The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

withabix

T4i wrote:

Any views on this?

FUJITSU SIEMEN AMILO 7320G Laptops - £399.99

Best spec I've seen for the price so far, went in to Curry's and had a look, the display model was playing a DVD - looked crisp!

Also, are there two types of laptop screens? Some I looked at are the ones I kow about - a dull looking plastic

The others I've seen look more like glass, shiny. Does anyone know what I'm on about? lol

Looked at that one and went for the 'Tesco' Acer Aspire 3634WLMi instead. The Fujitsu build quality didn't look as good and it has less RAM, although it was slightly faster processor.

The 'shiny' screens are better in bright light conditions and outside. Also supposedly give a better 'multimedia' experience when watching movies or pictures. Most of the widescreen lappies have these now - flavour of the month!

Kilty_2

Browntoa wrote:

the parts are all the cheapest available, poor quality build ( I've seen one with cross threaded screws on the Cd drives where they forced them in) premium rate support (Support for customers without Support Packs: 0906 200 1002. Please note that calls are charged at £1.00 per minute)

12 Month Standard Warranty


Parts and Labour Costs only

Customer pays carriage costs

I agree, do not touch Time unless you want burnt.

Bunch of scamming *****.

Try Dell, no doubt you can spec up an Intel based laptop for less (and Intel laptops are far better for battery life and performance anyway)

Rumman

withabix wrote:

Looked at that one and went for the 'Tesco' Acer Aspire 3634WLMi instead. The Fujitsu build quality didn't look as good and it has less RAM, although it was slightly faster processor.

The 'shiny' screens are better in bright light conditions and outside. Also supposedly give a better 'multimedia' experience when watching movies or pictures. Most of the widescreen lappies have these now - flavour of the month!

hey i think i bought the same laptop, this one acer 3630, 512ram, 80gb dvd rw 1.6 celeron?

i got mine from comet for £400 but got a free 25 quid laptop bag thrown in just by asking

T4i

Think I've found all my choices:-

Toshiba 100-179 £399.99
Acer Aspire 5044WLMI £399.99
Fujitsu Amilo L7320 £399.99
Toshiba Satalite Pro M50 £399.99

Or do I take my chances on e-bay......

moob_2

T4i wrote:

Think I've found all my choices:-

Toshiba 100-179 £399.99
Acer Aspire 5044WLMI £399.99
Fujitsu Amilo L7320 £399.99
Toshiba Satalite Pro M50 £399.99

Or do I take my chances on e-bay......

I've been patiently waiting to get this one, it has some major advantages over most of the units you've posted, including 4.5 hr battery life, quality RAM, decent graphics and a DVDRW+/-...

I'm reliably informed it will be in stock between 2-4/10/06.

Forgot link

DebH

Quote
I've been patiently waiting to get this one, it has some major advantages over most of the units you've posted, including 4.5 hr battery life, quality RAM, decent graphics and a DVDRW+/-...

I am looking for decent laptop but was told I may need separate graphics card as I do web design (dreamweaver) and photo editing (photo shop). Is it really necessary or will this graphics card be OK? I follow this thread avidly but am still confused! I keep looking at the Dell website but if I need separate graphics card prices shoot up.

Thanks for any advice.

jbatista

Well I finally bought this dell laptop this morning, can you tell me what you all think? and the price too-£342 with free double memory and I emailed the fab customer service guy who gave me 1/2 price delivery too inc in the price.


Base Intel® Celeron® M Processor 380 (1.60 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 400 MHz FSB)
Microsoft Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2

Memory 512MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x256)

Hard Drive 60GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive

Primary Battery 6 Cell, 56Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery

I also paid a bit extra for a dif battery, what are the main differences and how much battery life should I get from this one?

HeaddyMX

I bought an Acer Travelmate 2420 from Savastore a few weeks ago, for £400. It's a Celeron-based lightweight computer which has decent specs, including built-in wireless connection.
Unfortunately it doesn't have Bluetooth as I'd like, even though it has the switch.

Rumman

withabix wrote:

They won't sell many at that price anyway - it's overpriced by about £100-£140 against the market at present.

I agree with Browntoa - don't touch them with a bargepole. They peddled rubbish and aren't ther most reliable supplier in the market by a long shot.

Hopefully they won't be around for long.

Just got a fairly good price at Tesco for an Acer 3634WLMI (version LX.ABU05.333) for £399.94 for the missus (£384 if you deduct value of Clubcard Deals). Actually quite impressed with the build quality for the price.

Spec here:

Intel Celeron-M 380 Processor 1.6 GHz
1024 MB DDRII-533MHz SDRAM
60 GB Hard Drive
DVD Dual Layer Drive
15.4" WXGA Widescreen TFT Screen with CrystalBrite Technology
Integrated gigabit LAN
Integrated wireless 802.11 b/g LAN
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Pre Loaded
3 X USB2
PCMCIA card slot
Front audio connectors

Graphics are only 64MB shared but it isn't going to be a gaming machine!

i bought the same one from comet with 80gb instead of 1gb of ram tho but got a laptop bag in for a fiver

moob_2

DebH wrote:

Quote
I've been patiently waiting to get this one, it has some major advantages over most of the units you've posted, including 4.5 hr battery life, quality RAM, decent graphics and a DVDRW+/-...

I am looking for decent laptop but was told I may need separate graphics card as I do web design (dreamweaver) and photo editing (photo shop). Is it really necessary or will this graphics card be OK? I follow this thread avidly but am still confused! I keep looking at the Dell website but if I need separate graphics card prices shoot up.

Thanks for any advice.

I'm pretty sure it would handle Dreamweaver and photoshop apps, the main thing is the cpu and RAM for such apps, and it's more than adequate.

The RAM on this unit runs at 667...