Packard Bell recon laptops at Dixons (merged)

jordy32

ram is pretty easy to upgrade on most laptops, but 1gb isn't to be taken lightly... however,

the celeron 1.6 is a little long in the tooth these days as is the 64mb integrated graphics (no aero vista I'm afraid)

If you are after a laptop for web surfing, office apps and the odd dvd xvid viewing then this is OK, as long as you don't stray too far from a plug socket.

Rev

Now I'm not so sure about buying it. Don't want to spend on something that's poor build quality, I'd like to get a few years out o it at least. Think the battery life (or lack of) is the clincher though.

Ah well, I'm sure something will pop up in the sales.

Coldfinger

For more on Packard Bell machines you need to go to google.com, type

PACKARD HELL

and press Enter. They used to be somewhat..... er..... unpopular.

Eugene's_Pal

bubbles2007 wrote:

ok, i havent owned a packard bell, just see loads of advertising. i do know advent have a very poor reputation, worse than pb, so if thinking about the much lower spec advent laptop for £299 this should be considered?

I would say Advents and PBs are pretty much in the same league. Many PBs are sold at high prices to gulible customers.

CheeseOnToast

A lot of the Advents are good, the desktops are excellent imo, the components are very good brand names?

The thing that is laughable to me is this has a Celeron, so no amount of RAM will make it top spec.

Still a good deal for £300 imo, but not top spec lol.

Kilty_2

It's not top spec and CERTAINLY not a top brand (advent and packard bell are on a par, both as bad as each other).

Saying the Celeron is poor is not correct though, these new Celeron-M chips certainly pull their weight. Go for Dell though, pay around £50-£100 more and get something far more reliable and robust.

greyster

never ever buy an advent .... i am a money saver and will scrimp where possible but never ever buy an advent.

Yes they are cheap.
Yes they are Dixon Group Brand.
Yes they are good spec.
NO they are bad build, poor build quality. Rattles, overheats, plastic panels come off. Screen flickers. Its not all about RAM and CPU when it comes to advent, it comes down to being able to hold it on your lap on a summers day. No can do with advent.

lellie

I'm not sure how someone can describe dell as robust.. but that's an aside..

packard bell laptops are awful - we got the pc world £280 bargain easynote about 18 months ago - we sold it 6 months ago for what we paid roughly - but it was rubbish. I've since replaced with a second hand ibm thinkpad t41 - different league. It might be older, but it cost less and is ten times faster and generally a nicer machine.

Nix

lellie wrote:

...replaced with a second hand ibm thinkpad...

Unless the LCD goes >kaput< just outside the warranty period and the hard drive explodes 10 months later, or was I just the unlucky one?

One thing I DO know, IBM customer service is s**t and consequently, I won't be buying that brand again!

Horses for courses, with a bit of luck thrown in, as with all these products...

gromituk

Eugene's_Pal wrote:

Edit: Maybe Packard Bell is being mixed up with Hewlett Packard, which really is a good brand?

The brand would have been made up to encourage confusion, feeding off HP's reputation whilst remaining just different enough to avoid litigation.

Remember Saisho and Matsui? Dixons'/Currys' attempts to make you think their rubbish was high quality stuff from Japan.