Which Laptop? - £500 max budget - student

Hopefully with the info I have posted below someone could find me the laptop I want.... thanks in advance?? Joe


1. What type of laptop are you looking for? ----- Will use instead of family PC

2. What will be your uses for the laptop? ----- Browsing Internet, Schoolwork, Listening to Music

3. What is your total budget? ----- Absolute maximum of £500 including VAT - the cheaper the better!

4. How portable does the laptop need to be? ----- Not very - will be used at home mostly

5. What type of screen do you want? ----- Don't care so long as it is not awful quality or really really small.

6. How much battery life is required? ----- I will not travel with it very much, so not a huge length. However, not a pathetic length either, I want to use it for a good few hours without being plugged in!

7. What type of processor/ram/hard drive/optical drives do you want? -----

Operating System - XP
Processor - don’t mind 1.66 will do
RAM - 1024 or bigger
HD - at least 60GB
Optical drives - as long as it rips CDs I don’t mind

8. If you want to play games, what type? ----- Would like to be able to play Football Manager but this is a massive game so I can do without!

9. Are there any specific things needed? ----- Wireless Internet enabled and a few USB holes.

10. Which things are you willing to comprimise? ----- Graphics cards/DVD drives are not needed.

11. What laptops have you considered? ----- None at all - I looked on PC world and they only do laptops with Vista now! I need a lot of help searching for one! However I of course would like a reliable and durable brand.

12. What operating system(s) do you want to run? ----- Windows XP (Home or Pro, does not matter)

13. Do you want a new laptop, or would you mind a refurbished or used? ----- New one please

14. Do you need/wish to purchase from a particular store? ----- Nope - just a reliable one. Must be brought from the UK though

15. Timescale for purchasing ----- Within the next month.

 

Given Dell a try? They're 1501 range (could have those numbers wrong!) are at a great price and you can choose to have vista or xp I believe.

 

Thanks for all the advice everyone has posted.
I have found this laptop:

http://tinyurl.com/2u7pnl
It has 1GB RAM and a 80GB Hard Drive, with XP.

The only problem is that it is a Sempron CPU with only a 512 KB - L2 Cache. I have been told that this is really bad and the kiss of death for laptops as it will not be able to multitask - is this true?

 

this acer is nice: http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=120054

Ive got an Acer laptop, same case and all but a different processor (older core duo). the screen is BEAUTIFUL as well as being widescreen. it comes with all sorts of nifty pre-installed tools (no Dell bloatware here) all of which are quite useful.

 

http://outlet.us.dell.com

I used this website to buy a laptop recently but I ended up returning it because Dell didn't put enough RAM in it to support Vista. If you choose Vista use a mininum of 1GB. Anything less and you will not be able to run the system. But also you can buy less than 1GB and then later call up Dell and tell them that you are going to return the laptop because they didn't make the laptop with enough memory and they might give you a coupon to buy more memory on their website. This is what happened to me and they ended up giving me a $50 coupon to buy more RAM but I was so sick of dealing with Dell's customer service that I decided the heck with it and I returned the laptop. These computers are refurbished but they have very good warranties and are very near being new. My computer had a system built sicker dated 3/3/07. Good luck. Shiloh.

 

Yeh what he said ^^ LOL

 

Here is what I am now considering:

Dell Inspiron 6400
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5200 (1.60 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache)
Windows Vista Home Premium
1GB RAM
80GB Hard Drive

£499 Deliviered

Is this a good deal?

 

I also like the acer good little laptops

I use to buy from dell outlet but I think those acers, performance & price are a much better deal.

 

the acer i posted has 40 more gigs of HDD space and a faster processor for less $$. it also doesnt come with all the crap Dell preloads their systems with. Do you really want Vista? Id stick with XP for a while longer...

 

the dell is a great machine. Why would you buy old technology?

 

how is this outdated...? (unless im not understanding u correctly)

 

Windows XP . that was my point

 

No, Windows XP is not outdated and won't be for a long while yet. Just because Vista has been out for a few months does not classify XP as outdated. The support is still there etc, plus as Vista is still new some applications are not compatible without a patch, XP works with all current software.

It also may be that the user in context here is more computer literate with XP than Vista, and has therefore chosen this option.

 

I get my laptops and peripherals from Portable Universe and I can thoroughly recommend them. The best thing for people to do is to talk to them, let them know what your needs are (both current and future) and they will come up with the best laptop for you. I also get blank DVDs there for my backup.
http://www.portableuniverse.co.uk