Good entry level Toshiba laptop for £193.88

TakeThis

Good entry level laptop from Argos Outlet: Shop return with a full twelve month warranty.

Toshiba Satellite C660-*** for £185. You'll need some extra RAM, in the form of this 2GB module for £8.88. Easy to fit in minutes.

That will bring it up to the spec of the Toshiba Satellite C660-2DV here Hit F5 is page has expired.

Better still a 4GB RAM module for even further improved performance, to bring the total up to £199.68. See here for details.

CPU Benchmark of 1361, so don't listen to the naysayers. It's a bargain.

£193.87 in total for 3GB RAM.

£199.68 for 5GB RAM.

nadmaj

I'm after a new laptop, don't really want to spend more than £200 as kids play on it, so would this suffice also I run nero and photoshop so with the extra ram,also if I can get a laptop or notebook under£100 for the kids to play then I could keep the above for myself

what do you think

Rich44_2

No no no no don't buy a laptop with a Celeron processor

TakeThis

nadmaj wrote: »

I'm after a new laptop, don't really want to spend more than £200 as kids play on it, so would this suffice also I run nero and photoshop so with the extra ram,also if I can get a laptop or notebook under£100 for the kids to play then I could keep the above for myself

what do you think

I would say go for it, but you need the extra RAM.

Both gonzo127 and quoia have suggested(and I agree with them), that purchasing a 4GB RAM module for less than £15 instead of a 2GB module is a much better idea and will lead to a further improved performance.

Here is a link to quoia's suggestion.

Even with this improvement, we are still under the £200 mark.

TakeThis

Amazon gives you a good overview of the features available.

prowla

1.5 GHz Celeron doesn't seem a lot for these days, but I guess it should be fine for surfing and office use. (Maximum memory is 8 GB, which is good.)

It's not going to run much by way of games though, especially with its Intel shared graphics. And I guess photoshop and suchlike aren't going to be sprightly.

If I wanted something like that then I would consider it a good buy.

2010

TakeThis wrote: »

It's a bargain.
£193.87 in total.

It`s refurbished, which should be mentioned in the title.

ragz_2

Why does it need the extra RAM? I thought 1GB was quite a lot (my laptop has 256, no wonder is doesn't work very well!.)

ETA - just read the reviews a lot of people saying it is very slow... would the extra RAM fix that or is that because of the processor?

TakeThis

2010 wrote: »

It`s refurbished, which should be mentioned in the title.

Shop return is mentioned in the initial post. Perhaps you didn't read or are simply being churlish.
Since they had nearly 200 of them, I venture that they will be in 'as new' condition.
Perhaps returned because they were dragging with a mere 1GB RAM.
Can't understand why they only have 1GB RAM, but it's fine for us, because adding RAM is a breeze and will bring the machine up to spec.

TakeThis

prowla wrote: »

1.5 GHz Celeron doesn't seem a lot for these days, but I guess it should be fine for surfing and office use. (Maximum memory is 8 GB, which is good.)

It's not going to run much by way of games though, especially with its Intel shared graphics. And I guess photoshop and suchlike aren't going to be sprightly.

If I wanted something like that then I would consider it a good buy.

It's going to be fine for everything, except gaming and AutoCAD and the like.

I don't know why people go on about this, as if people expect to play games with such a machine.

Watching films, listening to music, office programs, surfing...all the usual things will be handled easily.

Plus it has excellent battery life.

As for PhotoShop.....

Windows
Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 3; Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (Service Pack 2 recommended); or Windows 7
1 GB of RAM
1 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash-based storage devices)
102 4x 768 display (1280 x 800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL video card, 16-bit color, and 256 MB of VRAM
Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
DVD-ROM drive
QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features

TakeThis

ragz wrote: »

Why does it need the extra RAM? I thought 1GB was quite a lot (my laptop has 256, no wonder is doesn't work very well!.)

ETA - just read the reviews a lot of people saying it is very slow... would the extra RAM fix that or is that because of the processor?

Windows 7 needs more RAM than Windows XP, especially as it is capable of a lot more straight out of the box.
A minimum of 2GB RAM is recommendable, so 3GB RAM will be more than enough for everyday tasks.

Yes, it is most certainly slow because of insufficient RAM.

When the computer open programs, it does so within the RAM(Random Access Memory). If there is insufficient RAM, it has to use the much slower hard drive instead. This is a relatively slow process. That is why you will see the hard drive light thrashing around whilst you wait for something to happen.
If you have sufficient RAM, this does not need to take place, so the machine appears faster.

The RAM for £8.88 will take care of that situation.

Imagine that you did not understand about RAM.... you would return the machine for being 'too slow'. Argos can now not sell that machine as new, so we get a bargain. More than £100 off the new price.

Try it for yourself. They have a seven working day 'no quibble' returns policy.
So make sure that everything is in excellent condition and that the only problem is the 'slowness'. Once you are satisfied that you want to keep it, buy and fit the RAM.

After a couple of reboots, all will be well.

Good and cheap.


PS. Yes your machine also needs more RAM and perhaps a clean up, guided by our esteemed member, closed.
Make and model number?