Which lap top for my son who's off to Uni

bowser1

Hi

I would welcome any advise on what sort of lap top to buy and where to buy it for my 18 year old son who is off to uni to study business. He has a budget of between £500 - £750; wants a good enough bit of kit to hopefully last his 4 year course and doesn't want to waste his money on a poor purchase. Any info greatly received- we have absolutley no techie experience here. Many thanks

albertross_2

www.dmxdimension.com
www.ebuyer.com

personally, I wouldn't go OTT on the spec, a £350-400 laptop is fine for uni work. Buying top of the range stuff is wasting money (trying to future proof computers is an expensive pastime, destined to fail)

Conor_3

PC World have some good buys under £500. Stick with HP, Compaq, Toshiba, Sony and steer clear of E-Machines and Advent.

BenL

There is a good offer on a Dell Vistron in one of the boards further down, shop till you drop or quick grab it whilst you can.

£350 amd its highly specced up with 2Gb RAM, 120 Gb Hard drive, AMD 64 bit processor, DVD & wireless internet.

Ben

wolfman

Something like an Apple MacBook would be a good buy.

They generally last very well (when compared to Windows machines), especially in terms of value, and it's a nice out of the box solution.

The cheapest MacBook is £700, but I seem to remember reading if it's for educational purposes you can get it cheaper. I think it's around 5-10% so you could get about £35-70 off.

Amnesia180

I would reccomend you check out www.acerlaptops.co.uk

Even their entry level laptops at £299 could do the job.

http://www.acerlaptops.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_3683_Laptop_LX.AZK0X.005/version-1.asp

That one will run easily do what he needs.

Acer are known for their strong build in laptops and excellent customer services.

In a laptop, I personally wouldn't recomend Dell... (I would for a desktop though).

Or this one - http://www.acerlaptops.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5633WLMi_LX.AY30X.091/version.asp
(Which takes advantage of the budget you have...).

Idiophreak

I'd personally be tempted to spend £350-£400 on a cheap lappy, acer or dell, and save the rest...Can then spend another £350-400 in 2 years time if you need to.

I don't think a business course will need anything too powerful...

techexpert

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTVIEWPAGE&USG=PRODUCT&ENT=PRODUCT&KEY=209713

Good Spec, Good Price

Broke_Student

wolfman wrote: »

Something like an Apple MacBook would be a good buy.

They generally last very well (when compared to Windows machines), especially in terms of value, and it's a nice out of the box solution.

The cheapest MacBook is £700, but I seem to remember reading if it's for educational purposes you can get it cheaper. I think it's around 5-10% so you could get about £35-70 off.

Just called sales line. They quoted £98 off off on the basic Macbook making it £601. You also get the option to extend the warranty to 3 years for £58 (normally £200).

coolagarry

The important thing to consider is whether or not he intends to play games on the PC. If not, then there is no need to spend more than about £400 as indicatged above. If he is into gaming then he will need a fast processor and a fast Video Card, both of which are expensive.
An expensive Laptop is just waiting to be stolen in Students digs !!
He should be fine with any of these http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_inspiron_6400.html

Millionaire

I would personally not buy anything too expensive as others have mentioned and i would also stick to a PC rather than a MAC even though that MAC deal brokestudent mentioned is very good.

If hes just using it for uni on his business course he wont need anything too powerful so a £300 to max £500 laptop will do the job no problems.

By brother just graduated this year and he used my old Sony laptop from 2001(with broken Hinges ) for his business degree no problems, and that was running a 1ghz Pentium 3 with 256mb ram, 40gb harddrive and i think 64mb graphics and cost me £1700 orginally. how times change

So as you can see you dont need anything powerful for that type of course.

Dell normally tend to have the best deals with normally good quality for the price