PC World Laptop, £199!

greenoak

Cheap laptops like this are a total waste of time.

You are buying redundant componants almost its almost impossible to upgrade with.

Laptops like this have everything on the motherboard. I bet the graphics uses system memory.

This is a total heap of tat. AVOID

Techies should know better. I bet your 4 year old lappy used standard chips not bargain basement junk.

Most laptops only last 3 years before they fail and cost more to repair than replace. Yoy will be lucky if this one works in 6 months let alone a year. This is a lada of a laptop. Typical pc world tat.

Kilty_2

Yep, avoid this stuff, I wouldnt touch VIA with a bargepole.

Medion were selling refurbished Celeron-M 1.3ghz laptops for £200 a while back, FAR better than this tat.

hammy_the_hammer

anyone have views on whether this is worth buying ?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1520892326.1166990813@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccladdjjmfmfdkcflgceggdhhmdfho.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=889047&category_oid=-31211

Kilty_2

Looks quite good but you should compare it to Dell and see if it can be beaten.

3.25h battery life quoted meaning the battery aint up to much, on a Core Solo I'd expect 4h+ quoted by manufacturer meaning a 3-3.5 actual.

Kool_Kool

That looks better stuff, definitely, hammy.

nutter

hammy_the_hammer wrote:

anyone have views on whether this is worth buying ?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1520892326.1166990813@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccladdjjmfmfdkcflgceggdhhmdfho.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=889047&category_oid=-31211

Hi i am currently sitting in my kitchen using one that i go from PC world today, it seems very good the battery lasts about 2 hours and it seems very fast. i got it for surfing theweb not playing games. aso for about £2 they will send you a copy of VISTA when it comes out.

If you want moe tech info just ask.

Nutter

youngwilly

Kilty wrote:

Yep, avoid this stuff, I wouldnt touch VIA with a bargepole.

Medion were selling refurbished Celeron-M 1.3ghz laptops for £200 a while back, FAR better than this tat.

Where did you see Medion selling laptops for £200?

A recent review of the VIA processor at
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/287/via_c3_1ghz_processor_review/index.html


The VIA C3 at 1.0GHz is definitely a step towards VIA's goals for a CPU; cheap, reliable and quiet. The VIA C3 is ultimately the quietest PC system available. Requiring no fan but just a passive heatsink and very little power, you can have a single or no fan system

- Pros
Stable
Fanless operation
Runs even without heatsink
Cheap
Overclocks quite well

- Cons
Rather slow, even for value CPU
Not suitable for games


Rating - 8/10

so for business and internet use this is a BARGAIN. For games - clearly not a system to buy if you want gaming - you will need to spend a lot more than £200!

Kilty_2

For business and internet use it certainly is NOT a bargain and shouldnt be touched with a bargepole, I don't care what any reviewer says.

Medion were selling refurbished Celeron machines on their own website a few months back.

Brockyman

My local Woolworths had an offer for an Acer laptop for £299 or £305 delivered. Sorry though, haven't a clue what the specs are but did seem good for the price. Can't find it online though.
Regarding the Via processor in the PC World laptop. I have a computer I built myself a couple of years ago with a Via C3 processor, 800mhz, and can say that although it is very sluggish it is probably the most stable computer I have ever owned. I don't think it has ever crashed once, but I did run win 98 on it until recently when I installed Linux, so I have never really hammered it much.
Cheers,
Ian.

Mobeer

I would recommend the laptop as a good buy for business and internet use. Despite what advertisers would like to claim, most business users don't need anywhere near the power of the average PC.

A laptop with this spec (C7 Processor 1.5GHz, 256 MB RAM) should easily run several choices of office software:
Open Office:
* 128 Mbytes RAM
* 200 Mbytes available disk space
* 800 x 600 or higher resolution with at least 256 colours

Microsoft Works 8:
# 128 MB of RAM for Windows 2000 SP3 or Windows XP Home or Professional Edition.
# 225 MB of hard disk space.

Microsoft Office 2000 Premium
* Pentium 166
* 128MB RAM for operating system plus 4-16 MB RAM per application
* <1 GB storage

This laptop might also run Microsoft Works Suite 2006, but this has higher requirements:
# 256 MB of RAM. Applications running simultaneously may require additional memory.
# A complete install requires minimum of 3.1 GB of hard disk space.

The laptop should also run Firefox 2, for which the recommended (not min) specs are:
* 500 Mhz processor
* 256 MB of RAM
* 100 MB of free disk space
* Microsoft Windows XP

This PC should also display DVDs reasonably well. For games, some though not all games that use 2D graphics would be ok, but other games using 2D graphics and anything using 3D graphics would be hopeless.

It would be an advantage if the laptop supports Ethernet or USB ports in terms of transferring files to and from it.