The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

anley1

Correction, I now think this Acer deal from Comet is the best entry level laptop around.

Chris, the fella who's after a £1500 laptop. Look at the specs of what you get for £500 and then ask youself exactly what you're getting for the extra £1000. Faster chip, faster that sure but are you going to notice when you write an email, check out this website or send an email?

dc2447

anley1 wrote:

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Staples deal (not on their website though)

It's a NEC I-Selection with a P4 Chip and 512Ram

I think it's the best value Laptop on the market right now at £499.

Like the acer laptops they have a poor reputation with many people.

chr1s_2

anley1 wrote:

Correction, I now think this Acer deal from Comet is the best entry level laptop around.

Chris, the fella who's after a £1500 laptop. Look at the specs of what you get for £500 and then ask youself exactly what you're getting for the extra £1000. Faster chip, faster that sure but are you going to notice when you write an email, check out this website or send an email?

Also, if you go in-store to buy that Acer laptop (rather than the website), you get a free laptop bag, wireless mouse and 128Mb MP3 player (assuming you're talking about Comet's 399.00 deal?) - at least that's what they had in the store I went in today. Appologies if someone's already mentioned this.

Yes, I agree about what the extra cash gets you for office/email type use, which is why I recommended he looked again at his full requirements for a laptop. Looks like he was happpy with his end purchase which is good. If I was buying a personal laptop, I'd be very careful with what I spent too, but if my company gave me a 1500 quid budget, then I'd happily spend it

Chris.

empfun

Martin, don't know why you didn't include IBM Lenovo on the poll list. They have entry-level models that don't cost too much.

anley1

Yep, good point. If somebody offers to buy me a laptop for £1500 I'm not going to suggest they save their money and only go to £500

John_M_Business

anley1 wrote:

Correction, I now think this Acer deal from Comet is the best entry level laptop around.

Chris, the fella who's after a £1500 laptop. Look at the specs of what you get for £500 and then ask youself exactly what you're getting for the extra £1000. Faster chip, faster that sure but are you going to notice when you write an email, check out this website or send an email?

Having looked at what you get for £500... I have to ask myself:
- where is the software I need? Pro and Office (add £250)
- what is the warranty like? 3 years on site (add £180)
- Celeron processors are junk - and you'll need a wireless card (£40)
- 20Gb and 50% quicker HD (£120)?
- Double RAM (£50)?

And then all the nice-to-haves:
- Do you have two batteries? Two 9 cells will give me 3+ hours of intensive use (see it's been rather hopeful at 2.3 hours for a 4 cell)
- TV Tuner?
- Extra 2" of screen? Glass-covered at that?
- High-end graphics card
- Stainless steel casing

... in the end you get what you pay for...

However I do realise that this is a 'Cheap' thread, and what I've ended up getting ain't cheap. But in terms of business - will it pay for itself in terms of time saving for me, and gaining business from clients? Undoubtedly.

Therefore it is 'Value' in my eyes as I'm getting all this for about £1,500!

anley1

John M

You must have been looking at a different Acer because that one had a Pentium M chip, 1GB of ram and 100Gb HD.

And you don't always get what you pay for with laptops, in many cases people are sold very overpriced stock.

Also, save your money buying Office and other bits of software, download it all for free using P2P.

dc2447

Why tell people to steal when there are free alternatives to MS office?

John_M_Business

anley1 wrote:

John M

You must have been looking at a different Acer because that one had a Pentium M chip, 1GB of ram and 100Gb HD.

And you don't always get what you pay for with laptops, in many cases people are sold very overpriced stock.

Also, save your money buying Office and other bits of software, download it all for free using P2P.

Well, I checked Comet and I can't find any Acer for under £500 with the M chip, 1 Gb and 100 Gb HDD... they're all 'cheats' (i.e. the one with the M chip only has a 40 Gb HDD). Anyway, I didn't search very hard because I can't be bothered.

No, you don't always get what you pay for, particularly if you don't read the detail, but given the spec of my Laptop I did a load of research and, frankly, you can't get it cheaper with all the elements I asked for and with the software and warranty.

P2P - no thank you. Moneysaving is one thing, theft is another! Particularly as a business it's a dumb thing to do.

I also know about Openoffice and even Staroffice, but again they're not quite 'there' yet in terms of my requirements as a business. I am going to be sharing documents with very important clients and I don't want to look at all homebrew - "before you open it, save it to your desktop, right click, select as " or... "well, it looked good when I presented it to you, but that bit of functionality is not compatible when saved as the MS format" etc.

I love this site, but I think sometimes the total focus on money savings can be short-sighted. Because the really important thing is VALUE FOR MONEY. I mean, this site would prefer to tell you that you should have bought a Daewoo Nubira new rather than a Volkswagen Passat - after all they're the same size, and have four wheels... but the total depreciation is about the same over the first three years AND you have a CR&P driving experience.

It's the same with the laptop... I'll go with the better experience. If it's speed saves me 1/2 an hour a day alone, plus wins me one more client a year - it will have paid for itself by the end of 2006.

pin

John, have you looked at the new Dell Latitude 620 or 820? They look like good business machines. Also could you go over your specs again?