The cheapest NEW laptop you can get

b44rch

avantra wrote:

I bought a good specification new laptop from Ebuyer.co.uk last week.
It is a PcChips G535 Notebook with AMD Athlon 1.2GHz CPU, 256MB DDR RAM 40GB Hard disk, DVD/CDRW combo, WLAN + Windows XP Home

All for £422.99, last time I looked they still had 200 units in stock.

I think for a new laptop this is amazing price.
The laptop works fine out of the box.

What about the important things: how big is the screen, and the battery only lasts 80 minutes! Not the best really... quite poor to be honest.

avantra

Mine last about 2 hours but I only use it for internet and some work with Open Office, I got it becuse it's got Wifi , it is a slim design and got 14.1 screen, anyone who had a laptop in the past knows that batteries life are the problematic point in most of the "slim design" models so 2 hours battery for £422 is a good value. This laptop also stay very cool which compare to my old Dell is a big plus (I can actually put it in my lap).

andreboyle

Hi all,

Just bought a laptop while in Florida on my honeymoon before Christmas.

Celeron M 350
512MB RAM
60 GB Hard Disk
DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
54MB Wireless 802.11 a/b/c
Bluetooth
15.4" Widescreen (WXGA)
Battery life so far has never dropped below 4 hours, yesterday it lasted about 5. (The joy of centrino)
Built-in 56K Modem
Built-in 100 Mb LAN
Firewire and 4 USB ports

Total price £375 all in.

Say what you like about Celeron processors but this one rocks in terms of speed. I have a spanky new 3.4 Ghz desktop and I generally prefer my laptop as it's grand Video editing through firewire and photoshop are great on it (Desktop obviously wins though.)

Dre

£$&*"($£&(

b44rch wrote:

I think you'll find that there IS a huge difference between a celeron M and a pentium M - never mind the clock speed, a pentium M has a massive level 2 cache (2 mb) while a celeron M only has 512 kb. This makes a enormous difference when doing multimedia stuff, like editing digital photos or movies.

Why do you think there's such a price difference between the 2 processors?

Admitidly this Celeron-M has a 512kb cache though many now have 1mb. However once you get above a 512kb cache the advantages aren't great. The same is true for comparisons of the 2mb and 1mb cached Pentium-M with differences in tests mainly resulting from processor speeds. Here's a conclusion from Toms Hardware:

"As the comparison tests of the Dell Latitude D505 based on the Celeron M, or alternatively the Pentium M have shown, a notebook with a Pentium M CPU is only advantageous with regard to the battery life. Regarding performance, the difference for day-to-day use of CPU models with a similar core clock speed is only marginal".

I've also seen it said that while desktop Celerons are cut down Pentiums the Pentium-M is an overcached Celeron-M.

JPS

andreboyle wrote:

Hi all,

Just bought a laptop while in Florida on my honeymoon before Christmas.

Celeron M 350
512MB RAM
60 GB Hard Disk
DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
54MB Wireless 802.11 a/b/c
Bluetooth
15.4" Widescreen (WXGA)
Battery life so far has never dropped below 4 hours, yesterday it lasted about 5. (The joy of centrino)
Built-in 56K Modem
Built-in 100 Mb LAN
Firewire and 4 USB ports

Total price £375 all in.

Say what you like about Celeron processors but this one rocks in terms of speed. I have a spanky new 3.4 Ghz desktop and I generally prefer my laptop as it's grand Video editing through firewire and photoshop are great on it (Desktop obviously wins though.)

Dre

What a fantastic price for a very good spec laptop!

gogsboy

andreboyle wrote:

Hi all,

Just bought a laptop while in Florida on my honeymoon before Christmas.

Celeron M 350
512MB RAM
60 GB Hard Disk
DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
54MB Wireless 802.11 a/b/c
Bluetooth
15.4" Widescreen (WXGA)
Battery life so far has never dropped below 4 hours, yesterday it lasted about 5. (The joy of centrino)
Built-in 56K Modem
Built-in 100 Mb LAN
Firewire and 4 USB ports

Total price £375 all in.

Say what you like about Celeron processors but this one rocks in terms of speed. I have a spanky new 3.4 Ghz desktop and I generally prefer my laptop as it's grand Video editing through firewire and photoshop are great on it (Desktop obviously wins though.)

Dre

Where did you get that from? I am maybe going over there quite soon, did you not have to pay some sort of import tax/duty as in VAT when entering the UK? Or is that included in the price you stated.

Also what make of machine is it.

Thanks

cheeky

alanrowell wrote:

Dell Inspiron 1000 is £410 inc vat, delivery & 1 year RTB guarantee

14" screen, 2.2GHz celeron processor, 256mb DDR RAM, 30GB hard drive, CD/DVD optical drive.

So that's £12.99 cheaper

How did i get it for this price? Seems to be about £410 PLUS £57 delivery ??

alanrowell

Starting in the Small Business section, the price for an Inspiron 1000 is £319 with an offer for free delivery until 2nd March 2005 which works out at just over £432.

When I originally posted, the pre-vat price was lower

thelawnet

This laptop is cheap & nasty. The price they are selling it for is what it's worth. It's not an amazing bargain.... If you need a laptop there are quite a few problems with this one. If you don't need one now, you will be able to get a better machine for less money in six months time, so just wait.

PcChips are not a reputable brand. They have a very bad reputation. Their primary job is making motherboards. They make motherboards that are half the price of everyone else, and how? By using cheap components (low quality capacitors, using cheaper, less reliable Taiwanese chipsets rather than Intel or Nvidia ones), and poor to non-existent QA.

