Which laptop for £400

[Howard]

Gang,

Some advice please ...

I have £350 - 400 tops to spend on a laptop..... its only really going to get used for surfing the net , putting photos on and general letter writing and such...

I don't play games, download DVD's or anything so it's not going to be taxed, but obviously i want to get the best one i can though

So, its down to these two bad boys , before anyone says, i know they are not the best machines in the overall scheme of things , but i'm not going to be sending rockets to pluto , and plus, its all i can afford ....

Basically , which one would you go for bearing in mind my needs , please remember my technical knowledge is limited to rewiring a plug , so go easy on me ......

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5101AWLMi_Laptop_LX.ABH05.237/version.asp

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Fujitsu_Siemens_Amilo_Pro_V2085_VFY:APED208564Z2GB/version-1.asp

All advice gratefully recieved ! If i don't reply straight away , i will be asleep until early afternoon as i'm on nights ....

Once again , thanks everyone

H

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Oooh. Tough call. I'd probably go for the Fuji of the two, and ask about the low cost memory upgrade.

Have you considered Dell? I've had 5 Dell laptops (four business and one personal) and all have been great. Probably not going to help by stretching your shortlist, but they have three roughly in your price range. The one costing £379 (link below) looks like a nice compromise, and is probably the one I'll get for my little sister in law for Christmas.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/inspn_1300?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

 

[Flyer]

Hi Howard

The first one looks good; make sure you go for at least 512MB RAM. I'm now advising clients to increase to 1GB if they can, in prep for Vista, but 512 is fine for XP.

A client has just bought a laptop from PC World and gave it to me to setup. It's really quite good; rather impressed! Can't find it on their (totally crap) website, but it's a Packard Bell Easynote R1935, think she payed £360 for it.

I normally purchase clients' hardware from Dell (edit: missed the one BD pointed out, which looks good. Dell's website keeps crashing Opera, )

Might be an idea to have a play at PCW/Currys/etc. just to see what's available

 

[WLeg]

Worth a look:

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productp...102&S=1015&lang=en-gb&K=&M=LEN&2713v=1&SB=plh

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productp...=HPYA04XRL&nbs_search=lang=en-gb&C=102&S=1015

Have purchased both for clients recently - both quite surprising for the price.

 

[Sp!ke]

Both Fiji and Acer make good notebooks.... Personally, I would go for the Fuji with the Intel processor and then bung some extra memory from crucial.

Definately steer clear of anything Packard Bell (or similar) in my opinion as the quality is poor and customer support is shocking. Definitely steer clear of Celeron stuff too IMO.

* If you can stretch to buying a dual core laptop then you will have some future proofing once Vista is launched.

 

[Flyer]

Definately steer clear of anything Packard Bell (or similar) in my opinion as the quality is poor and customer support is shocking.

Normally quite agree there Spike. When someone says that they are going to buy a PB, or Advent or similar from PCW, I roll my eyes and try and talk them out of it, so I do know where you're coming from , but this time the deal was done, it was passed to me and I was pleasantly surprised. No idea on customer support, but the quality certainly isn't poor. Remove all the crap that OEMs like to put on and it's not a bad bit of kit, for the price.

My phone, at retail, costs more than these laptops, so you can't expect outstanding build quality and components. But for home use, where they aren't subjected to the rigours of corporate life, they're fine.

Having said all that, if Dell do one for a similar price, I would always go with Dell (even if I do have to spend an hour or so removing the rubbish they insist on pre-loading).

 

[Alps]

i agree with spike and flyer on this one, they advertised it on the tv, and i think its a good deal, i normally purchase for my company, always DELL, probably get you a small discount 5% if you bought from them. 512M mem should be fine for what your doing, if you need more its not too expensive to buy afterwards! Make sure you get a big enough HD as they tend to fill up with junk after a while.

 

[Pietre]

Dell have some really good offers at the moment around your price range.

 

[Howard]

Thanks for all the advice so far chaps ....

I have been advised to go Centrino rather than Celeron as it is a better processor and prolongs battery life .... is this correct ?

Also, to try and get one with a stand alone graphics card as some of the ones i have been looking at have 'integrated' graphics do-dahs (i was told that an integrated one running at 128 mb is eating up 128 mb of them RAM ) ... is this right ?

I was also told to try and go for a 2mb cache instead of 1 mb .... sound right ?

Cheers everyone .... keep the advice coming ...

EDIT :- the 'low cost' memory upgrade is £45 for an extra 256 , totalling 512 ...... i would go down the crucial route, but it will invalidate the warranty if i open it up , surely its better to have it factory installed ?

H

 

[Sp!ke]

Centrino is now 'old hat' but not as bad as celeron. If poss you want the core duo based notebook if possible.

Never use an integrated graphics card if you can help it and under no circumstances ever anything with Intel Graphics as they've never ever made a decent gpu.

Crucial wont invalidate warranty as you shouldn't need to open it up to swap memory since manufacturers give you a nice little memory cover at the back so you can upgrade memory yourself in 99% of cases.

All of the above is tricky on your budget - you spend yer money ......

 

[Howard]

I really cant stretch to a dual core laptop £500 is the cheapest one i have seen ....

Although i do have a dual core desktop AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ , whatever that is .....

There was a good deal on it at the time so i had it ..... never use it properly though ....

 

[KNU7S]

I have the Fujitsu and it is excelent for the money

 

[Howard]

Bottom line then ....

Fuji or Acer, as i'm gonna buy it tomorrow .....

Think it will be Fuji TBH.....

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Better to have a separate graphics card, but if you're only using it for web-type stuff, it shouldn't really be necessary. If you play games though then it may be an altogether different story.

 

[Howard]

No , i don't sit in playing games on computers .....

Much prefer to go out with my wife or friends ......

 

[masqueraid]

"Which of these two ...."?
Of course we're going to suggest another

If you don't want state of the art I'd really suggest a used Dell
As already said try for 1GB RAM (but if you are planning ahead for Vista you'll need a DVD drive too) .

You should be able to pick one of these workhorses up for as little as £150
http://tinyurl.com/yykt76
Only down side is you might need to replace the battery at £40-£70 but the laptop itself will go on forever.

 

[PeterE320Cdi]

Hi Howard,

Out of the 2 I would go with the Acer as it has more ram.

 

[scotth_uk]

/me can verify that the last acer machine I had was excellent and gave no problems. Only sold it recently.

 

[scotth_uk]

Never use an integrated graphics card if you can help it and under no circumstances ever anything with Intel Graphics as they've never ever made a decent gpu.

Going to have to disagree with you there Spike. Whilst no Intel GPUs are good for gaming, the GMA950 plays videos and handles standard 2d and simple 3d tasks just fine.

Keeping mind what this laptop is going to be used for, it's not really a problem.

 

[Sp!ke]

Going to have to disagree with you there Spike. Whilst no Intel GPUs are good for gaming, the GMA950 plays videos and handles standard 2d and simple 3d tasks just fine.

Keeping mind what this laptop is going to be used for, it's not really a problem.

All intel Graphics cards steal clock cycles from the CPU - Best reason ever for not buying one in my book.

Any old card'll play video, heck i got a 3Mb card in a pentium 1 laptop that' will do that.... I see your point Scott but the point I am making is if given the choice, steer clear if you can and go dedicated. (Its often a £30 option)