Sub £300 Laptop

Harrystottal

barbel wrote:

laptop users beware !
Constantly charging of your laptop battery will cook it better than Gordon f£c*ing ramsey .
Deplete and then re charge , This will extend the life of any laptop battery.
all the best .. 1hr 15 mins for a battery... mine lasts 5hr 19 at 98%

Yo u'll,

I have had a Toshiba Satellite for at least 18 mths now. I use it from morning till night some days and I keep it perminately plugged into the mains. I have never fried a battery yet!! Infact I'm still using the original battery. Maybe it depends on the make and model of laptop.

Harry :cool:

timbellina

Harrystottal wrote:

Yo u'll,

I have had a Toshiba Satellite for at least 18 mths now. I use it from morning till night some days and I keep it perminately plugged into the mains. I have never fried a battery yet!! Infact I'm still using the original battery. Maybe it depends on the make and model of laptop.

Harry :cool:

I think what barbel means is that constant use of the battery in that way trashes it. Dell actually suggest you use their laptops with the battery removed if you're going to use it on the mains for prolonged periods. A couple of years ago I trashed my satellite battery in a month by running SETI at home 24/7 on the mains. The replacement cost £45, and I don't use SETI any more. And in my new Dell, I chose the long life battery; got an extra long life battery, and use it 90% of the time with the battery removed. No probs yet.

How long does your battery last if you unplug the mains, Harry? And does it go 100% - 99% - 98% - 95% - 0%! all in a rush?


Tim

codetown

Not directly connected to the model above, but quite a good table I have used for comparing different laptop models is this:
http://www.reportlabs.com/testbed/version1/nbv1/nbtop50.php

It gives a good summary of benchmark rating and battery life (and also weight in the top battery list) for different laptop models.
Use it if you have doubts about performance of branded notebooks!

wigan_rl_till_i_die

5% off aswell

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deal/377/expired-5-off-200-pcworld

TaBunny

sounds a good deal I think and can't argue with the money cheaper than some refurbs I've seen

royalsteve

RedOnRed wrote:

It does look very good for the price.

As a "techie", my main concerns would be compatibility and reliability for a unfamiliar brand.

Compatibilty in so much as you do connect a lot of things into laptops and also you might want something like a port replicator and WILL need a replacement battery eventually.

Reliability in so much as are parts going to be readily available and what's the warranty like. Laptops tend to be less reliable then PC's and parts for them tend to be more bespoke.

Personally, i'd spend a bit extra and look out for a bargain branded laptop.

not so much as bespoke, but merely rebranded/rebadged as there are surprisingly few manufacturers of computer products

compatiability isnt so much a problem these days, well compared to 10-15 years ago anyway....usb is one connectivity method that has allieviated some compatibility issues...but alas has created some new issues too

royalsteve

codetown wrote:

I use laptops a lot travelling, running from an airport to a train station, abroad, in meetings etc. Not always is easy to have time/possibility to recharge. Lots of times I could simply not use the laptop becuase it had flat battery and far too many times I had to stop my work because of lack of power. Even at home I tend to use the laptop on my lap sitting in the garden or anyway not at a power cord distance of a power plug.
Also most of the complaints I ever hear from collegues are: battery life (too little) and weight (too much). None is ever worried about lack of CPU power....

So, it all depends on what usage you plan to do with your lappy.
I sent just a warning. I was about to go with an extremly tempting offer (much more tempting that this) just a few days ago, but desisted because the battery life was rated up to 2 hours, which today is insufficient for me.

Anyone has its own needs of course, so if you run the laptop from home desk all the time, simply disconnect your battery pack and enjoy any of the laptops on offer!

absolutely, the 2 most important things are battery life and weight (including screen size)......how important they are depends how often you are 'out and about'.

do you need a laptop with 17in screen which weighs a mere 5-6 kg and with bag, etc totals 10-12kg - do you really want to carry this every day for 2 miles a day and look like an orangatang at the end of the week or try a 14.1 inch screen laptop with weights around 2-2.5kg?

Processor speed and memory are pretty important but all laptops will be ok to run most business applications (word, excel, etc) and surf the internet....but just consider how long you intend to keep your laptop.....a low spec machine may be unable to run even basic apps in 2 years time

personally im not bothered about graphics cards in laptops or decent sound - why? - eats battery power and these laptops generally get very hot......feel how hot a toshiba qosimo gets...ridiculous...not only that they are alot more expensive

bought my wife a toshiba 110-275 from Comet of all places - 1.83mhz dual core processor, 1 mb ram, 15.4in wxga ultrabrite screen, 60gb hard drive for £649 - does the job o running business apps, surfing internet and playing kids games with ease and future proof for at least a couple of years (I wish!!)

