Best laptop - under £300!?!

Sarah1971

I am just starting up working from home doing bookeeping, on a small scale. I now need to get a laptop so I can go out to clients and discuss their accounts with them.

The laptop needs to have excel and I'll be loading quick books onto it, also it would be nice to have the ability to connect it to the internet via a wireless modem. I'm not very up on computers at all, the one I use at home is great but sooo slow and of course not portable so I need to get one pretty quick as I have my 1st meeting next thursday!

I've seen this one on tesco direct, does anyone rate it and would it suit my needs? Seems a bargain at £299??

"The Gateway ML3108b 14.1" Laptop is light and thin for easy portability. The laptop features the new Windows Vista™ Home Basic operating system. It also comes complete with a 1.86 GHz AMD Sempron processor with a GeForce GO 6100 graphics card. The laptop also features 256KB L2 cache with a 60GB 4200 RPM PATA hard drive for storage as well as having wireless capability to connect to the internet without hassle using its 802.11g Wireless LAN. It includean DVD Dual Layer Rewriter optical drive and has a 14.1" Ultrabright WXGA TFT display."

Any help would be great!

Thanks

amcluesent

> Any help would be great!<

I'd pop a 1Gb of RAM (£70?) in (assume it comes with 512Mb) to allow Vista and MS Office to work nicely. It has wi-fi built in.

You'd need to budget for Excel 2003 (I'd avoid 2007, so few people have it).

Plus have a good backup scheme, don't want to lose customer data!

paint

Just bought one of these:-

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_3694WLMi_LX.AY90Y.253/version-1.asp

which is similar spec to the Gateway (including wifi), but with a slightly larger screen. I'd recommend it.

As the previous poster said, if you get anything with windows Vista as the operating system you'll need AT LEAST 1GB RAM. I bought an extra 1GB of RAM for my Acer from ebuyer.com for £25 - it now has 1.5GB RAM and it runs nice and quick.

If you're not confident about installing additional RAM yourself (it is very straightforward, but I realise some people might not be comfortable with it), for an extra £20 this Toshiba has 1GB RAM installed, as opposed to 512MB for the others, and is otherwise a similar-looking spec (again including wifi) to the Acer and Gateway:-

http://www.shop.bt.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=4NBP

Also, MS Office (inclding Excel) will set you back another £100 or so, I'd have thought. Personally, I'd not fork out, and instead download a free 'Open Office' package which gives you much the same functionality:-

http://www.openoffice.org/

bainy

How about this Acer from Ebuyer its bang on budget and perhaps if you have a spare £25 then also add another stick of 512mb RAM to give you 1Gb. Its a very simple procedure to install takes all of about 5 mins to do. Because its a faster processor (AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology MK-36 2.0 GHz much better than a Celeron cpu )installed than the others, savings have had to be made on other components and therefore the hard drive is only 60gb but more than sufficient for most peoples needs. It weights 2.4kg and has a battery run time of 2.5 hours.
Ebuyer are currently awaiting more stock in the next few days. Read the 99 5 star reviews on the product

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/123115

You can also purchase the same laptop from Comet for £349.99 and this incudes a larger 80gb hard drive, 1gb RAM and windows Vista Home Premium, not bad for the extra £50.Only downside to this deal at comet is it has a slightly slower processor a 1.6Ghz.
http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=384020&cm_ven=Pricerunner&cm_cat=Feed&cm_pla=Laptops&cm_ite=384020_ACER_ASPIRE_5051AWXMI

As for MS Office if you are a student at university, college etc then Microsoft has a very good deal on Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for just £38.95 (lifetime license) thats half price or pay £12.95 for a 1 year license. There are a few conditions for eligibility, you must be a student, have a college or university email address ending in ac.uk and actively enrolled on a course.Promotion runs from 12th September 2007 to 30th April 2008.
More Details here: -
http://www.theultimatesteal.co.uk/product.asp

and T& C's here: -
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/buy/universityoffertandc/default.mspx

Sarah1971

Thanks for all of your help and advice on a laptop under £300. The Acer does look and sound like just what I'm looking for but I was just wondering if it would be worth my while spending a little bit more on this Toshiba? (£320) It has 1GB Ram.

any more thoughts before i make the purchase would be welcome
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_L30-10X_PSL33E-03K031EN/version-1.asp

mjr600

With 4.5% Quidco cashback this Dell works out at £280 inc VAT & Delivery.

Alter the warranty to 1 year for the best price, for an extra £10 add the 6 cell battery for regular mains free use.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&oc=N0910001

motorguy

amcluesent wrote: »

> Any help would be great!<

I'd pop a 1Gb of RAM (£70?) in (assume it comes with 512Mb) to allow Vista and MS Office to work nicely. It has wi-fi built in.

You'd need to budget for Excel 2003 (I'd avoid 2007, so few people have it).

Plus have a good backup scheme, don't want to lose customer data!

Spending £70 on RAM takes you to £369, for which you could buy way better.

motorguy

mjr600 wrote: »

With 4.5% Quidco cashback this Dell works out at £280 inc VAT & Delivery.

Alter the warranty to 1 year for the best price, for an extra £10 add the 6 cell battery for regular mains free use.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&oc=N0910001

I'd buy this all day long over the tescos offering. Personally i'd run it with XP rather than vista though, vista is resource heavy and the sempron processor is just 'ok'

I'd spend the extra £20 on the next processor up, the TL53 X2

bainy

Here's a very good deal on an Acer Extensa 5512ZWLMi Intel Core Duo laptop priced at £342.23 inc.VAT from: -

http://lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B74219

Specification: -

Processor: Intel Core Duo, 1.6GHz CPU (far superior processor than a celeron or a sempron)
Memory: 1024MB RAM (1GB)
Hard Drive: 80GB Hard Disk Drive
Display: 15.4 inch TFT display
Optical Drive: DVD Supermulti
OS Version: Windows Vista Business
Wireless LAN: Wireless LAN 802.11abg upto 54Mbps
6 Cell Battery
Weight: 2.72 Kg

Best bang for buck

paint

Sarah1971 wrote: »

Thanks for all of your help and advice on a laptop under £300. The Acer does look and sound like just what I'm looking for but I was just wondering if it would be worth my while spending a little bit more on this Toshiba? (£320) It has 1GB Ram.

any more thoughts before i make the purchase would be welcome
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_L30-10X_PSL33E-03K031EN/version-1.asp

If you're not happy fitting extra RAM yourself, Sarah1971, then I'd say definitely go for one with at least 1GB RAM already installed (if the operating system is Windows Vista).

Also worth noting is that the BT shop has these for £319.00 with free delivery (not sure what the delivery charge is, if any, with laptopsdirect).

http://www.shop.bt.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=4NBP

motorguy

bainy wrote: »

Here's a very good deal on an Acer Extensa 5512ZWLMi Intel Core Duo laptop priced at £342.23 inc.VAT from: -

http://lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B74219

Specification: -

Processor: Intel Core Duo, 1.6GHz CPU (far superior processor than a celeron or a sempron)
Memory: 1024MB RAM (1GB)
Hard Drive: 80GB Hard Disk Drive
Display: 15.4 inch TFT display
Optical Drive: DVD Supermulti
OS Version: Windows Vista Business
Wireless LAN: Wireless LAN 802.11abg upto 54Mbps
6 Cell Battery
Weight: 2.72 Kg

Best bang for buck

Plus postage, which i cant check the price of as the item is out of stock anyway.

All its saying regarding postage is 'Delivery charges depend on the weight, value and number of the items ordered. The delivery charge is displayed in your shopping cart as soon as you add your first item, and is updated after each alteration'