The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

anley1

pin wrote:

With the newer Li-ion batteries that most laptops now have, this is no longer the case, you don't need to fully discharge to get longer battery life.

PIN, I read recently that if you use the mains for your laptop power most of the time it's best to take the battery out as this prolongs the life. Only put it in when you really want to be mobile etc.

Any truth in this? Thanks

jazzeeeee5

I too am looking for the best laptop under £500. I would prefer mine to be Vista ready and the Toshibas are looking pretty good.

However, I am looking hard for the best storage, ram, memory, processor, speed, graphics cards (preferably not SHARED) in the best make possible and the Toshibas in this price range have low HD storage.

Here are a few links I have found. Its tough cos I want to take some aspects from one and mix them with other aspects of others! I am buying pretty soon, so if anyone has any advice or better offers, PLEASE let me know!

This is one of the cheapest I have found for the specs on offer. Just dont know about Acers? They seem to have OK reviews?
http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_336467.html

Same price, less storage, looks better, better make?
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/305220

Same make, better specs
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1741767427.1157196828@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccjaddikejfhelcflgceggdhhmdfho.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=250372&category_oid=

Good make, less specs?
http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/store/dix_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0423432333.1157197063@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccfaddikddhfgmcflgceggdhhmdfhn.0&page=Product&fm=2&sm=0&tm=0&sku=334210&category_oid=-28733

Dells best for that price range (scroll down under the price on the right and change the home servicing to 1 year - they automatically put you down for 3 years which adds heavily to the price. It works out at £425) http://configure.euro.dell.com/dells...ftdppnotebook1

Would appreciate feedback
Jazz

Tharweb

anley1 wrote:

PIN, I read recently that if you use the mains for your laptop power most of the time it's best to take the battery out as this prolongs the life. Only put it in when you really want to be mobile etc.

Any truth in this? Thanks

Don't know/care what the official line is on this one but I do this and still get a good 3-4 hours out of mine even though its over 18 months old. If I do use the battery, I make sure I discharge it fully, then charge it up and put the battery away for the next time.

Tuxman1

Gutted, I was on Woolworths website about 1am last night. They had the £299.99 laptop in stock and in my basket, I thought I'll buy it tommorow. Now its not showing.

Just rung Comet. They are out of stock at the moment but are expecting some more in the next two weeks.

smcaul

I got one of these http://www.pcwb.com/catalogue/item/LENNB018 about 2 weeks ago, and for the money it is excellent (£380 del. with 256mb upgrade inc vat)- the connectivity software it comes with is excellent as you can set up different profiles - i.e. at home on my wireless lan I dont need a firewall as my router has one, but out and about via wifi or dial up I do need one and it lets you set those options. The battery life is very good with over 4 hours of use surfiing via wifi. It connected with ease to my PDA via built in Bluetooth. I did upgrade the memory to 512mb but that only cost £17 extra, all in all I may buy another one for my other half as it is a really good performer for the money - assuming you only want it for surfing, watching video or normal office applications, I don't think it would handle games too well, but as I am not a gamer that does not interest me.

anley1

Tharweb wrote:

Don't know/care what the official line is on this one but I do this and still get a good 3-4 hours out of mine even though its over 18 months old. If I do use the battery, I make sure I discharge it fully, then charge it up and put the battery away for the next time.

Thanks, just taken your advice.

FrappaMCL

After weeks of deliberating and constantly missing out on the £299.99 Acer offers (Comet - sold out, awaiting stock; Tesco's - my local branches sold out), I decided to opt for the Dell 1300.

The offer they have on the site at the moment is £329 for Celeron M, 256MB, 40GB (including vat and delivery). I asked them what the best deal they could do was and cited some previous deals I'd seen them advertising.

For £40 extra they upgraded it to 512MB, 60GB and included 15 months McAfee Security package.

You could probably get more if you haggled a bit better than I did or waited for them to run the next round of offers. I saw one about 8 weeks ago which offered 512MB, 60GB and a free printer for £349.

Happy laptop hunting

Derek_A.

Hi Sonic,
Laptop Superstore has ceased trading, see their website.

withabix

Anyone tried DSG's laptop website called RED CRACKER ??

Not sure if anyone has posted about it before OR if the prices are cheaper than their other websites, but worth a look...

http://www.redcracker.com/

Claims to have 'the best laptop deals on the net'.....we shall see!

DonGotti

What about this:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/489722

Comes with 512 MB, 40 GB HDD, Wireless Adaptor, and DVD Rewriter.

Battery life is awful but still think price is great.