Portable Laptop. Cheap

Sigur_2

Anyone know of slightly old-spec portable laptops (13" screens or so) that are good and reliable?

I'm about to start university and I need something portable enough I can stick it in my bag and use it while I am on the train/plane.

It doesn't need to be fancy, I'll only be running MS Office, watching movies, playing music and internet basically. No gaming or heavy graphics stuff. Plus I can buy an external HD for it, if need be to put all my music on.

Anyway info, much appreciated!

John_Gray

If you are going to be using it on the train/plane and watching DVDs on it, you want to get a laptop with a long battery life. For this you want to look at tests in computer mags, since the figures given by manufacturers are often, shall we say, optimistic...

John

Sigur_2

Sorry. No, I won't be watching DVDs on the train/plane. Just doing academic work, mainly MSOffice and maybe a few statistics programs. Won't be for more than a few hours either.

Kilty_2

Depends how much you need to spend, I think Dell made some small laptops around the Pentium 3 era if you want second hand (and cheap).

Otherwise, Aldi had one in for £499, decent spec and 12.1" screen, my store still has them on clearance so you might be lucky, unless that's out of your budget.

Rex_Mundi

Check your local free ads paper. You should be able to pick up an older laptop that would suit your needs pretty cheaply. I recently sold an old Dell Inspiron that would have done the job for you for less than £100 (including carry bag, and full MS Office installed).

albertross_2

A Dell L400 or C400 is very lightweight (The CD drives, and Floppy aren't built-in, so you don't have to carry them about), so ideal for travelling, and fine for XP (with 512+) ram. You can get a C400 for around £200-220 secondhand (they costed about £1500 new).

Sigur_2

Yeah I saw those C400 and L400, probably what I need. I have no need for a CD Drive or anything like that. Its purely going to be for MSOffice because I will have my iPod for music and my desktop for films etc.

albertross_2

http://www.blinknmissit.co.uk/

They come with a CD drive (or writer for the later models) and floppy, you just don't have to lug the weight around with you if you don't need them.

alikat_3

IBM's are very tough & reliable. If you look for the T series T20 onwards, they were originally made for the corparate market & can still be found in good working order, while older models won't guarentee batteries replacements can be found fairly cheaply, I had a T22 which had an ultrabay which could also hold a spare battery.

The X series were a little more expensive as they were a top of the range corparate model ,when they first came out & while the ones I have used have had very good battery life, they are a bit heavier than theT series.

If you google reviews you should find more info.

Sigur_2

I prob need wireless, these will have spare slots for a wireless card?

alikat_3

My T22 had a wireless card, although I couldn't say if it was added or standard.