Please help me choose a laptop!

jenhug

Hello,
I am buying a laptop. Its for daughters schoolwork, plus i'm sure it will end up being used for other stuff like online games etc (i'll be kidding myself if I say it will only ever be for homework! LOL!)

I have a budget of £400. Its a home access grant i'm using, so I need to buy from comet, or i can buy online at somewhere like misco.co.uk.

Can anyone advise me which is a good quality make to go for? help with spec would be great too.

Thanks in advance, i'm a total laptop novice!

Hammyman

For £400 you're stuck with low end consumer grade so build quality is going to be much of a muchness. Go for one with a dual core over one with a single core but more RAM and bigger hard drives. Memory and hard drives in new machines have been at a level thats far more than required for home users for 18 months now. Try and avoid ones with glossy screens if possible because they'll drive whoever is using it mental.

steve1980

The big sticky at the top should help

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1147017

jenhug

Thanks, I popped to comet, it turns out there is a choice of one! Its a Toshiba satellite pro L450D 12X

Donnie

Misco will be better, as they have a Samsung Dual Core Celeron for £370. Perhaps they will upgrade the RAM to 2GB within budget.

rdpro

Hammyman wrote: »

For £400 you're stuck with low end consumer grade

Pants - http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/vostro-3500?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

I'm not a Dell slave, but the value of this kit is pretty damn good - I'm amazed it's overlooked so often. I fix about 6 a year, compared to 6 a week of other models. The only thing I recommend is to order by phone and haggle a warranty upgrade for free.

Donnie

rdpro wrote: »

Pants - http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/vostro-3500?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

I'm not a Dell slave, but the value of this kit is pretty damn good - I'm amazed it's overlooked so often. I fix about 6 a year, compared to 6 a week of other models. The only thing I recommend is to order by phone and haggle a warranty upgrade for free.

But it isn't a machine available on the Home Access Grant and it's a £500 laptop.