Total laptop novice - need to buy one - any pointers?

Lorna

Hi, I want to buy my mum a laptop for her birthday. She'll mainly use it for word processing letters, sending emails and surfing the web, so nothing flashy. But as with most users I guess she'd like a decent speed laptop and decent memory. I've been recommended a Dell Inspiron laptop, which I've Googled, but no idea which model to buy and how important or not different processors (dual core, intel etc etc) are....the budget is around the £300-350 ish mark. Any help from someone with a bit more knowledge than me in buying something suitable would be very much appreciated!

Lorna

Sorry, I should also have added that a decent battery life would be great, and if it came complete with Microsoft Word and Excel that would be a bonus!

chippy2u

Just bought a Toshiba laptop from Tesco. Intel dual processor 2.2, 4Gb ram,500Gb hard drive and built in web cam, in store price £359. (Actually got it cheaper than that as DD used her staff discount card!!) It might be slightly over budget but it seems a good buy. Try and get it in store as Tesco catalogue say £379, on line £369. I think this will do everything she wants plus a lot more.

dg1dd1ngs_2

My sister has just brought the Samsung NP-RV510, or you can buy it from Amazon.

• CPU & Chipset: Intel® Celeron™ Dual Core Processor T3500, 2.13GHz
• Display: 15.6" WXGA LED, Gloss, 1366 x 768
• Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 Bit)
• Storage: 500GB SATA
• Memory: 3GB

It doesn't come with MS Office but you could always pop OpenOffice on there for her

Knarf44

This looks like a decent machine for the money. Good brand, Lenovo, decent enough dual core processor, dedicated graphics.

macman

Lorna wrote: »

Sorry, I should also have added that a decent battery life would be great, and if it came complete with Microsoft Word and Excel that would be a bonus!

No laptops come with a full version of MS Office included, the most you'll get is a time-limited trial version. Use OpenOffice, it will do almost everything that MS Office does, and will read and save in Office-compatible formats.
Any modern laptop will be more than adequate for the tasks you have outlined, all you need is a basic minimum spec, something like:
Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.
320GB hard drive.
3GB RAM.
Dual Core or Core Duo processor.

spud17

macman wrote: »

No laptops come with a full version of MS Office included, the most you'll get is a time-limited trial version. Use OpenOffice, it will do almost everything that MS Office does, and will read and save in Office-compatible formats.
Any modern laptop will be more than adequate for the tasks you have outlined, all you need is a basic minimum spec, something like:
Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.
320GB hard drive.
3GB RAM.
Dual Core or Core Duo processor.

Isn't there now a MS Office Starter?
A cut down version admittedly, with embedded adverts, but being shipped with some laptops and not time limited.

It's probably suitable for most people, as it includes Word and Excel

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/358585/microsoft-office-starter-2010