Wanted: A Good Quality Cheap Laptop

JustWonderful

Hey, I'm a relative newbie here and was wanting some help, cheeky i know!

Basically the thing is i want a laptop, which is good quality for the best possible price.

The Problems: I dont know what to look for in a laptop, I dont know what a good price is for a laptop, I dont know where to look.

any help appreciated!

Hapless_2

I bought an advent laptop in the sale in PC World about 12 months ago. cost about £400. I pay the £7.99 PC performance which allows free PC healthchecks and any upgrades fitted free.
Check out the website first then go to the store.




*I do not work for PC world, but I have had great service from them*

parkside_stroller

I wonder if it's worth posting this in the techie forum as I'm sure some of the people there could advise you on what to look for in a laptop but here is a few thought from someone who got one fairly recently.

Consider the weight if you are carrying it about.
Battery life
Quality of images on screen (some laptops can be a bit dark especially if not plugged into the mains).
I looked for USB2 ports and wanted a firewire input (but didn't get it on the one I eventually went for)
You should get at least 80GB hard disk and it's possible to get much more for not a lot of cash.
Nice up to date software bundle might be of interest to you.

Laptops like anything else computing or electrical can go wrong occasionally so consider how you will be getting support and what type of warranty is on offer.
Watch for expensive telephone services - is it possible to get the laptop picked up or repaired at your home for example?

I'm using a DELL laptop and I'm generally happy with it - I'm a subscriber to Which? magazine and I notice they have an 85% reliability rate reported (Apple also scored high) however they also said that only 25% were happy with support (I was happy with the way my battery recall was handled).

I noticed you didn't say what you are going to use the laptop for so I would certainly consider that and post again if you want a bit more indepth help from people
e.g. you would want a funky graphics card if you are a big gamer and that could push the price up.
If you were wanting to do a few task at one time perphaps consider a dual core cpu

Look for a DVD burner as standard rather than just cd burner

You would want 256mb of memory as a bare minimum but you should find 512mb without bursting the bank so you should try to go for that (or 1gb even better)

Windows vista is also now on the scene so they will stop supporting windows XP at some point so if you are going to be a windows user you might want to think about that - look elsewhere on the forum (techie for info on this).

I read a recent report (it was in Computer Shopper magazine this month) which recommended a laptop from Tesco as the best buy for a cheaper end laptop - it cost £430. Click HERE to read the review.

Dell for example can go cheaper click here for an idea of prices and spec.