Mal27

Also, if you want extended battery life then consider under clocking your CPU and graphics chips... although this depends on the chips you have on the laptop.

I have a T42 that I got really cheap last year and by doing this the battery life has gone from four hours to somewhere between five and six. It's quite a complex thing to perfect but it's worth it. My one dynamically switches between speeds and automatically uses low rates and voltages when on battery mode.

Another side effect is the laptop doesn't get as hot and the fan stays off most of the time, so it is very quiet. I also switched the hard disk and dvd drive into quiet modes, so at the moment it's a perfect laptop.

The software that does all this is Notebook Hardware Control.

RedOnRed

royalsteve wrote:

not so much as bespoke, but merely rebranded/rebadged as there are surprisingly few manufacturers of computer products

compatiability isnt so much a problem these days, well compared to 10-15 years ago anyway....usb is one connectivity method that has allieviated some compatibility issues...but alas has created some new issues too

A lot of the parts for laptops are made specifically for the model or brand of the laptop. That includes the battery, case, keyboard and system board and a lot of those things need replacing with a laptop. That's what I meant really about compatibility.

smsmasters

I build PCs and this is what I think about this laptop. I have similar DELL Laptop with similar specs as this and it is very good for the price.

- Intel Celeron M 380 Processor 1.6GHz
Quite a fast processor considering the price, it is about as fast a Pentium 4 2.0 ghz. Still decent for word processing, internet, but slow for gaming, video editing, etc...

- 400 MHz FSB
This is the bus speed between the processor and motherboard. Still decent, although my dual core processor has a FSB of 1066 MHz and I have overclocked it to 4GHz from 3GHz.

- 1 MB Cache
Pretty good, my dual core processor has 2x 2MB Cache.

- 512 MB RAM
Not enough for video editing and other memory hungry software. I recommend at least 1GB, even 2GB if you work with large multimedia files.

- 40 GB Hard Drive
This will fill up quickly if you have lots of media files.

- DVD ReWriter MultiDrive
This is great.

- 14.1" TFT Display
Decent.

- Microsoft Windows XP Home
Windows Vista is coming out this November, bear that in mind.

- 64 MB Shared Graphics
Utter crap if you want to play games. This basically means 64MB is used from your system RAM for graphics.

olykun wrote:

PC World have a fairly decent laptop for £297.86 its got a DVD Writer, Wi-Fi, and 512MB of RAM, which for this price is pretty good. Delivery is £14.95, but you can collect in store if you prefer. Add your Quidco discount into it and delivered its £294.04 or if you pick it up £288.92. Not bad. The brand is PC World's own, but you get one year warrenty with it, somewhat more than Dell's 90 day offering.

On top of that you can have an extra battery, if that takes your fancy, for a tenner!

Cant work out how to make a link directly to it, but this should do, its not a refferal by the way, just a strange link: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1472018564.1162399708@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccejaddjffjmkjecflgceggdhhmdgml.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=919877&category_oid=


Specs below:

Features for this EI SYSTEMS 3083
- Intel Celeron M 380 Processor 1.6GHz
- 400 MHz FSB
- 1 MB Cache
- 512 MB RAM
- 40 GB Hard Drive
- DVD ReWriter MultiDrive
- 14.1" TFT Display
- Microsoft Windows XP Home
- 64 MB Shared Graphics
- 1 Year Free Warranty

Specification for this EI SYSTEMS 3083
Processor Type Celeron M 380
Processor speed 1600 mhz
Memory Size 512 mb
Memory Type DDR333
Hard Drive Capacity 40 Gb
Optical Drives DVDRW
CD-ROM Speed 48 x
CD-RW Speed. 24 x
DVD-ROM Speed 8 x
DVD-RW Speed 4 x
Floppy Disk Drive No
Screen Size/Type 14.1" XGA
Graphics Card Type Integrated Graphics
Graphics Memory 64 shared mb
TV-out No
Sound Type AC97 16bit
Modem Type 56k
Wireless Enabled Yes
No. of USB Connections 4
No. of Firewire Connections 0
Infrared Port Included No
Other Interfaces 10/100 LAN Ethernet
Battery Type Li-ion
Battery life (up to) 1 hours
Software Titles Included Works 8.5
Operating system WIN XP
Weight 2.8 kg
Height 32 mm
Width 326 mm
Depth 258 mm
Colour Silver