Which laptop please

MothballsWallet

I'm looking at a new laptop too, what about this Lenovo that's advertised on our nemesis PC World's site here?

I'm thinking of email, office stuff, perhaps some programming work, photo editing, maybe some video editing at some point.

davidjmclare

Lenovo is a very good make, well worth a look. I'd suggest against a netbook, they are a bit out of date now and not too powerful. Ultrabooks are the new netbooks / laptops. They have the power of pretty decent laptops and the portability of a netbook. For example I use a MacBook Air 13" which is incredibly thin, fast and powerful. Usually they do not have optical drives, but it depends on you - for example I do not use DVDs or CDs anymore. There are plenty of Windows ultrabooks available (inc. Lenovo) - I'd suggest checking a top ten list on blogs such as Tech Radar.

NeverEnough

gonzo127 wrote: »

as to reliability, as ever with anything it is pot luck as to if something will be a lemon, and although Acer are not generally well thought of, my mum and dad have had one for about 5 years now with no problems what so ever, and so long as you buy from someone reputable (not pc world) your warrenty shoudl cover most things in the first year.

anyways brands i tent to look at would be Asus, Lenovo and probably toshiba, this being said if you see a good deal on other brands do not automatically discount them

Generalisations aren't always accurate....I have an 11 year old Acer built like a tank and still going strong, running some ancient Windows version. Average life of the newer laptops seems to be much less though - my Dell packed up last week, was only 3 years old, the Samsung I had prior lasted 5 years. The Acer has outlived them all.
Bought an HP G72 on sale at Argos last week to replace the Dell and its a great spec for the £370 it cost. Most of the major manufacturers are still in business because they sell enough products so its down to best deals and personal choices. I wouldn't go for a netbook, though, they are tiny, relatively slow compared to the laptops and have no CD/DVD drive - if you have a laptop you use regularly, you will find it annoying to use such a small screen, do things fairly slowly and have to plug in a pen drive or a portable DVD drive to transfer data. I would aim for the £300 - £399 bracket, if you have the funds - more expensive isn't really necessary and cheaper will compromise on something.

Don't ever buy anything at all at PC World - they are the worst of the worst of the worst - just go in to take a look at the different laptops, they are all available cheaper elsewhere anyway.

donny-gal

If your need to play DVD's is infrequent, and you can load them to the harddrive anyway, you could get a netbook, and buy a usb cd/dvd drive for when you need one. DG