You probably get bored of these type of questions but which of these is best at around the £300 mark, or do you know of a better deal?

Acer Aspire Gemstone 5315 Laptop Celeron 540 1024MB 80GB DVD-SM 15.4 ACB TFT Windows Vista Basic - Ebuyer

HP 550 Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile V5535 Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

Toshiba Satellite Pro L300 Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

I need to buy a pair of whatever's best at around this price, must be new and under warranty.

Thanks

dont know much , but HP has always been recomende , that one has 2 years warranty and 4 hr bat life .

Avoid Celeron processors like the plague. Its similar to Ford vs Ferrari

Get something with a decent dual core processor and a decent amount of ram

Avoid Celeron processors like the plague. Its similar to Ford vs Ferrari

Get something with a decent dual core processor and a decent amount of ram

short sighted advice ftw it so depends on the intended purpose; if all you want to do is browse the internet and check email you don't need anything all that swish

We really need to know what the main use is going to be for the lappy's.

However looking at the specs, the Toshiba is the only one with 2GB RAM and Vista Home Premium, and as a make gets good reliability ratings over at the PC review site I mod at.

Conversely Acer get very bad ratings, particularly for their after sales service

Conversely Acer get very bad ratings, particularly for their after sales service

Yes they are a pain to get parts for. They also seem to have a higher than usual failure rate

Thanks very much for the replies.

Sorry I should have put a bit more info into the first post about usage etc.

I want the laptops for my kids, one's at high school and could do with something with a reasonable spec and my youngest will be starting high school next year so wifey decided that we would save up for a decent Xmas prezzie this year and hope that they last a few years at least (until they're old enough to buy their own next time!!!).

So primary use will be homework (I have power point etc that will be installed on them) and general internet browsing (so I can have my PC back!), no heavy duty gaming or anything is likely.

My wife was initially swaying towards a Dell 1525 basic spec as we have had a Dell computer (pc) before and their aftercare was okay and the thing was easy to self repair when it went out of warranty. I thought I'd look into other options, but the more you look the harder the choice seems.....

Another brand to through into the mix is Samsung, their recent laptops are really good. They all have a good spec, and reasonable price.

Dells warranty on laptops is very different to their desktop systems because typically laptops are very difficult to repair. The onsite warranty will typically be a replacement unit for any broken ones, and the replacement will most likely be a refurb unit. They will not transfer any data from laptop to the other, so you will need to ensure all the data is backed up elsewhere.

As well as the laptops, budget for an external removable drive for data backup just in case something happens to the laptop, you dont want them to lose all their course work.

Does it have to be a full size laptop?

The whole netbook market is awash with smaller, lighter notebooks ideal for general office/net duties.....not very expandable though, and soon hit "full size" costs.

course, high school students - they may want to be able to dabble with games etc.......which alters things.....

Here at work:

HP 530's (earlier version of the 550 going off the specs) - bought 13 of them. fairly abused. no errors or failures so far (almost 12 months)

Toshiba (assorted mix of satellite pro's and tecra's) - Satellites seem to last longer than the tecra's, but failure rate beginning to accelerate after 3 years.

Acer - no. no. no. and no again. We've had a few over the years, and every single one has died, some within two weeks and we've never got anywhere with replacements.

No knowledge of the Fujitsu's.

Thanks again.

Yes I do want full size ones, initially looked at the Asus 8.9 inch EEE netbooks but the keyboards are a bit small on them. The good thing about the smaller netbooks are that you can still get them with XP installed. But I've had my orders that they've got to be 15.4s.

I guess Acer is off the shopping list then but the choice of the others is so bewildering its unbelievable. I guess it's going to be a case of wait and see what comes on special offer.

short sighted advice ftw

Not really:rolleyes:. I'm speaking from experience:D.

You dont have to pay loads for Dual Core. you can get a decent laptop with a 1.6Ghz Dual Core processor which will be infinitely better than any celeron processor.

I'm a Dell supporter having spent many troublefree hours in front of Dell machines both at home and at the office.

The Inspiron 1525 costs (depending on specs) from £329 and upwards.

Or take a bold step and look at the Inspiron Mini 9 (from £269)?

If your kids show any signs of developing into pc geeks the Mini with Linux might be a good choice?

EDIT after reading BeezerDiesel's last: Yes, the keyboard on mini laptops is terribly small at the beginning, but you adjust remarkably quick (and kids probably adjust quicker, just look at how fast and easy they type their sms messages on a very small keyboard). And the SSD memory might be more durable (shockproof) than a HDD.

Not really:rolleyes:. I'm speaking from experience:D.

You dont have to pay loads for Dual Core. you can get a decent laptop with a 1.6Ghz Dual Core processor which will be infinitely better than any celeron processor.

didn't mean to have a real go, but you can't make a good recommendation on spec without knowing the intended purpose - something like an E1200 could well be perfectly adequate yet ignored due to comments like "avoid Celeron processors like the plague"

didn't mean to have a real go, but you can't make a good recommendation on spec without knowing the intended purpose - something like an E1200 could well be perfectly adequate yet ignored due to comments like "avoid Celeron processors like the plague"

Ok i should make myself clearer. Why pay for something that is adequate when you can get something more than adequate for a little bit more or even the same price.

