PC World £150 cash back for old laptop

fluffysheep

I was wondering if anyone had taken advantage of the PC World offer of £150 cash back for an old laptop under 4 years old http://pcworld.pctradeup.com/claim.php

I've looked around the MSE forums but most references appear to be for the £100 cashback previously offered to upgrade to a Windows7 system.

The cashback appears to be valid only if you purchase a refurbished laptop from the PC World site. The refurbished laptops on the site don't appear to be great value but if £150 were to be knocked off, then I think I'd be interested.

Is there anything I should watch out for? Such as less than the £150 being given (it's cash back to be claimed after making a purchase). For example, the power cable I have for my Dell laptop is not the original, would that cause the cashback to be reduced?

Also, is there anything specific one should look out for with refurbished laptops? They come with a 12 month warranty and for ~£200, I'd be happy to get a year or more out of a laptop - since my current one has all but given up.

fwor

My personal view is that I would not buy a refurbed laptop from PC World, because I don't have any confidence that they will have adequately tested it, to ensure that it has no intermittent (possibly heat-related) faults.

Laptops really need to be soak tested under load, and I don't trust them to do much more than turn it on, see that it loads the OS Ok and then turn it off.

Of course, there's a good chance that you will get lucky and receive one that was returned because the buyer didn't like the colour, but if you're not, you can expect a Customer Service nightmare...

What's so wrong about your current laptop? A typical Dell that's under 4 years old should not be giving you performance problems.

fluffysheep

fwor wrote: »

My personal view is that I would not buy a refurbed laptop from PC World, because I don't have any confidence that they will have adequately tested it, to ensure that it has no intermittent (possibly heat-related) faults.

Laptops really need to be soak tested under load, and I don't trust them to do much more than turn it on, see that it loads the OS Ok and then turn it off.

Of course, there's a good chance that you will get lucky and receive one that was returned because the buyer didn't like the colour, but if you're not, you can expect a Customer Service nightmare...

What's so wrong about your current laptop? A typical Dell that's under 4 years old should not be giving you performance problems.

Thanks for the input - I'd be sceptical myself but for £200 I was hoping I might get some use out of it. From the experience of my previous two laptops (£1,000 and £500) I'm sceptical of putting any money into a laptop that may not function as intended for more than a year.

The three-year warranty has just expired on my Dell laptop, having been "repaired" frequently during that time. It's been getting progressively slower to the point that I now cannot even use the web or iTunes comfortably. Dell suggested that this was due to a lack of RAM and that I purchase more but I don't think it's worth putting more money into it, since the motherboard and hard drive (three times) were already replaced under warranty and yet performance has continued to decline.

The Dell is hardly useable at the moment and now that it's out of warranty, I'd be worried in case it stops working entirely (again).

closed

The reason a laptop gets slower with age is because of the software loaded at startup.

Backup data, restore to factory settings using recovery partition or disc, and it won't be slow anymore, or look at what software you have running.

fluffysheep

closed wrote: »

The reason a laptop gets slower with age is because of the software loaded at startup.

Backup data, restore to factory settings using recovery partition or disc, and it won't be slow anymore, or look at what software you have running.

Following a reformat or each time the hard-drive has been replaced, the laptop continues to run slow. There's very little software installed on it - save for Windows, a couple of browers, iTunes, Open Office. There's nothing running at startup, save for those loaded by Windows itself.

JasX

closed wrote: »

The reason a laptop gets slower with age is because of the software loaded at startup.

Backup data, restore to factory settings using recovery partition or disc, and it won't be slow anymore, or look at what software you have running.

Strongly, suggest trying the above before spending money on another laptop, Dells I've had experience of have all proven fairly reliable and of
reasonable if unremarkable build quality (unlike say Acer's or Advent's).

unless your useage of the machine has changed and you're doing something that needs alot more processing power a reset should make it just as speedy as it was when new

(and getting into good habits of not repeatedly installing/uninstalling unessary programs over time will help keep it faster for longer too)

JasX

fluffysheep wrote: »

Following a reformat or each time the hard-drive has been replaced, the laptop continues to run slow. There's very little software installed on it - save for Windows, a couple of browers, iTunes, Open Office. There's nothing running at startup, save for those loaded by Windows itself.

ok cross post, there will be a few basic checks. How much RAM does the machine have? what version of windows is it running? what processor does it have and if possible can you see what size your page file is (control panel>system> performance)? is there a decent amount of free space on the hard drive (ideally don't fill it above 90-95% max if you can avoid it.... actually just don't...).

Has it always been slow? could be something simple like they've not bothered to install the graphics driver and its limping along trying to display things with a generic wiindows one.....

fluffysheep

JasX wrote: »

Strongly, suggest trying the above before spending money on another laptop, Dells I've had experience of have all proven fairly reliable and of
reasonable if unremarkable build quality (unlike say Acer's or Advent's).

unless your useage of the machine has changed and you're doing something that needs alot more processing power a reset should make it just as speedy as it was when new

(and getting into good habits of not repeatedly installing/uninstalling unessary programs over time will help keep it faster for longer too)

Beyond the first few months of ownership, the laptop has been consistently slow. In spite of reformatting (and indeed replacing) the hard drive, it's just got slower to the point that it is now not worth using.

fwor

fluffysheep wrote: »

Following a reformat or each time the hard-drive has been replaced, the laptop continues to run slow. There's very little software installed on it - save for Windows, a couple of browers, iTunes, Open Office. There's nothing running at startup, save for those loaded by Windows itself.

That is surprising - I've got a 6 year old Compaq laptop and it's running Ok with either Linux or WinXP (the former being considerably faster to load).

How much memory and what version of Windows? If it's Vista, you probably will need more memory...

[Edit: cross-posting with JasX now! His suggestion about not having the proper system/graphics drivers installed is a good one to check.]

Hammyman

fluffysheep wrote: »

Following a reformat or each time the hard-drive has been replaced, the laptop continues to run slow. There's very little software installed on it - save for Windows, a couple of browers, iTunes, Open Office. There's nothing running at startup, save for those loaded by Windows itself.

Is the fan running all the time?

closed

itunes loads startup items for one, post a hijackthis log, physical memory and commit charge figures from task manager, graphics card make, and more specifics on what slow means.