On the lookout for a laptop to replace my ageing PC, have you guys any ideas of good ones around the £500 mark:confused: Been advised by a few friends to look at Acer and Dell (inspiron) although they have said screens seem poor on the Dell ones.....

Looking for dual core, 2gb memory, 100+ hard drive, wireless but would prefer 17" screen....Dont want much do i:D

Thanks in advance

Phil

I personally would avoid acer like the plague!

I would start looking at Toshiba's, Lenovo's and Samsungs. But that is just my opinion, no doubt other people will think different! From experience you very much get what you pay for with laptops.

As above, I'd avoid Acer!

By also, avoid HP at the minute!

Mine has been back to HP 4 times in the last 6 or so months, and they keep it for nearly a month at a time!

I've been using the same Inspiron for 5(!) years now, both at office & at home and never had any kind of trouble. Sooner and later I'll have to swpa it for a new one, it's become a little slow in the uptake over years, but I wouldnt' hesitate to get a new Dell.

Screen quality it's all about what you're going to use it for. You can upgrade the standard 1440x900 to ultra xga 1920x1200 but that's probably an extra £100 or so.

For myself I would never choose a 17" screen for a laptop since the point for me is that it should be small (more tempted to go for the XPS 13.3") but again, it all depends on your preferences and what to use it for.

Cheers so far guys... Dell was my 1st choice, did see a nice Packard Bell one though but it has a AMD Turion? Swmbo wanted the 17" screen for the boys games etc, not fussed myself 15.4 would be fine

Cheers so far guys... Dell was my 1st choice, did see a nice Packard Bell one though but it has a AMD Turion? Swmbo wanted the 17" screen for the boys games etc, not fussed myself 15.4 would be fine

To be truthful, I thought it was the AMD TURION 64x2 that was the route of all my problems, but my dad had a HP with the intel processor I think, and he's had loads of problems, that within the first month, he sent his back, and is using a Sony one now, and that seems really good (But expensive to buy)

Vote for Dell from me, it's what everyone uses in the office. Mostly Latitude business spec opnes but there's a couple of Inspirons and some Vostros are creeping in (which feel a bit cheap to me).

Never had any failures on them yet, we have some really old Latitude ones where the only problem is the battery not holding a charge which is to be expected over a certian age.

Def avoid Acer had 2 both broke very soon after warranty expired and not worth fixing. Bought an HP from Staples for 399 been ok so far, admittedly only 2 months!

What games are you planning to play, for £500 you will get onboard video, which is very basic and wont play all but the oldest of games.

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The Vostro 1500 would be worth a look

I have to say i am amazed at the amount of support i see for Dell.. from experience and from what i have read in the past dell is utter carp! Maybe they have cleaned up their act??

I still don't think i would touch a dell box with a 10ft pole, regardless. When i worked for Cummins they replaced all their IBM equipment with Dell and from what i heard back from people it was all rubbish that was nothing but trouble. One person had 4 laptops in as many weeks before he got a good one.

Just my 2 pence worth.

We've bought pretty much Dell at work and nothing else for the last three years and I've been pleased with them.

One failed fan on a desktop and a few laptop faults that have all been sorted nice and quickly.

I've bought Dells for all my family and would continue to do so.

funny how people have different opinions on hardware :P

I guess the better priced dells cant be 'that' bad, i would imagine these £299 things with a screen and the works must be utter rubbish.

I guess the better priced dells cant be 'that' bad, i would imagine these £299 things with a screen and the works must be utter rubbish.

You'd be surprised...the cost savings generally come with scales of economy, usage of older technology and operating, er, "lean" customer support operations. The hardware itself is usually made to pretty good tolerances, and if the performance meets your usage requirements (ie. will probably suit about 80% of the people whose usage constitutes browsing the 'net and typing an occasional Word document) then it's a good punt.

Based on the experiences I've had with many of the main brands of laptops, my advice would be to sod the brand and just buy on the deal (price/performance/bundle) - chances are it's all the same components anyway.

Rob.

Phil, if you wanted a Vaio, I could help you out They're rather stylish and imho look a lot nicer than a plasticky Acer which I'd avoid like others have said

Going back to the graphics question, it's important to know what you'd want to play on it as Manny said. For example, I could get you a VGN-NR21E in silver (1.6GHz T2330 dual core, 2GB RAM, 15.4" WXGA screen, 160GB HDD, DVD burner...) for around £400, but it only has on board Intel X3100 graphics which won't really cut it at the 1280x800 screen resolution for the latest games at high detail.

If you want serious graphics, you're looking at an nvidia GeForce 8400M GT but those GPUs only come in at higher spec laptops (£620 for a VGN-AR61E)

What games are you planning to play, for £500 you will get onboard video, which is very basic and wont play all but the oldest of games.

As apposed to the unpluggable graphics cards that you can buy in laptops? they have tried to make laptops with upgradable graphics but never succeeded from what i can tell. as for acer i have had one for a couple of years and has been solid as a rock. but it was around £800 when i brought it. but i have herd bad storys about acer which makes me not want to buy another one in case my luck runs out

Thanks Xav, and others ... i may be in touch Xav as a Sony PC has kept me online for the last 5+ years

Phil

I have run Acers for years and never had a problem with any of them :confused:

Dell seem to be good though.

Ben