)

dc

Staples have the IBM Thinkpad R50e for £399

Similar to Dell 1200 with Cel m360.

plusses, Wi-fi , and dual layer DVD RW.

but only 256 ram

highlighter

keren29 wrote:

That's the kind of thing i'm hanging in for.......but.....I have to ask a really stupid question......all the Dell laptops have a USB floppy for an extra £40 or so. If I don't add one to the price, I guess I won't be able to use floppies? Is this now standard with new laptops? The cheap Acers etc - do they have floppy disc drives with them as standard (or am I being thick in some way?!!)

You can buy a external floppy drive (dont buy this from dell) after you have bought your laptop. Try ebuer.com or ebay-will be alot cheaper thant Dell.

p.s. if you have access to a floppy drive now why dont you buy a pen drive (usb drive) and transfer your data from your floppies onto that- they are very small and cheap. They can be bought in different sizes 64mb, 128mb 256mb....and so on.

delluver

dc wrote:

Staples have the IBM Thinkpad R50e for £399

Similar to Dell 1200 with Cel m360.

plusses, Wi-fi , and dual layer DVD RW.

but only 256 ram

Or hopefully the Inspiron 2200 will come down again to £385 with a free printer. Better spec than above (15"), but without DVD RW. Just CD RW/DVD player. You won't get one for around £300 unfortunately.

£$&*"($£&(

Tesco's have an Acer Centrino laptop with Pentium-M 1.6ghz and DVD writer in store at present for £568 which sounds like a decent price to me.