As the title says really, the time has come for me to part with my 9 year old acer aspire, its served me well but is severely lacking in power (512mb ram, 40gb hdd)

So ive done abit of looking and Dells seem to be very over priced compared to HPs or Acers? What do folk recommend for mainly internet browsing, music streamib, some photoshop & CAD work? I'm more of a hammer basher than keyboard warrior so any help is appreciated

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-pavilion-ultrabook-was-500-now-yours-for-just-339-possibly-51-quidco-288-hp-store-1420320

I doubt you'd go far wrong with that.

Dells can be well priced if you can get an offer and/or voucher code. I've just gone for an Inspiron 15R SE with 9% discount code (http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/topics/landing_pages/en/voucher_lp?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs - last day tomorrow) and a £220 saving (runs out on the 2nd) that brings it down to a bit over your budget (£450 vs £719). I've had several makes over the years and the last one was an Inspiron in 2007. Apart from a dead battery that's still going well.

If you're doing CAD work and don't want to be waiting an age, you do really need to be looking at a 'proper' chip like an i3/i5/i7 which rules out the Atom based netbooks. Dell have an Inspiron 15 at £399 (£363 with the coupon) with a dual core i5 2.5Ghz, 6Gb RAM and 1TB drive. http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=n0015m31&model_id=inspiron-15-3520&c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1

I agree it's a bit of a minefield, though, as I've been looking for the last month or so. Trying to find something reasonably light, powerful and cheap but it seems my definition of reasonable doesn't tally with the manufacturers' use of the term :( Light gets a netbook (not so powerful) or an ultrabook (not so cheap) so I ended up going for a compromise system and gave up on the lightness!

I hope you find something suitable!

Photoshop and CAD avoid atoms as above. Ideal is a dedicated graphics card.

I have a Dell desktop and so far I'm pleased with it/Dell. Haggled on the list price though.

Maybe consider an AMD laptop rather than Intel, battery may suffer but dedicated GPU's at that budget rarely seem to happen for Intel but do for AMD (not high end ones but better than nothing). Is a laptop an absolute must? £400 on a desktop would grab you more performance than £400 on a laptop. See if you can find a friend with a similar specced machine to what you choose and see if he will let you try a quick bit of PhotoShop or your cad tool of choice before hand.

Try the Dell Outlet store.

Just for reference the Inspiron 15R SE is one of the laptops that has a dual graphics setup. Onboard Intel for general use whilst saving power and a dedicated AMD Radeon 2Gb card for heavier tasks. Nice as an entertainment system too as it comes with bluray and full HD (1920x1080) display. Shame it isn't under the OP's £400 budget :(

+1 for Dell outlet. You should be able to get a reasonable i3 laptop for that.

Check Quidco for Dell offers, they often have 24hr deals on delivery etc.

There are some nice HP i5 machines in currys at £399 which I'm pondering myself.

The hp site code above has expired?

Tempted by this http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-pavilion-g7-2274sa-laptop-407-15-with-code-15offxmas-15-cashback-from-quidco-1422411#post-comment

If you are going to be using CAD then I would be looking for something with a screen resolution better than a bog standard 1366x768.

I have twin monitors with decent resolution on my CAD machine at work and when I have to use CAD on my laptop the lower resolution is a right pain.

Thanks to all suggestions, had a good look at all of them. The reason i wanted a laptop was for the portability, ive got a desktop at work where my main CAD & PS is done. Was only looking for a laptop which would cope for finishing off tasks. The dell outlet store had some good deals, but i decided upon a HP. The HP Pavillion G7-2274sa, Managed to get it for £346 which i thought was an excellent deal.

Thanks again for you help, some very knowledgable people in this section

Thanks to all suggestions, had a good look at all of them. The reason i wanted a laptop was for the portability, ive got a desktop at work where my main CAD & PS is done. Was only looking for a laptop which would cope for finishing off tasks. The dell outlet store had some good deals, but i decided upon a HP. The HP Pavillion G7-2274sa, Managed to get it for £346 which i thought was an excellent deal.

Thanks again for you help, some very knowledgable people in this section

I assume this is with the 15% and quidco? Or did you find another code?

Yeah with the voucher code and quidco

Yeah with the voucher code and quidco

Did yours arrive?

Had to ring HP as their system screwed everything up. Means no Quidco :(

My Dell order done at the same time got messed up too. My credit card company decided a first time Dell purchase over Christmas was likely to be dodgy so stopped the payment. That left it in limbo on Dell's site, with no order confirmation but still with an order reference. Eventually managed to get payment cleared but thought we'd lose the TopCashback linked to the original purchase. luckily it looks like it will come through, as it was mentioned on the latest email TC sent through. Not sure when it's going to turn up though :(

Anti-fraud was my thoughts, but not heard anything from either HP nor the bank.

I've usually had a phone call from them if they've stopped a payment, but I used the card later the same day to get diesel from my local and that went through. SWMBO tried to use the card online the next day and that's when we realised it was blocked. Having had the card cloned (but not accurately, fortunately, so the fake transactions got picked up and new cards issued) before we're quite happy for the bank to keep an eye out for stuff like this, but a check up phone call wouldn't have gone amiss. They did say when I rang them that there had been a lot of bogus transactions going through Dell.

It'll be nice to finally get it, but goodness knows when that will be - it's just arrived back in Cologne for the third time today!

Did yours arrive?

Had to ring HP as their system screwed everything up. Means no Quidco :(

Yeah mine arrived on the 2nd with no problems although the quidco get declined, however I've appealled it. Hope everything gets sorted for you

Yeah mine arrived on the 2nd with no problems although the quidco get declined, however I've appealled it. Hope everything gets sorted for you

On what grounds did they refuse?

Had a number of issues lately with quidco cash back requiring claims to be raised

The best dell deals can be found at this little known website: www.dmxdimension.com - accurate and reliable, also saves a good amount of money! Friend recently got a very high spec 15r SE through there, £800 reduced to £449. I5/8gb/750gb/bluray/2gb Radeon etc!

That appears to be one of several aggregation sites that pull in the various deals and takes you straight to the relevant offer on Dell's site. I found a few in my trawls but that appears better than most. Good tip!

Mine is the same spec as your friend's, although with 6GB RAM and adding a backlit keyboard (£30 extra). Usual price £750, offered with £220 discount, plus voucher code for another 9% off brought it to down £480. We should be getting a TopCashback payback of £20 on it as well, so quite pleased

My Dell order done at the same time got messed up too. My credit card company decided a first time Dell purchase over Christmas was likely to be dodgy so stopped the payment. That left it in limbo on Dell's site, with no order confirmation but still with an order reference.

I've had this a few times with laptops but normally it's just a phone call to confirm the payment is genuine. Maybe you had more problems because it was the holiday period.

Laptops are a common purchase with stolen cards that's why it set off the alarms. Airplane tickets are another one.

Edited 9 January, 201313 yr by Aspman

I purchased a Sony Vaio i5 4gb Ram about a year ago. running Win 7 64bit for sub £400 just shoped around and found some voucher codes. I also use Cad but its 3D Solidworks 2012 it runs it just but only for solid modelling any complex stuff like surfacing and you will need a better spec. Can't fault the vaio though very well made bit of kit its not got dedicated video but you can run in openGL mode. It would handle autocad no problems though if your just doing 2D.