Want a laptop that will last, cd spend up to £800 or more for something amazing

caroline1973lefty

Hi there would appreciate any advice on buying a new laptop, currently using a rather underpowered one but have a bit more cash to spend now. Main critera are:

Light - under 2kg or less if poss
Robust & reliable
Fast operation including start up (is SSD superior / any drawbacks?)
Connectivity that will be reasonably future proof

I use it most for heavy duty word processing and web surfing including watching iplayer, would like to be able to store itunes too.

Not interested in gaming, touch screen, would prefer NOT to have memory hungry OS or bloatware

Mostly I want something fast, light, reliable, and as future proof as possible. In fact if there was a linux laptop that could run MS Office and a decent web browser, although I'm not that techie, I wonder if that could fulfil my needs. I'm fed up with MS and their endless memory munching, over-complicated, glitchy upgrades, I preferred the versions of Office & Windows that were around about 6 years ago!

Thanks!

Cisco001

I would never dream of laptop will last these days. And there is no such things as 'future proof'

aerostar

The biggest thing with laptops is that people do not treat them very well, I have an Acer laptop that is nearly 8 years old, running XP Pro, it is well travelled, it still does does everything I need, and is used every day.

You can get the equivalent of MS Office for Linux, Libre Office, and the web browsers are very good.

Download a Linux live CD and try it, live CDs do not need to be installed. The speeds will be slow as it has to read off the disc, but it will give you a good idea of the system and software.

wba31

http://store.apple.com/uk/configure/MD223B/A

closed

doesn't your existing one do most of that, (should boot within 40 seconds after a factory restore)? A £300 laptop is easily capable of word processing and iplayer - the best way of future proofing is to put the money saved into the bank

blizeH

caroline1973lefty wrote: »

Fast operation including start up (is SSD superior / any drawbacks?)

Just to touch on this point, apart from the graphics card if you're into gaming, an SSD drive will be IMO by far the biggest performance boost you'll get from a component right now - the difference in load times and general responsiveness is huge!

You could probably do a lot worse than the Macbook Air mentioned above, but you don't get a lot of hard drive space (64GB) or RAM (4GB) for your money... Apple hardware is great though, in particular the screens, trackpads and keyboards make it a dream to use, and they last better than most too (also see Lenovo and Asus for good build quality)

prowla

caroline1973lefty wrote: »

Hi there would appreciate any advice on buying a new laptop, currently using a rather underpowered one but have a bit more cash to spend now. Main critera are:

Light - under 2kg or less if poss
Robust & reliable
Fast operation including start up (is SSD superior / any drawbacks?)
Connectivity that will be reasonably future proof

I use it most for heavy duty word processing and web surfing including watching iplayer, would like to be able to store itunes too.

Not interested in gaming, touch screen, would prefer NOT to have memory hungry OS or bloatware

Mostly I want something fast, light, reliable, and as future proof as possible. In fact if there was a linux laptop that could run MS Office and a decent web browser, although I'm not that techie, I wonder if that could fulfil my needs. I'm fed up with MS and their endless memory munching, over-complicated, glitchy upgrades, I preferred the versions of Office & Windows that were around about 6 years ago!

Thanks!

None of that is heavy duty, so the spec doesn't need to be mega.

Lenovo make business quality laptops.

The Macbook Air looks to be just outside of budget.

If you do go for a smaller screen one though, consider whether all of the Word ribbons/toolbars and other gubbins leave sufficient workspace.

caroline1973lefty

thanks for suggestions i am doing a bit of research... take the point about money in the bank but my current one really is underpowered and titchy and takes ages to boot up (HP - never again), and i wouldn't mind spending a bit of money this side of new tax year. i guess i've been thinking about ultrabooks cos i'm not a huge person and a 1.3kg laptop would be really nice!

Are Dell's considered good, (reliable, robust) still? I had one for work ages ago and i did rather like it. Been eyeing up the XPS13 (i think with student discount i can get one for £880 with windows 8, intel core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB solid state hard drive, a nice screen, and good connectivity, which is handy cos i might do professional presentations sometimes). but i don't want to spend loads just for the sake of it.

closed

Assuming it didn't take ages to boot up when you bought it, a 10 minute factory restore (after backing up your data) will put it back to it's best. Bootup should be under 60 seconds

with coupon codes and cashback from topcashback/quidco, you can get the price down below 800, but will still be paying a significant (£400+) premium for the the light weight and ssd (which may be limiting in terms of capacity)

http://www.dmxdimension.com/dell-uk/xps-13-ultrabook-deals/

securityguy

prowla wrote: »

The Macbook Air looks to be just outside of budget.

I think the OP mentioned being a student. You get something like 18% discount on Apple kit in that case, and you get about 75% discount on three years' maintenance.

prowla

caroline1973lefty wrote: »

thanks for suggestions i am doing a bit of research... take the point about money in the bank but my current one really is underpowered and titchy and takes ages to boot up (HP - never again), and i wouldn't mind spending a bit of money this side of new tax year. i guess i've been thinking about ultrabooks cos i'm not a huge person and a 1.3kg laptop would be really nice!

I'm not sure if a particular model being slow is a good reason to reject the whole brand per-se. The main manufacturers tend to do business quality and budget models, and if you've got a budget one then it simply will not be as good/fast/robust as the high-end models.

It's also worth noting that the Windows OS is renowned for getting bloated, and also anti-virus tools and suchlike can impact performance (it is easy to have two configured, which can then work against each other.

And finally, depending upon the age, the memory can be a big factor; whereas 2 GB was large 5 years ago it's not really enough today.