Laptop Buying Advice - EBuyer Sale any good

Huggins

Hi All,

I'm looking to buy a laptop in the near future for my business. It doesn't need to be 'state of the art' just suitable for running windows,excel, dreamweaver, surfing the internet at a good speed.

The only other requirement would be a decent size screen - as my eyesight isn't the best!

I have just recived an email from ebuyer for a laptop sale - are any of these any good? http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c3BlY2lhbHM=&special_uid=935&ebid=1214 if not are there any other good offers about currently for laptops?
Also what should I look for in a laptop - I'm not very technial on computers.

Many thx Huggins

nickmack

To be honest I think this laptop is a bit underpowered.

With only 256Mb of RAM and this being shared with the video memory, you will find it struggles once you have a few applications open.

The Celeron processor is also not very fast when you could get a Mobile Pentium for a little more.

Have a look at Dell, particularly the Inspiron 1300. You can get this with a Pentium 1.7, 512Mb RAM, 60Gb Hard Disk and a 15.4" widescreen for about £100 more than the EBuyer deal.

fguk

Im with nickmack on this one

That Tosh is a little underpowered for your requirements, and if the Inspiron 1300 can be specced up as mentioned, then that will do the job well.

General buying advice for laptops is

Buy from a big name ie, Dell, HP, Toshiba, IBM, Acer (plenty of them at ebuyer).

See if you can get a hands on session before you buy (difficult with Dell), you can do worse than pop down to PC World and see what size screen you find comfortable etc. (Try not to buy from there, itll cost you!).

Get yourself a Pentium Mobile, or Pentium Curo Solo or Duo for best performance. Try and get at least 512Mb of ram. Wireless should be included as well.

Have a think about software, getting MS Office pre-installed is the cheapest (legal) way to get a license.

Little_John

A celeron and 256mb will run what you want to do if you knock the dreamweaver side of things. dreamweaver is quite power hungry compaired to the rest and you should be looking for a 1.6 centrino/pentium M or higher, single or dual core a dual core is a nice thing to have but not really required for what your doing. You would also be better to get 512Mb of ram.

All the other things are irelevent amount of storage, CD or DVD drives that will write to CD or DVD just buy the largest hard disk you can afford if you need ot be able ot writhe to DVD buy one with a DVD writer. Internet browsing at speed depends more on the connection than the hardware but general web browsing is fine on a 512kbps connection if your a heavy downloader then the faster the better. Any new Laptop will be able to open applications including web browsers quickly.

Huggins

ok many thanks people for all your great help. I have just been looking at the spec of my home comp and it's only 256mb ram. This might explain why it's slow with dreamweaver sometimes - whats exactly is RAM and how much roughly would it cost to get it uprgraded to 512mb for the home comp?

Back to the laptops the Dell one sounds just the ticket but is more than i wanted to spend. I may go for this ok many thanks people for all your great help. I have just been looking at the spec of my home comp and it's only 256mb ram. This might explain why it's slow with dreamweaver sometimes - whats exactly is RAM and how much roughly would it cost to get it uprgraded to 512mb for the home comp?

The dell option is more than I was looking to spend. I think i might have a go at one of these instead http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=225297&highlight=tesco+laptop - but again it has the celeron processor? would I REALLY notice the difference between this and the Mobile Pentium processir in your opinions?

nickmack

Huggins wrote:

I have just been looking at the spec of my home comp and it's only 256mb ram. This might explain why it's slow with dreamweaver sometimes - whats exactly is RAM and how much roughly would it cost to get it uprgraded to 512mb for the home comp?

RAM or Random Access Memory is designed to hold data about applications and running programs on your PC. Every application you run, uses some RAM, some more than others. In context to your case, I am currently running Dreamweaver on my PC and it is using 62Mb of RAM.

They come in "sticks", which are mini printed circuit boards with memory chips on. There are different types and which you need will depend on your PC. Use the memory advisor tool at this link to find out what type you need.

The dell option is more than I was looking to spend. I think i might have a go at one of these instead http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=225297&highlight=tesco+laptop - but again it has the celeron processor? would I REALLY notice the difference between this and the Mobile Pentium processir in your opinions?

Again this only has 256Mb and Celeron processor. Given the choice between this and the Toshiba, I would go for the Toshiba for better quality.

You won't notice a huge difference in the Celeron and Pentiums except for applications that perform a lot of internal calculations. However the combination of 256Mb RAM and a Celeron is very low spec for a new Windows XP machine.

You should perhaps rethink a little about this laptop. Can you use a desktop instead for Dreamweaver? If it's for a business then you should seriously consider stretching the budget by £100 to get a much better machine.

SMC_2

Have a look at Comet, they have some great deals on Acer laptops and they are good value for money.