Advice - Looking for an ultrabook or tablet or something

Shrimply

HotDealsStuff wrote: »

The laptop sounds fine. I bought an Asus laptop on Christmas and my battery lasts for like 5 hours.

While I admire your optimism I'm not convinced you have the knowledge or product experiance to give constructive advice.

That being said, if the elitebook had an i3 processor I'd have bought it already. I'm just concerned the AMD thing isn't all that capable.

The Asus looks interesting too, am right in thinking that some of the windows tablets have a mobile version of windows which is limited to apps, while some have the full version which mean you an install any programs that run on windows. And if so is there anyway to tell which is which?

Knarf44

Did you have a look at the Linx 1010b I linked to above?

For £140 you get a very well spec'd mobile laptop/ tablet with a full version of Windows 10 and MS Office mobile. The hardware incorporates 2 full size USB 2.0 ports, a mini hdmi output, a mini usb, micro sd slot for increased storage and a 1280x800 display.

From your op it sounds ideal for your needs.

paddyrg

Be aware that the £250 price point is going to mean compromise - if you want lightweight AND long battery life AND cheap then I wouldn't expect too much in terms of build quality, longevity, processor speed, etc. Good engineering adds cost!

John_Gray

See what you think of this HP Stream 11 small laptop for £149 (until 17th Jan, probably). You'd have to budget for an SDHC card also (32 GB, say).

Reviews were pretty good, if you accept that it's a low-end box, no optical drive (so you'd have to install Stuff over the internet or from a USB Flash Drive), no ethernet socket (but USB/ethernet hubs are about £16) no possibility of main memory expansion above 2 GB, slow Celeron CPU.

Can be upgraded to Window 10 free, provided you have either a 16 GB SDHC card or USB Flash Drive connected, and a lot of patience!

Later...

I'm just back from my local Tesco Extra, having got one for £89! The assistant was staggered, and I didn't argue...

[Deleted User]

John_Gray wrote: »

no optical drive (so you'd have to install Stuff over the internet or from a USB Flash Drive)

Or, get yourself a USB DVD Drive.

matchplayer

Samsung galaxy tab A9.7" http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4147000.htm £169. My wife did the exact same as you bought a notebook, very poor straight out of the box, would not even sell 2nd hand to anyone as absolutely useless. Got one of these & it is amazing, smooth, fast. Lots of apps, sd card for extra storage. Dont worry about keyboard, try the samsung swype keyboard. You keep finger on the screen and swipe over the letters you need, works great & improves with use, remembering your own/most used words. If not what you need, i bet you could sell on & get at least 90% of your money back! Currys etc still want over £200 for these!

duchy

Shrimply wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

So to fill you in a bit more, which I should probably have done from the start as it will probably explain my dilemma a bit more.

I'm a (poor) student, I commute about 40 minutes a day and not need to carry a machine with me. The internet on the route is pretty naff, so I struggle to find anything productive to do in the time. If I'm honest often I'm half a sleep and not capable of doing very much. So here a tablet would seem like the more sensible option.

At weekends though I very often travel home which is about 3 hours on the train. I need to take my current, very heavy machine, with me to do work while I'm at home. So if I was to buy a tablet, I'd probably have to carry both. Whereas if something like the elite book I linked to would be OK for my uses I could actually use that the whole weekend for the work I need to do.

Really though I think the conclusion is that what would be ideal for me would cost far more than I can afford to pay.

I do appreciate the input, and any other thoughts are very welcome.

I got a rather dinky device for Christmas called an Osprey.-it's a mobile wi-fi device so when I'm out of range of free wifi I can still use the internet. It uses EE mobile data so might be handy for working on the train so it's not dead time for you sometimes.

Laptops have got quite a bit lighter in recent years so it might be worth popping into PC world or similar and just hefting them about to see what kind of weight would suit you to help narrow your search.

Mr_Toad

Shrimply wrote: »

Hi Guys,
I travel quite a bit though, and the laptop is heavy and the battery life poor.
So really I'm just looking for something that is reasonably light and at the bare minimum can run Microsoft Office and browse the internet and has a decent battery life.

This is always a tricky one and one that I went through some years ago in 2009.

I made a list of essential requirements and long battery life was top. I wanted a full day of 'average' use without having to take the charger with me.

Then I looked at machines that fitted the list criteria.

It was an expensive list, there was nothing on it under £1000 that didn't feel cheap and nasty but fortunately I was able to spend that sort of money. I looked at all the available machines and ended up with a 13" Macbook Pro. Apple had at that time just released the Air but the screen was too small on the first model. I wanted a 13" screen.

There were Windows machines with as good or better build quality than the Mac but they were money.

Time has moved on, batteries have improved, cases have improved and things have got generally better, thinner, lighter and cheaper but I'm not sure you'll get what you're looking for within budget but you never know.

Good luck

P.S. I'm still using the same Macbook and it's still doing its job. The only change made was to install a 500MB SSD

paddyrg

Mr_Toad wrote: »

The only change made was to install a 500MB SSD

Allowing you to store several MP3's ;-)

Mr_Toad

paddyrg wrote: »

Allowing you to store several MP3's ;-)

It was more to do with the fact that the 250MB HD that it came with wasn't big enough for some of the database files and documentation I used to have on there. I upgraded to a standard 500MB drive the day I bought it as it was a lot cheaper than having an Apple upgrade. :rotfl:

I went SSD when they started to come down in price.