Printable Version | Subscribe | Add to Favourites
New Topic New Poll New Reply
Author: Subject: Whats best for £550
iscmatt
Contributor






Posts 1929
Registered 30/3/06
Location York
Member Is Offline

Photo Archive Go!
Building: - BUILT - 2.0 pinto indy, Kent Cam, zzr1100 carbs

posted on 2/9/07 at 02:13 PM Reply With Quote
Whats best for £550

I'm buying a new laptop with a max budget of £550. The laptop will be used for simple tasks like word processing. It will have alot of music and photos on it too.

The thing i want is a fast laptop, i have an external hard drive so i'm not too fussed about the size of its hard drive.

Currently the sony vaio n31M/W is at the top of the list but i have feeling i might be paying for the brand name.

Any help appreciated on wht to look for and where to look
Cheers

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
Benzine

posted on 2/9/07 at 02:21 PM Reply With Quote
Acer ftw
View User's Profile E-Mail User Visit User's Homepage View All Posts By User U2U Member
Moorron

posted on 2/9/07 at 03:35 PM Reply With Quote
after alot of looking around i ended up getting an acer. Not the best in daylight (in the back garden) and the after 2 years the battery now only lasts about 45 minutes from the original 2 hours, but apart from that it was a great buy at the time as it came with 100 gig HD and a pci graphics card for games.





Sorry about my spelling, im an engineer and only work in numbers.

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
Avoneer

posted on 2/9/07 at 03:59 PM Reply With Quote
You can't go wrong with a dell.

Pat...





No trees were killed in the sending of this message.
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

View User's Profile E-Mail User Visit User's Homepage View All Posts By User U2U Member
Humbug

posted on 2/9/07 at 04:13 PM Reply With Quote
I have had an Acer for homne use for about 2 years - no pobs. I got an email from Amazon to day with links to special offers on Acer laptops... incl. one for £320! You would probably need some extra RAM (I can recommend www.crucial.com) but there is probably an Acer laptop with the spec you want for less than a Sony.

Also, if you look at Dell: unless they've changed things recently the standard warranty included in the headline price of a PC is only 3 months, so make sure you price like for like.

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
MikeR

posted on 2/9/07 at 04:14 PM Reply With Quote
until the dell goes wrong

Look at Tesco - no i'm not joking, the laptops they do are good value, then look what you can get from ebuyer.

What you'll notice is they all pretty much look the same - there are only a few people making laptop cases / chassis once you get away from Sony / IBM etc.

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
MikeR

posted on 2/9/07 at 04:25 PM Reply With Quote
thought i should add some more detail.

Dell have a bad rep for when things go wrong. I didn't believe this until my brothers laptop broke. He ended up in a comedy conversation. He'd bought top of the range with the best warranty they had. When he tried to say "got a problem with the case, its cracked" they said, "its plastic, its not essential therefore not covered". He then asked if he could therefore remove all the plastic from the outside of the laptop. They replied "oh course not sir, you'd expose the innards the plastic covers". He therefore pointed out its essential ......... circular conversation.

Anyway, the crack wasn't that bad, he was only getting it fixed cause he was going to give me the laptop (he's a nice brother). About a month latter the thing emitted a puff of smoke and died (i was slow picking it up). Dell decided that as it was catastrophic failure of multiple components it wasn't covered in the warranty - if just one thing had died it would be.

Now brother is rather fuming here. Took it to work - they use lots of dell kit and have a business relationship direct with dell. Tech's there looked at it and said .... sorry, its dead. If it was one of our dell's we'd be ok. Cause we have a business warranty we'd just send it back and it would be replaced, consumer warranty forget it.

Me - i've got a samsung from tesco's. I'm happy after 4 months, lad in the office had his 8 and he's still happy.

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
kj

posted on 2/9/07 at 04:45 PM Reply With Quote
Acer at Asda £275.00
View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
russbost

posted on 2/9/07 at 04:58 PM Reply With Quote
acer certainly take some beating, my 2 daughters both have acer laptops, one about 3 years old the other about 2 (the laptops not the girls b4 some smarta*se gets in there!) the older machine had a harddrive problem during the last month of warranty, was sorted out no probs (did take about 3 weeks tho' & they replaced the 30Gb hd with a 40Gb at no cost.
Bought from laptopsdirect who always seem to have competitive prices & service is good.





I no longer run Furore Products or Furore Cars Ltd, but would still highly recommend them for Acewell dashes, projector headlights, dominator headlights, indicators, mirrors etc, best prices in the UK! Take a look at http://www.furoreproducts.co.uk/ or find more parts on Ebay, user names furoreltd & furoreproducts, discounts available for LCB users.
Don't forget Stainless Steel Braided brake hoses, made to your exact requirements in any of around 16 colours. http://shop.ebay.co.uk/furoreproducts/m.html?_dmd=1&_ipg=50&_sop=12&_rdc=1

NOTE:This user is registered as a LocostBuilders trader and may offer commercial services to other users
View User's Profile Visit User's Homepage View All Posts By User U2U Member
Catpuss

posted on 2/9/07 at 05:40 PM Reply With Quote
Toys R Us arn't too bad if they are doing Medions.

I bought one for the in law last week. Toshiba L10X (2Gb version) from PC World.

I don't like the Advent ones too much, the case feels a bit to flexible and a friend across the road broke her display just by trying to close it from one corner rather than the center.

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
bigrich

posted on 2/9/07 at 05:52 PM Reply With Quote
acer also gets my vote, very impressed with mine







A pint for the gent and a white wine/fruit based drink for the lady. Those are the rules

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
tomblyth

posted on 2/9/07 at 07:43 PM Reply With Quote
I've had a toshiba m40 for two years and its the best I've ever had!
View User's Profile E-Mail User View All Posts By User U2U Member
Hellfire

posted on 2/9/07 at 08:53 PM Reply With Quote
My kids Dell went down and the CS was a joke. In the end I ended up taking it apart myself and mending it, it turned out to be a loose RAM Socket... a little adjustery got it working ok.

FWIW - for the money you can get a "FAST" Laptop you could get a superfast PC. No Laptop is fast compared to the equivalent processor in a PC. Laptops are only good for one thing - being portable. If you can manage at all with a PC - do so!!!

Steve






View User's Profile Visit User's Homepage View All Posts By User U2U Member
Peter Cowley

posted on 2/9/07 at 09:24 PM Reply With Quote
Bargain, this gets my vote !

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=22016

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
britishtrident

posted on 5/9/07 at 06:26 PM Reply With Quote
Only 3 manufacturers I tell clients to avoid are Dell, Acer and Packard-Hell.

Toshiba ---- always have made good laptops.
Fujitsu-Siemens ----- very reliable good VFM
Sony --- very good but you pay for the branding
Lenovo --- very good but again you pay for the branding.





[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
MikeR

posted on 6/9/07 at 11:33 PM Reply With Quote
work uses lots of Tosh (in fact i think thats all we use). Seem ok to me.
View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member
geoff shep

posted on 7/9/07 at 07:00 AM Reply With Quote
Recommend Acer from experience - PCworld has this - Acer 5633. On line price is good saving and double airmiles!

[Edited on 7/9/07 by geoff shep]

View User's Profile View All Posts By User U2U Member

New Topic New Poll New Reply


go to top






Website design and SEO by Studio Montage

All content © 2001-16 LocostBuilders. Reproduction prohibited
Opinions expressed in public posts are those of the author and do not necessarily represent
the views of other users or any member of the LocostBuilders team.
Running XMB 1.8 Partagium [© 2002 XMB Group] on Apache under CentOS Linux
Founded, built and operated by ChrisW.