To do the basic set of activities i.e. Mainly Word Processing, some spreadsheets, some processing/moving of photos, accessing E-mail, saving to dvd, in-built web-cam, microphone etc. Ideally something that will last at least 5 years (With warranty to match) and that has total reliability and a decent battery life.

Any ideas?

Nick

I wouldn't bother with a warranty, it would proberbly cost more than the laptop. For £300 your not going to get much, and that price point battery life is going to be very limited.

I wouldn't bother with a warranty, it would proberbly cost more than the laptop. For £300 your not going to get much, and that price point battery life is going to be very limited.

Some places yes, the extended warranty will cost more than the laptop. Where I work the extended warranty is ~£130 for an extra 2 years for a £300 laptop

To do the basic set of activities i.e. Mainly Word Processing, some spreadsheets, some processing/moving of photos, accessing E-mail, saving to dvd, in-built web-cam, microphone etc. Ideally something that will last at least 5 years (With warranty to match) and that has total reliability and a decent battery life.

Not possible, at least nothing that will be any good, at that price level battery life will be 1.5hrs tops. Add £100 to £200 and get something that will do the job properly instead. Good HP's with i3 / i5 CPU's are available at that level. Nothing can be said to have total reliability, there are always some that will break (even the mighty Apples can break) However, the HP units are proving to be quite solid, even at the lower price points. Don't buy a low price Dell.

As Chris says, warranty extension to 5 years will be in the region of £200.

I work at PCW and the absolute minimum I would pay for a laptop is £379 - £399, specs are fairly decent there now. Below that things can get quite nasty.

There is THIS or THIS which may be OK as they have been discounted. At least neither has a Celeron, which is good.

There really isn't a lot worth having at under £300

Or, for £399 you'll get THIS or THIS

There is THIS or THIS which may be OK as they have been discounted. At least neither has a Celeron, which is good.

There really isn't a lot worth having at under £300

Or, for £399 you'll get THIS or THIS

I like the Toshiba. Although slightly lesser specified, I wonder whether this one at £269 (Before cash back) would be in the same league ?

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_C660-1JH_Laptop_PSC0LE-03400JEN/version.asp

Nick

Edited 16 April, 201115 yr by Clunkclick

Put simply, it will be significantly slower. It may look a bargain but you could get fed up with its slowness very quickly.

It's amazing how people only look at the price. A few years back we got 20 laptops to sell at £199 at Xmas. We could sell 10 on boxing day and 10 the day after. People didn't care what the spec was, they just saw "laptop for £199" and were queuing to get in at 7:30am to buy one. The things were complete rubbish, yet we nearly had fights in the queue over laptops that I wouldn't have paid £1.99 for :S

Amazingly, most of them are still working

If your looking for a cheap laptop try the dell outlet site maybe refurbed/ex display etc however they still have a years warranty!

This is not for me but for a relative who has a limited budget and is looking for value for money and a big screen becaue of diminishing visual capability.

They just want a simple machine that they can sit at home with and do the domestic IT chores on, partially to replace the current desktop which is U/S.

Whilst the existing desktop (A 2005 Packard Bell) may be repairable (Three blown capacitors on the Gigabyte motherboard) my previous experience of having surface mounted capacitors replaced is that it isn't always 100% successful.

So the plan is to get a cheap laptop and if there is any dosh left over get a cheap gigabyte AM3 mainboard and Athlon II dual core processor (640 ?) (Total costs approx £120 Inc VAT) to re-instate the desktop which will then be used as a multimedia centre connected to the LCD TV via the network connector - might also have to get an adapter for the motherboard power supply.

I'm reasonably confident in refurb machines - this post is being typed on a 8 year old Packard Bell Easynote originally sold through PC World and refurb'd by a third party refurbisher after being a returned as a faulty item. I got it for half price because the on-board modem is U/S and the screen is slightly overdriven - no big deal there, just bought an external USB dongle modem for £10 and turn the brightness on the screen down, good as new ! And although the hard disk is slow (27 MB/Sec transfer Rate) this is more than made up for by a steaming Pentium 4 Northwood clocking @ 3Ghz.

Would a Toshiba with a Celeron be slower faster than this ?

Nick

Edited 17 April, 201115 yr by Clunkclick

in your first post you mentioned you would like something thats going to last 5 years, buying something with what is in effect an already obsolete processor is going to be running slow today, never mind in 5 years time. You really need at least 3GB or ram, an i3 processor and at a minimum a 15.6" screen, hard drive will be fine at 120GB plus I guess. Buying a celeron CPU may well be faster than what they have already, but it will not be much of a difference, the Celeron is a budget CPU with some stuff removed to reduce costs.

The model I'm looking at, Toshiba satellite Pro C660 1JH was apparently only introduced last September and has now been superseded by another model with a two core processor. I think, as a result of this quick change, suppliers across the board, have been left with large stocks unsold - hence the discounting.

With a Celeron Mobile 900 (2.3 GHZ), 2 GB RAM (Expandable to 4GB for £15),250GB hard disk (5400RPM), 15.6 screen (1366 x768), DVD writer, Built In Wi-Fi (Up to n), Windows 7 (64 bit) and some good reviews, seems like a snip @ £269 (Inc VAT).

Potential user impressed anyway.

Just need a visit to PC World to check out the build-quality onn the current models - this was the only question mark popping up on the web.

