Hi y'all

 

i'm looking for a new laptop to replace my 6 yr old Acer, which the screen is constantly flickering and whiting out on and would cost me at least £100 to fix, and that's if it stays fixed! So, looking at a new laptop, don't really want touchscreen (got a tablet and phone for that functionality).

 

Finding the choice out there a bit bewildering with all the versions of the i3/i5 chips (are they better than the AMD equivalents?), ideally 13-16" screen, optical drive if poss, and at least 4gb ram and 500mb HDD. What difference is ther between a standard hard drive and the new SSD drives?

 

Sony, Asus (won't go for another Acer, not impressed with reliability or build quality), Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Samsung (if they do any in that price range?).

 

I will mostly be web browising, photo editing, word processing, maybe the odd game.

 

Cheers

Wouldn't bother with Dell. I've had two and they are both shagged. 

(About 8 years old.)

I'm quite happy with our new Acer. Boots up FAST, even from fully off.

No fan noise either.   

I've just bought an Asus from Amazon, cost me £299 which is proper bargain basement! For what I use or for though, is ideal (web surfing and downloading)

Only issue I had was updating to the latest windows 8.1 as there were loads of patches and it took a whole day

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Wouldn't bother with Dell. I've had two and they are both shagged. 

(About 8 years old.)

I'm quite happy with our new Acer. Boots up FAST, even from fully off.

No fan noise either.   

 

Just to counter we have an i5 Dell we got for less than £500 (~£440 ) through the outlet (inc a 1Gb graphics card) works away brilliantly for us despite SWMBOs abuse.

 

But honestly any i3 will do everything you ask except demanding games. You'll need separate graphics for that which is usually a premium on a laptop.

HP or Acer will give you a lot of laptop for that budget!

Check out hotukdeals as well. I'd personally avoid an i3 and go for i5 or i7 processor and if you can a touch screen convertible model (as in screen folds right over) running full flavour windows 8.1

If you can afford it go for a lappy with a ssd drive instead of mechanical hdd. The difference is night and day performance wise. If you do not need all the storage then a 128gb ssd will be fine. I stuck my old ssd in me daughters sony vaio and everything is so much snappier. It boots in a fraction of the time and everything is faster. I will not have a computer without an ssd now as a boot drive. Reliability wise the ssd is an old crucial m4 never missed a beat.

If you can afford it go for a lappy with a ssd drive instead of mechanical hdd. The difference is night and day performance wise. If you do not need all the storage then a 128gb ssd will be fine. I stuck my old ssd in me daughters sony vaio and everything is so much snappier. It boots in a fraction of the time and everything is faster. I will not have a computer without an ssd now as a boot drive. Reliability wise the ssd is an old crucial m4 never missed a beat.

 

SSDs do make a huge difference but it'll probably be easier/cheaper to swap later. They only seem to be fitted to very high spec laptops at a big markup.

HP seem to be putting in an ssd for the os, and normal hard drive for any other apps and data

Fujitsu do some nice ones. Esp the lifebook range.

I have  Lenovo Ideapad Flex 14 - nice bit of kit