A few of my friends work in computing and all the techies in work all say the same thing. When it comes to Computers/Laptops get the best you can afford. otherwise you end up paying more in the long run. I.E a dual core Laptop will last longer than a Celeron one. Im talking in terms of software use etc not hardware failure. Plus they use less power so save money on eleccy bills so its win win all round:D:D

didn't mean to have a real go, but you can't make a good recommendation on spec without knowing the intended purpose - something like an E1200 could well be perfectly adequate yet ignored due to comments like "avoid Celeron processors like the plague"

Can't resist joining this rant even if it's slightly OT. What's wrong with celeron processors? Have used them for years, they do not wear out - not from me using them, at least. But OK, I'm not into extremely resource-consuming activities, just the ordinary Office/image editing/browsing tasks.

The HP looks like a good deal but you'll need to factor in an extra gig of ram for each machine but it's not expensive. The Intel chip is the best at the moment.

I got an HP lappy from Ebuyer last year and I've been very pleased with it.

Other than that I'd get the Tosh. They're well built too.

Celerons are ok but to run Vista you need all the grunt you can get and the prices of these laptops are low enough that you don't really need to choose the budget processor. I've seen Vista basic on a Celeron and it's not good.

I'd say have a look at Dell. My past few laptop/desktops have been Dell and all OK. If you can catch the offers, be it on the actual laptop or something like free delivery and/or money off then they can be good value. If you go over to Honest Johns website, there is a Dell pop-up that comes up with a laptop for £299.

I'd say have a look at Dell. My past few laptop/desktops have been Dell and all OK. If you can catch the offers, be it on the actual laptop or something like free delivery and/or money off then they can be good value. If you go over to Honest Johns website, there is a Dell pop-up that comes up with a laptop for £299.

Nice one, having a look at that right now.

There's quite a lot of Vostros on Ebay being sold as new and under warranty so I guess they buy a load and sell them on again(?) as it's a business laptop(?), would the gaphics cards be any good on these as the kids would watch AVI movies on their laptops?

I have This Acer model

For web browsing, typing it does the job. I paid £400 for mine back in 2007 and upgraded the RAM to 2GB.

The touchpad can get irritating if you tap it when typing though but if you have a big desk to stick it on and a mouse you dont need to worry.

The 17" screen is pretty good 1440x900, the cpu is nippy although now its got 2GB RAM it def helps.

You might think 80GB is a little small. But if you store your music and videos on another PC and stream it across.

Haven't had to use Acers support people, so can't comment on them.

How's this one sound?

Looks quite good to me, dual core thingy and 120 GB whatnot, is it okay?

Currys - Shop for Laptops - Packard Bell MX37-S-200 Intel Celeron Dual Core T1400 Processor

Edit: Scrub that one it's out of stock everywhere

Edited 30 October, 200817 yr by BeezerDiesel

If your young 'uns will be using it, I guess they'll play a game or two in their leisure time and in that case 1GB RAM might be on the low side. Also, Vista Home Premium has a few extra gadgets added such as the Media Center which can be handy for movies, music &c.

Nice one, having a look at that right now.

There's quite a lot of Vostros on Ebay being sold as new and under warranty so I guess they buy a load and sell them on again(?) as it's a business laptop(?), would the gaphics cards be any good on these as the kids would watch AVI movies on their laptops?

I don't know what the real difference is between the Vostro "business" range and the other Dell stuff. I think it must be like Tesco value or finest range - same food stuff just different ingredients and pricing. I found the Vostro isn't a real tough laptop as in it doesn't have metal casing and it isn't as thin as some other Dell laptops, but for the price you can't grumble. We use ours as a general machine - web and such like but it plays DVD's fine and is quick at encoding DV camcorder stuff to record onto DVD's so I'd say it should handle most things except the more hardcore gaming.

If you do go down the Dell route (or any other laptop) remember to spend 10mins looking for stuff like "dell discount vouchers" as you wil be surprised what discount codes you can find. Most are out of date but you may find one that gives you a tenner off.

Cheers for that, what's the sound like on the Vostros? Being more of a business use compooter I thought it might be a bit tinny.

And yep, I'm an avid scourer of discount websites!!! In my book if I can't shave a few quid off I keep my money in my pocket unless it's an emergency purchase. I can spend months searching for deals sometimes. Like now I guess!

Well to my surprise I've actually gone out and bought the laptops from one of those despicable big name retailers after my wife saw them advertised on TV.

I had a look at the spec after what you guys recommended and it seemed to have everything more or less and has 2mb cache which doesn't seem to feature very often in lappies at this price.

Buy TOSHIBA SAT L300-18D | T/l300 t5750-2gb-120-drw-15-vp - Laptops | Comet

I bought a cheap laptop with integrated graphics and MS Vista last year and assumed I wouldn't be able to play any games on it.

However after playing about this summer I found it was able to play games from a few years ago so its not the end of the world for games either Added bonus that old games will be cheap