Nick

Edited 17 April, 201115 yr by Clunkclick

Tesco's or the like will sell you a laptop for that kind of money - may not be a techies choice but then you are after a simple consumer item.

The model I'm looking at, Toshiba satellite Pro C660 1JH was apparently only introduced last September and has now been superseded by another model with a two core processor. I think, as a result of this quick change, suppliers across the board, have been left with large stocks unsold - hence the discounting.

With a Celeron Mobile 900 (2.3 GHZ), 2 GB RAM (Expandable to 4GB for £15),250GB hard disk (5400RPM), 15.6 screen (1366 x768), DVD writer, Built In Wi-Fi (Up to n), Windows 7 (64 bit) and some good reviews, seems like a snip @ £269 (Inc VAT).

Potential user impressed anyway.

Just need a visit to PC World to check out the build-quality onn the current models - this was the only question mark popping up on the web.

Nick

Celeron and Battery life DO NOT go together. Celeron's are awful in laptops.

go here:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/dfo/df.aspx?refid=df&s=dfo

They currently have this:

•Inspiron N5010

•Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)

•Processor:Intel i3-370M(2.4GHz) Mobile CPU

•250GB (5400rpm)

•Memory 2GB (2x1GB) 1333MHz DDR3 ECC-UDIMM

•Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software

•Display 15.6in HD (1366X768) WLED with TrueLife

•LCD Back Cover : Mars Black

For £296.35 inc vat.

Ample spec for what you need and RAM can be upgraded afterwards for a few quid.

Celeron and Battery life DO NOT go together. Celeron's are awful in laptops.

go here:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/dfo/df.aspx?refid=df&s=dfo

They currently have this:

•Inspiron N5010

•Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)

•Processor:Intel i3-370M(2.4GHz) Mobile CPU

•250GB (5400rpm)

•Memory 2GB (2x1GB) 1333MHz DDR3 ECC-UDIMM

•Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software

•Display 15.6in HD (1366X768) WLED with TrueLife

•LCD Back Cover : Mars Black

For £296.35 inc vat.

Ample spec for what you need and RAM can be upgraded afterwards for a few quid.

That looks very good - current provcessor & memory and I suppose another £15-20 to add an extra 2 GB of memory.

Nick

Edited 17 April, 201115 yr by Clunkclick

I have always had Dell with laptops. Touch wood never had any problems. Same can't be said for Acer, HP, Lenovo though...

I run a computer business and can sometimes get recon laptops from the manufacturers with 1 year warranty.

Cheapest ive seen is £270 ex vat, it was an acer.

As you can imagine they go very quick at that price.

I would search places like dabs.co.uk and other online retailers for "open box" stock, thats the best cheap stuff, not repaired,just returned goods that were wrongly ordered.

I run a computer business and can sometimes get recon laptops from the manufacturers with 1 year warranty.

Cheapest ive seen is £270 ex vat, it was an acer.

As you can imagine they go very quick at that price.

I would search places like dabs.co.uk and other online retailers for "open box" stock, thats the best cheap stuff, not repaired,just returned goods that were wrongly ordered.

Thats not a great price.....as i listed earlier the Dell Outlet one is/was cheaper and has the benefit of not being an Acer.

VMT guys.

Lots of food for thought - the power of Briskoda !

Any views on the Compaq Presario range ? - seems to within price bracket

Nick

VMT guys.

Lots of food for thought - the power of Briskoda !

Any views on the Compaq Presario range ? - seems to within price bracket

Nick

They are ok - what spec? Not as well built as they used to be though. I have a couple of the old HP range floating around that are 6-7 years old and haven't got a mark on them yet 2-3 year old ones i look after are ready for the bin.

The Compaq CQ61 base model is a well biult little machine, got a couple of them.

Always try to go for a machine running Windows 7 64 bit and not 32 bit as in 3-5 years time you will need 4 Gbs of RAM to run anything an 32 bit Windows 7 will only address just over 3 Gb of RAM even if you put it in.

I have a Dell Vostro for work. Dell do not avertise them but you can find them and they are general better value than their punter versions.

Argos were knocking out 17inch HPs for £369 with quite impressive spec. You get a lot more for a few quid more.

Loads of makes I would not buy, emachine etc. Best go for Compaq or HP IMO.

Edited 18 April, 201115 yr by lol

emachine are made by Acer. As are Packard Bell.

emachine are made by Acer. As are Packard Bell.

Enough Said.

Enough Said.

Indeed

Not possible, at least nothing that will be any good, at that price level battery life will be 1.5hrs tops. Add £100 to £200 and get something that will do the job properly instead. Good HP's with i3 / i5 CPU's are available at that level. Nothing can be said to have total reliability, there are always some that will break (even the mighty Apples can break) However, the HP units are proving to be quite solid, even at the lower price points. Don't buy a low price Dell.

As Chris says, warranty extension to 5 years will be in the region of £200.

I work at PCW and the absolute minimum I would pay for a laptop is £379 - £399, specs are fairly decent there now. Below that things can get quite nasty.

HP's? I've had 2 batteries in less than 12 months from them - now it's out of warranty and I need a 3rd - I wouldn't touch another HP - although they are solidly built, if you get one invest in replacement batteries.

HP's? I've had 2 batteries in less than 12 months from them - now it's out of warranty and I need a 3rd - I wouldn't touch another HP - although they are solidly built, if you get one invest in replacement batteries.

Celeron or AMD by any chance?