New laptop time?

[Will]

Hi everyone,

It's come to that time again, I could really do with a new laptop for home use.

The current machine has done very well so far. It's an IBM Thinkpad T43 which although was fairly expensive compared to the likes of PC World machines has performed much better than my previous laptops by Samsung and Toshiba

Anyway, it's now nearly 3 years old (I think it'll be 3 in september/october time?)

It's a bit tired all round, the battery only lasts an hour or so (understandable), and there's an intermittant hard drive fault - It sometimes won't boot unless it's given a persuasive tap. Spec is OK but I could do with a bigger HD etc so it seems a good time to move up to a new model.

On one hand I'm pleased to see that laptop prices seem to be better value than they ever used to. Even £400ish seems to buy a reasonable machine.

I think IBM Thinkpads are now made by Lenovo, my old one might even be (haven't checked yet)

What's the general concencus on here? Should I look for another Thinkpad or should I go for something like one of the Dell offers that seem pretty good value?

As an example, they do an Inspiron with a Core 2 duo 1.83Ghz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD and all the usual stuff (DVD-RW, Wifi, webcam etc) for £399 inc VAT/delivery. This spec would be fine for my needs But will it last as well as my old Thinkpad has?

Will

 

[Sp!ke]

Thinkpads are good but generally aimed at the corporate market so heavilly discounted for corporates but overpriced in the high street.


You could just upgrade the HDD if its the only fault. Ghost old to new and off you go.

Frankly, laptops are so cheap now, if you look at 18 month upgrade cycles you're still quids in.

 

[Mr Raw]

laptops

I bought a 2g dual core fujitsui for about£450 six months ago with 250 sata hard drive, 2g ddr,15.4 screen and vista home premium,had all the normal stuff, wireless etc, tons of usb2 ports, small firewire port, very good fast machine and there is xp support for it on there website.

I had an asus before that, damm good laptop that cost me £1800, so price wise its better spec for less money.

 

[A210AMG]

Hello

I buy Toshiba for work and as it happends had a Toshiba laptop myself, when that needed upgrading last year I bought a 17" dual core, 2gb ram, 160gb hard drive, Vista, 4 or 6 usb ports, card reader, web cam built in.

Its great as a desktop replacement huge nice screen, ok not portable as in a laptop should be but sat on my knee its ace.

£450 all in

The way the prices are I would not pay any more, ok my dad has a macbook pro 17" but that was £1350 plus vat and for what he does with it it's no better than mine


Keep it 2 years sell on flea bay for half and upgrade for another £200

 

[Geezer]

I recently got a Dell XPS 1530 and am very pleased with it.

 

[jpskiller]

Thinkpads are good but generally aimed at the corporate market so heavilly discounted for corporates but overpriced in the high street.

They have come down in price now to fall in line with other makes, and are generally better build quality, but not so good on the looks.

 

[columb]

I'm buying Dell's for work (lots of people are using them-everywhere!), have 4 at home atm, few at work etc.
No problems!

The good thing about dell is that ypu can configure laptop for YOUR specs (I mean bigger/smaller HDD, more/less memory etc)

I would recommend Dell- check deals on www.hotukdeals.com and see what you can get for your money.


Cheers
Chris