Laptop advice please

misspointy

Im no technical genius so buying a laptop is bl**dy confusing!
Basically my daughter wants a laptop (shes 15) she would use it for homework, internet, chat, photos, music download and if at all possible play the odd sims game on.
we only have a budget of £350 is it possible to buy a reasonable laptop for this price...and one that would last longer than a year?
Ive looked on the Dell site but there are too many to look at. Been told to avoid Pc world!!?
Any help would be gratefully received. Thanks.

misscomickat

I have ordered a laptop this morning off Dell, the Inspiron 6400. There's £50 off until tomorrow. Mine came to £400 but I had the higher spec one, there is a lower spec one for less.

davetrousers

For your money you will get a much higher spec desktop machine. I don't know what other people think but imho budget PCs with Vista are not a great idea and you would probably be better going with XP

try misco for cheap desktops that still come with XP rather than the crippling vista!

Have a look at this PC but remember to get a monitor like this

misscomickat

He wants a laptop, not a desktop.

The_Gerbil

misspointy wrote: »

and if at all possible play the odd sims game on.

That could be where you will have problems. Using the internet doesn't require much in the way of a high spec but once you start wanting to run games the specification can become important.

I know The Sims wouldn't run on an old PC of mine and I needed to buy a new graphics card. With a laptop you can't really start upgrading it like a desktop though.

davetrousers

misscomickat wrote: »

He wants a laptop, not a desktop.

But £350 is only going to get a very basic laptop and if it has Vista surely it's going to be very slow, then how do you upgrade a laptop? Not very easily. A desktop is much easier to upgrade.

By all means buy a laptop, but I was just giving my 2 penneth!

BillScarab

£350 will get a resonable laptop. DMXdimension usually list the best deals from Dell. They currently have some Inspiron 6400 laptops at OK prices like misscomickat mentioned. Here is the link the one for £349 is Ok but 1Gb RAM with Vista is not good, if you could strecth to the one for £399 it has twice the RAM and a much better processor. It may even be capabel fo playing the sims.

yorksbabe

hi, both my boys got an acer aspire 5315 with their crimbo money. They £329.99 from comet and they think they are brill.

johng_uk

Apparently you can negotiate with Dell if you order by phone. The more money you spend, the easier it would be to get a discount though.

Although there's no harm in giving them a quick call to see what they have to offer.

foreversomeday

Is it The Sims, or The Sims 2?

The Sims 2 will not run on any laptop without problems, it is a very high spec game and requires up to date video cards as well as a large amount of RAM. The minimum specs are not really enough to play the game without it crashing, especially with Vista.

If it is the original Sims, there should be no problem getting it to run on a laptop which is a few years old, even.

If she wants to play The Sims 2, I would suggest she gets one of the Sims 2 Stories games, these are designed for laptops and are a bit easier to run.

The problem with the Sims 2 is that it is unlike other games - processing speed and RAM aren't as important as the graphics card (The RAM will be an issue with Vista, though.) - and the graphics cards in laptops are generally not heavy duty ones, as laptops aren't designed for this purpose - they were originally designed for businesspeople who need to be able to access the same files and programs at work and home. Bit of a gap in the market, you might think - but gaming computers are generally desktops so that they can be upgraded more easily.

Do you have a family desktop you could upgrade for the sims games, this would dramatically reduce the amount of money you'd have to spend on the laptop and you could use the extra in the budget to pay for a better graphics card/more RAM for the desktop.

culpepper

we got the acer aspire for DD on her birthday. From ebuyer where we often buy computer stuff. It wont install the sims 2 but is pretty good for everything else. I think it was around £350 but it is 17 inches wide which is quite heavy to lug around. They do smaller models but the 17" screen is nice for watching films.