New laptop - no idea where to start!

flutterbyuk25

Hey all

I wondered if you nice people would give me a point in the right direction of searching for a new laptop.

I currently have an 8 year old Dell Inspiron 1300, but the battery no longer holds charge. This has been the case for 3 years but now I'm moving in with a friend I want a portable laptop rather than just keeping it on my kitchen table like now. A new battery is £80 so i think I will be better off buying a new laptop as this one is slow and some of the keys are broken.

I mainly use my laptop for internet access and using things like Word as I am a part time student. I very occassionally download music (maybe 10 albums a year), but do have a 10GB worth of music on my Itunes. I also have lots of pictures stored too (backed up on CD too). I don't play games, or download films etc. I very rarely watch tv on laptop either. I do sometimes watch clips on youtube.

I've looked through the sub £350 thread and I am still clueless. I have no idea about technical aspects so not sure whether ones I've seen are good or not!

I'd be grateful of any pointers, or ones to avoid.

Many thanks

x

T_T_2

To be quite honest it doesn't sound like your requirements are particularly demanding. If you bought a middle of the range laptop from five years ago it would still meet your requirements.

Nevertheless we aren't talking about five years ago, you want a laptop today, and you will be pleased to hear that you are shopping at a particularly good time.

There are bargain laptops flying all over the shop. Take a gander at this NEW Compaq Presario which is 15.6" (wide screen), has a 2.2GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 250GB harddrive, Windows 7 Home Premium.

What if I told you it was only £290.00? Well, I'd be lying it is actually only £250.00! Oh wait no I'm lying again... last time...it is £219.99 delivered! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310328774766

If my two and a half year old laptop wasn't running as well as the day I bought it I would buy one myself. I've not seen a laptop of this spec at this price before.

If you want to spend a bit more you can get some cracking laptops with a bit more RAM for around the £279, £299 mark from Tesco.

flutterbyuk25

Thank you for your kind reply T_T! I did have a look at that Compaq one as had heard Ebay deal of day was good place to start, but wasn't sure if it was any good!

suicidebob

flutterbyuk25 wrote: »

Thank you for your kind reply T_T! I did have a look at that Compaq one as had heard Ebay deal of day was good place to start, but wasn't sure if it was any good!

That Compaq one doesn't look up to much - there's a reason it's so cheap.

Avoid older Intel CPUs, and go for something that's Core i3 or Core i5. CPU is way more important than the amount of RAM.

Plenty of choice around the £350 mark.

Ebuyer Laptops

grumpycrab

There are some cheap Acer laptops around at the moment. By the sound of it you don't need a top spec laptop. I assume your budget is under £350. How long do you expect the laptop to last? Laptops have a bad reliability record. You can either buy extended warranties or rely on the Sale Of Goods Act (provides cover for up to six years).

Cheap Acer extended warranty (£32) http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130533991522

Here's a couple of cheap Acers:-
£249 http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/acer-aspire-5336-15-6-notebook-intel-t3500-processor-3gb-ram-320gb-hdd-windows-7/968756
£260 http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/acer-aspire-5552-laptop-athlon-dual-core-p340-2-2ghz-3gb-ram-320gb-hdd-15-6-lcd/958417

stilltheone

Whoa! Hold your horses! £80 for a new battery? More like £15 and some more RAM for another £10. You'll see the difference in speed once you've fitted the new RAM. Check with Crucial UK online checker to ensure that I have recommended the correct memory. You can find keys online. Example. Keep the machine as a backup.

As for the i3 story... don't believe it. You can get a laptop that fit your requirements for much less than £350.

suicidebob

stilltheone wrote: »

Whoa! Hold your horses! £80 for a new battery? More like £15 and some more RAM for another £10. You'll see the difference in speed once you've fitted the new RAM. Check with Crucial UK online checker to ensure that I have recommended the correct memory. You can find keys online. Example. Keep the machine as a backup.

As for the i3 story... don't believe it. You can get a laptop that fit your requirements for much less than £350.

An i3 performs way better than a Celeron. Why settle for poor performance and outdated technology when he has the budget to buy something that will be more pleasurable to use?

What if he wants to watch video or download movies? No chance of this on a Celeron.

RAM upgrades are way overrated anyway. Unlikely he'll see any improvement with an 8 year old machine - the CPU is the bottleneck.

Hammyman

suicidebob wrote: »

Avoid older Intel CPUs, and go for something that's Core i3 or Core i5. CPU is way more important than the amount of RAM.

Is completely and utterly incorrect advice.

Any Intel CPU in the last 5 years is more than fast enoug for normal use and again for normal use RAM gives more performance benefits than a CPU, £ for £ up to 3GB.

NeverAgain_2

The major bottleneck will probably be the speed of the OP's broadband connection.

Hammyman

suicidebob wrote: »

What if he wants to watch video or download movies? No chance of this on a Celeron.

RAM upgrades are way overrated anyway. Unlikely he'll see any improvement with an 8 year old machine - the CPU is the bottleneck.

Utter utter poppycock. I really do wish you'd go and learn something before "advising" people.

On Windows XP you'll get very noticable benefits upgrading up to about 1.5GB and on Windows Vista/7 upgrading up to 2GB. And Celeron processors are more than up to the task of watching videos and downloading movies.

Suicidebob, I can only assume you're under the age of 20 because we were watching DVDs and downloading movies on old Pentium and 486 class CPUs back in the 1990's which are way slower than even 5 year old Celerons.

T_T_2

suicidebob wrote: »

What if he wants to watch video or download movies? No chance of this on a Celeron.

Firstly, a quote from the OP "I don't play games, or download films etc. I very rarely watch tv on laptop either. I do sometimes watch clips on youtube."

So a lesson in reading may be appropriate for you bob.

Secondly, do you genuine believe that watching videos and downloading movies cannot be achieved on a Celeron? I mean come on...I can watch and download movies on my £100 smart phone and it only has an 800MHz processor.