Please, please, please HELP me get what I want (Laptop)

Rivaldo107

After nearly a month of looking for a good laptop deal, waiting for the sales and then thinking I've found what I'm looking for, I'm back to square one. Over the last couple of days I decided to buy the Acer Aspire 5742-i3 from Comet for £380, only to go and collect this morning to find myself doubting the purchase, due to seeing the build quality and comparing it to a Sony, and even Dell, I was not very impressed.

My budget is £400 and I wanted the best possible specs for the price, but now I think I want the best quality laptop. I'd only be using the laptop for a maximum of 25hrs a week, with word processing and internet browsing being the main tasks. I have a desktop, so it will only ever be used for OU work.

Firstly, I decided to go for a Novatech i3 for £380 with no OS, looking to install Ubuntu, but then I realised I can get a Dell Inspiron 15r from Dell for £400 with Windows 7 and then dual boot. After thinking I'd wait until the sales, I came across the Acer 5742-i3 and I decided that was the one for me and to just go for it. Coming across M&S and John Lewis' free 2 year guarantee has thrown me into more doubt, as I could not afford to replace the laptop in the next 18 months.

Coming back to the present, I am again back to square one with a number of options, but not the confidence to go for one outright. I've got a number of queries and if anyone can help me I'd be hugely grateful.

1. Do I really need i3 for the tasks I'd be carrying out? (NO gaming)
2. Dell, Acer, Sony, Asus or HP for an all-round good laptop?
3. Asus from Ebuyer - £379.99? I've heard great things about Asus and I can't afford a Sony.
4. Will an average laptop run considerably slower if I dual-boot with Linux?
5. Can I use the Windows 7 licence on my desktop (currently running Linux), dual boot that and use the laptop with Linux as the sole OS?

All in all, I just want a laptop that meets my requirements, budget and will last. If there are any other deals you can recommend, please let me know, please.

Ian

amcluesent

Can't see Ubuntu being much good for OU work, IIRC they want work submitted as Word .doc files.

I bought a cracking HP NC6400 off Ebay last week for less than £200, solid as a rock machine designed for business use, and it'll run Vista fine. I used one when doing an MSc a few years back.

JJ_Egan

. Can I use the Windows 7 licence on my desktop (currently running Linux), dual boot that and use the laptop with Linux as the sole OS?

No it will be OEM licensed to the laptop and probably fail activation .

jje

dave_dph

I have an ASUS X5DAB which I bought from ebuyer this time last year for aroung £360, have to say it's a great laptop. It came with Vista installed, but I did a clean install of W7 which came as a free upgrade. It has an Athlon X2 QL65 processor with 3Gb ram and runs great. I am not one of those who hates Vista, but have to say W7 runs great on this machine!

I did dual boot it with Ubuntu 10.10 for a while but have recently formatted and re-installed W7 on its own. Dual booting didn't slow the machine down, but I found the battery life was pretty poor whilst running Ubuntu and the laptop was permanently on charge. (I am currently considering dual booting my desktop - Vista & Ubuntu, just cos I like to mess!)

Rivaldo107

Thanks for the replies. They've cleared a few things up for me.

I'm tempted to go for the Asus now from Ebuyer and potentially just run it on Windows 7. Would you read too much into surveys regarding laptop reliability, or is just luck and preference?

free4440273

Rivaldo107 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. They've cleared a few things up for me.

I'm tempted to go for the Asus now from Ebuyer and potentially just run it on Windows 7. Would you read too much into surveys regarding laptop reliability, or is just luck and preference?

I always say -- although reviews are useful -- but in conjunction with, best to go to a retailer and actually use the laptop/ inspect the screen/build quality/keyboard etc... photos on the net/magazine can always be 'glossed' and give a false impression // it's what I do anyhow :cool: //

candtalan

amcluesent wrote: »

Can't see Ubuntu being much good for OU work, IIRC they want work submitted as Word .doc files.

What a thing to say! Open Office will easily produce doc files, and other formats too. It can also create nice quality pdf files, I think the latest version can even import pdf. There is nothing preventing a user running Open Office and Microsoft Word on the same machine (Windows) which has the advantage that when time passes and upgrades are called for, the Open Office suite can be upgrade free of cost. Most GNU/Linux systems, (eg Ubuntu) come with Open Office. It is also very easy to install Windows inside Ubuntu or the like using (say) virtualbox, and you can if you wish, run Word itself.