The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

moob_2

-1- wrote:

UPTO 1 hour too.

Goto Tesco see what they have. Some of their Acers are ok.

They only tend to get 1.5-2 hrs.

lapnutty

Hi

as anyone seen comet the acer 1642 -£499.99 or £479.99 online -sounds ok

http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_336521.html

i've been looking at dell 1300 works out as £581 for same spec.

choice far too many i'm confused with it all - but it's an expensive mistake if you choose the wrong laptop!

going2die_rich

Whats a good average battery time that a laptop should provide?

I am looking for a laptop but need to know what a good battery time is, as thats my biggest requirement due to no mains connections being available where it'll be used.

cannyscot_2

Same here-want a laptop mainly to use word & excel-want ok battery life -to use when travelling and a decent screen -poor eyesight so prefer bigger and brighter.

Searched the thread only got more confused. I have two dell towers so usually would just buy a dell but not sure now.

Also need office at least basic 2007.

Any help by those more technically minded would be much appreciated.

Edit- Inspiron 1300
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735a (1.70 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 400MHz FSB), Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2 (Does not include Operating System Re-Installation CD)


£429 is this any good?

moob_2

going2die_rich wrote:

Whats a good average battery time that a laptop should provide?

I am looking for a laptop but need to know what a good battery time is, as thats my biggest requirement due to no mains connections being available where it'll be used.

I'd be looking for a min of 4 hours. Otherwise, what's the point in the laptop being portable?

moob_2

cannyscot wrote:

Same here-want a laptop mainly to use word & excel-want ok battery life -to use when travelling and a decent screen -poor eyesight so prefer bigger and brighter.

Searched the thread only got more confused. I have two dell towers so usually would just buy a dell but not sure now.

Also need office at least basic 2007.

Any help by those more technically minded would be much appreciated.

Edit- Inspiron 1300
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735a (1.70 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 400MHz FSB), Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2 (Does not include Operating System Re-Installation CD)


£429 is this any good?

Would need more specs to comment, but Dell offer good value most the time. I'd wait and see how their offers change, as they do frequently...

Kilty_2

TBH save the money and go for the Celeron-M equivelant, for word processing it makes no difference and difference in battery life ***on that base model*** is negligible (sp?). Make sure you get the 6 cell battery though.

As for Office, why not run OpenOffice instead?

T4i

I too am looking into laptops, never owned one before. The only reason I want one is so I can sit downstairs using the net.

I really don't need a beefy CPU as it wont be doing that much work, I'd rather have more memory than the latest CPU speeds, not too fussed about HDD space either as I will be using a wireless network to store files on my desktop upstairs, so oviously needs wireless, but not essential as I can just by a dongle later.

Not really bothered about battery life either as we have plenty plug sockets downstairs to run the laptop off, anyone seen any good offers that suit my needs??

Meatbingo

T4i: Definitely have a look in Tesco at their Acers. Don't know if the £299 one is still available, but that is the one I bought and I use it for basically the same purpose as you require. It has been fantastic and I've used it much more than I expected I would. Only thing is that it only has 256MB RAM, but this is easily rectified. I'll be adding another 512MB to mine soon.

BTW, for anyone concerned about Celeron M based laptops - don't be. I run a lot of CPU intensive music creation software. The Celeron M 1.6ghz in my laptop happily beats my desktop Athlon XP2800+ by a decent margin.

T4i

Acer 2423WXMI Travelmate Laptop - Can only find this model.

£348.97 - Not a bad price though.