Need to buy 3 new laptops.

geordielass

Our kids' laptops have all packed up so I need to get them each a new one for Christmas. Two of them are Dell and apart from Malware issues they have been very reliable for the past six years.

They will be using them for Uni/School and for playing games, nothing too heavy....Football Manager, Minecraft type games.

Just wanted a little input please as to what the spec needs to be for this use as I have been looking online especially as Tesco has a sale on at the mo but I am pretty clueless!

Budget is about £400 each although cheaper would be a bonus:D

Thankyou.

closed

how did they all pack up?

Bit early for Xmas presents, you might get a better deal after W8 comes out (end Oct)

GunJack

^^^^ that, plus you don't need to spend £400 each on kid's laptops, if you really need to replace if repair doesn't work, budget £600 for 3 refurbished ones. £200 will get you a lot of refurb laptop, and probably less will be more than sufficient for the uses you've quoted.

geordielass

One's a Sony which was second hand, that must have a small crack as it has a liquid mark on the screen.The two Dells are now just very slow with knackered batteries and missing keys. Can't complain though after being hammered for six years.

I just seen the Tesco deals and was thinking the better deals might be now as the prices may go up nearer Christmas.

Thought about waiting a bit and going instore to try and negotiate a deal for buying three at once but I'm not very keen n the likes of PC world so scrapped that idea.

Where is the best place to look for refurb ones please Gunjack. I might need a better spec for the older kids' at uni. Not sure what exactly they want to do on them.

Thanks.

closed

Slowness on a dell can be cured in 10 minutes, (after backing up any important data) - boot, press a few keys (probably F8, advanced boot options, repair, dell factory restore, if it's vista), factory restore, install avast free, done - it will boot and run like new.

keys and batteries can be replaced too.

Neil49

If you like dell then you could try the dell outlet which sells on refurbished equipment. Just be aware that the prices quoted exclude vat and delivery.

Just go to the normal Dell site, click on 'For Home', then under Dell Deals select Outlet.

GunJack

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/cat.php?search=Laptops

always a good place to start...got some T-series Thinkpads with 6-mth warranty just under/over £100

and argos ebay outlet for newer/higher cost models

gonzo127

if you dont want to go down the fixing it route and save some money

argos ebay is usualy pretty good for refurbs, and although i hate to say this pc world have a few decent bargins on refurbs (on their website) and the dell refurbs can be good

for specs - well the best specs do depend on what is needed of laptop, and coudl quite easily be different for each person

for example pure processing speed for things such as editing photos intel processors tend to be better (core i3 or i5), but these have very low powered intergrated graphics chipsets which makes gaming on them a bit of a chore, whereas AMD processors (A series) are less powerful as a processor, but their intergrated graphics chipset are more powerful than intels meaning you can usualy play more games on them, with higher settings.

therefore i would suggest (if possible) to speak to each child and find out what they would like to do with a laptop so that we might be able to suggest laptops which are better suited to their needs.

if you cant speak to them about it i would probably suggest looking at laptops with amd a series processors mainly due to the fact kids are more likely to want to play games on them and the lower powered processor will not matter that much in everyday things such as opening web browsers and office documents etc

gonzo127

just spotted something which might be interesting, but would mean taking a bit of a risk with cashback as it is £450 but has £150 cashback if you trade in a old laptop/netbook making it 'only' £300 if there is no problems (this also might be able to be used with quidco or topcashback to get it even cheaper but i havent looked through the terms and conditions to see if this is possible)

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-envy-6-sleekbook-1006sa-15-6-laptop-14893789-pdt.html

is the system, and comes with the latest AMD trinity processor and graphics chipset which are pretty good (although as above processor power is less than intels but this is made up by having a far superior graphics chipset)

what sets this apart from some other systems is the fact of it being super thin so looks really quite stylish (although this does mean no DVD drive on the system which would need to be considered, howeve external ones are pretty cheap)

Cisco001

£400
Acer Aspire 5755G.
i3-2350M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, GT630m
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5755G_1201802.html

£330
Dell Inspiron M5110
AMD A6 3420M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 6520G
http://www.oyyy.co.uk/product.php/197145/dell-inspiron-m5110-156-inch-notebook-a6-3420m-15ghz-4gb-500gb-dvdrw-wlan-webcam-windows-7-hp-64-bit-radeon-hd-6520g-black?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cse&utm_campaign=Base&jssCart=adb975c121abbd779cf411aec92c6e75

However, if you want something durable, you can consider this. But it is with lower spec.
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E525 AMD A4-3300M 4GB 500GB AMD Radeon HD 6480G
http://www.dabs.com/products/lenovo-thinkpad-edge-e525-amd-a4-3300m-4gb-500gb-win-7-home-premium-64-bit-15-6--wide-1366-x-768-7ZR4.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product+search&utm_content=Q200

BTW, HP Envy for £450 above is actually quite good if you can stretch that little bit.

macman

Not tricky to fit a new clone battery and a keyboard, that'll keep em running for a couple more years.