£299.92 laptop at Tesco

rhig

I would look at what you can get refurbished for £300 vs this, it isn’t a bad spec performance wise but Acer lapops are generally very poor in terms of build quality.

If you definitely want something new its worth spending another £100 on a low end Dell or Toshiba, personally I believe the Dells are less temperamental, I have seen a few Toshibas send back in the last year. For the extra money you will probably get 512MB RAM and a faster processor. The only thing I really think is nice about this laptop is they have given you a 15.4” screen, I would have imagined they would be selling it with just 14”.

The refurbished market is often overlooked for budget laptops, you will be able to get something for £300 that cost a lot more on release and is well built. Budget laptops usually just come with a 1 year (or sometimes 3 month) guarantee, which is often no better than you will get refurbished. So long as you make sure the battery is good you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, if it breaks you will likely get a new laptop quickly if it can’t be repaired as opposed to what I imagine will be a standard return to base warranty.

If you can wait I would wait till September, there will be a lot more to choose from with retailers trying to sell students laptops, I’m sure Dell will run an offer on top of their usual deals along with eBuyer, PC World and Dabs. Sure no-one is going to beat £299 with a good computer but you might pick something better up for £350.

nej

There is nothing wrong with Acer. The build quality may not be up to that of IBM, but then neither is the price! I know a couple of people with Acers who have no problems. I have an Acer TFT at work that's great.

I don't get the whole refurb argument. If a machine is a year or two old, then frankly it's a year or two closer to failing. It may be working fine when you get it, but if, for example, a hard disk might last 5 years (I've had some last 10 or more and some last 2, so I'm using 5 as a generalisation) then you've only got 3 years left. If you buy a new one you've got 5 years left. Warranty isn't everything... components probably will fail at some point.

Personally, I would never buy a refurb. They often only have a 3 month warranty on them anyway.

The only exception here might be a machine from the Dell Outlet store, which are often returns rather than refurbs. Still expensive though. Interestingly none of their "cheap" machines are available - it's mainly mid-to-high end stuff.

And spending another £100 is only an option if you've got another £100 to spend. That's kind of like saying "why buy that Kia when you can get a BMW for only £10k more". Ok, I'm being faceitious but you see the point!

rdwarr

rhig wrote:

... but Acer lapops are generally very poor in terms of build quality.

I disagree. Perhaps not up to a Dell Latitude but I'd rate much more highly than a Dell Inspiron.
When laptops sold for £3000 they could afford to build them well. But £300 doesn't allow a lot of margin for decent construction regardless of the manufacturer. Just look at the IBM R-series versus the T-series.

nej

Just popped to local Extra store in my lunch break... still nothing.

Alison_B

I have been phoning 7 stores within a 60 mile radius to me and nobody seems to know anything about this. Contacted customer services number that was in the booklet 4 times now and they say that it should have been in the stores from 16 July. Contacted head office to see if I could find out any further information and they put me in touch with one of the managers from the customer services department. He is going to find out some more information for me as I was pretty angry with all this chasing up. Will let you all know if I find anything out.

nej

I'm going to run into the store near my house on my way home, see if they have any there.

Kimberley

If you just want it for the internet and home use, these are not bad prices for second hand ones

http://www.val-u-computers.co.uk/

Oh and how so you increase the ram size? I've got a 256mb and would like to increase it a little.

hibs72

i dont know if this helps anyone but tesco's in Antrim (northern ireland) had 2 this afternoon

vinylmusic

twe wrote:

Dell have some current offers, £399 laptop or £380 if you go through a cashback site: code UKDHSONL-N07136 offer finishes in a day or 2....

1.7GHz Centrino processor
512MB RAM
60GB HD
DVD writer
wireless lan

also bigger battery is only £11 more or 15.4" screen is £35 more otherwise its a 14.1" screen....

Watch out with Dell, often you only get 90 days return to base warranty. Its £99 to upgrade to 3 years.
Shop around even more. Companies like Evesham give 3 years warranty as standard.

Someone I know bought a dell and thought he was doing well since it came wuth a free printer. I dont think he realised that their printers are very expensive on ink and you cant get cheaper cartridges so easily. Not like you can with an epson

nej

Alison_B wrote:

I have been phoning 7 stores within a 60 mile radius to me and nobody seems to know anything about this. Contacted customer services number that was in the booklet 4 times now and they say that it should have been in the stores from 16 July. Contacted head office to see if I could find out any further information and they put me in touch with one of the managers from the customer services department. He is going to find out some more information for me as I was pretty angry with all this chasing up. Will let you all know if I find anything out.

Well my wife just tried our local one and the guy still hadnt heard anything about it. I just tried the Purley Way one and nothing there. Nobody on CS to ask either.

It's getting silly now!