Other problems with this laptop?

* 256MB of RAM is not really enough. It's ok, but you are cutting corners. 512MB is more appropriate these days. An after-market upgrade would be about £45

* Don't imagine this laptop will play any games at all. The graphics chip is integrated using some of that system RAM (which makes the system even more RAM-starved). It's fine for web surfing and typing.

* Battery life is shocking - 80 minutes is not suitable if you are going to use this laptop away from a plugpoint.... Suitable scenarios for using this laptop? In bed, surfing the web or sitting on the sofa, plugged into the wallpoint... Away from home? Just forget it, you will probably get no more than 1 hour actual battery life , and the battery will deteriorate with time.

* US keyboard

* Scrap-yard CPU... This contains a 1.2GHz Athlon CPU with 200MHz fsb (actually 100MHz fsb, but it's double-pumped). This is the Athlon 1400+ Mobile CPU. This is not comparable to a Pentium M or Celeron M chip as these are modern chips designed for long battery life and more efficient at the same clock speed.

Considering that modern AMD chips are rated at numbers from 2400+ up to 4000+, this is pretty much exactly half the speed of a modern CPU.

The fact that it's using a 200MHz fsb (front-side bus) is a really bad sign, as AMD switched over to 266MHz fsb three years ago, and subsequently onto 333MHz and finally 400MHz bus. As the front-side bus determines the speed of the memory as well, having a slow front-side bus slows down your whole PC. This thing is not only not a current generation CPU (Athlon 64), but it's not a previous generation (Athlon XP) either - it was originally released in November 2001. So you are buying a 4-year-old CPU. This runs at the speed of an old Pentium 3 CPU, and the CPUcosts perhaps $25 to buy. Of course this is probably ok for basic web surfing and typing, but you might as well buy a second hand P3 for less, and use the change to buy a faster PC.

Good things:

* hard drive is ok (but likely to be a cheap slow 4200rpm model rather than 5400rpm)

* DVD-ROM drive again, useful

* Integrated wireless, saves buying a £15 add-in card. However, no mention of whether it is 802.11b or 802.11g. 802.11b is unacceptably slow, you might end up buying the add-in card anyway.

* Screen seems to be just fine

In conclusion, this thing is probably ok, but don't confuse it with a quality laptop, and don't imagine that PCChips build reliable equipment.

If you are looking for a cheap laptop (rather than this 80-minute monster), look for a cheap Celeron M (not Mobile Celeron) - these will have low clock speed but efficient architecture, and long battery life (4 hours+).

lellie

thelawnet wrote:

This laptop is cheap & nasty. The price they are selling it for is what it's worth. It's not an amazing bargain.... If you need a laptop there are quite a few problems with this one. If you don't need one now, you will be able to get a better machine for less money in six months time, so just wait.

PcChips are not a reputable brand. They have a very bad reputation. Their primary job is making motherboards. They make motherboards that are half the price of everyone else, and how? By using cheap components (low quality capacitors, using cheaper, less reliable Taiwanese chipsets rather than Intel or Nvidia ones), and poor to non-existent QA.

Other problems with this laptop?

* 256MB of RAM is not really enough. It's ok, but you are cutting corners. 512MB is more appropriate these days. An after-market upgrade would be about £45

* Don't imagine this laptop will play any games at all. The graphics chip is integrated using some of that system RAM (which makes the system even more RAM-starved). It's fine for web surfing and typing.

* Battery life is shocking - 80 minutes is not suitable if you are going to use this laptop away from a plugpoint.... Suitable scenarios for using this laptop? In bed, surfing the web or sitting on the sofa, plugged into the wallpoint... Away from home? Just forget it, you will probably get no more than 1 hour actual battery life , and the battery will deteriorate with time.

* US keyboard

* Scrap-yard CPU... This contains a 1.2GHz Athlon CPU with 200MHz fsb (actually 100MHz fsb, but it's double-pumped). This is the Athlon 1400+ Mobile CPU. This is not comparable to a Pentium M or Celeron M chip as these are modern chips designed for long battery life and more efficient at the same clock speed.

Considering that modern AMD chips are rated at numbers from 2400+ up to 4000+, this is pretty much exactly half the speed of a modern CPU.

The fact that it's using a 200MHz fsb (front-side bus) is a really bad sign, as AMD switched over to 266MHz fsb three years ago, and subsequently onto 333MHz and finally 400MHz bus. As the front-side bus determines the speed of the memory as well, having a slow front-side bus slows down your whole PC. This thing is not only not a current generation CPU (Athlon 64), but it's not a previous generation (Athlon XP) either - it was originally released in November 2001. So you are buying a 4-year-old CPU. This runs at the speed of an old Pentium 3 CPU, and the CPUcosts perhaps $25 to buy. Of course this is probably

Good things:

* hard drive is ok (but likely to be a cheap slow 4200rpm model rather than 5400rpm)

* DVD-ROM drive again, useful

* Integrated wireless, saves buying a £15 add-in card. However, no mention of whether it is 802.11b or 802.11g. 802.11b is unacceptably slow, you might end up buying the add-in card anyway.

* Screen seems to be just fine

In conclusion, this thing is probably ok, but don't confuse it with a quality laptop, and don't imagine that PCChips build reliable equipment.

If you are looking for a cheap laptop (rather than this 80-minute monster), look for a cheap Celeron M (not Mobile Celeron) - these will have low clock speed but efficient architecture, and long battery life (4 hours+).

Thank god someone mentioned all the above..

AMDs are good - but 1.2?? yawwwwwwwn.. I'd have to make a cup of tea every time I wanted to use photoshop..