Looking for a new laptop. I have a £500 budget and need it mainly for internet, photos and music. Something quick and robust would be good! Can STW massive point me in the direction of some good online shops and whixh brands to go for and which to avoid.
Cheers Mat

always got on well with ebuyer.com they might be worth a try.

Amazon, dell, apple all good to buy from. i'm an apple man but thats bit out the price range. there all much a muchness. I assume dell are market leaders and good value. lenovo will have best build quality from a pc brand.

go have a look down john lewis and pc world and see what you like the look of and feel of, then buy online if the saving is big enough. hope that helps.

Get one with a decent battery life. To get the real battery life read some independent tests and don't go on manufacturers stated figures as they're always BS.

For your money, you'll be hard placed to beat Dell.

I like HP stuff myself, it's v robust and my 2 year old laptop is like new and has been ace considering the amount of banging about it's had. I also sped it up by sticking ubuntu 9.10 on it 😀

On the advice of a work mate bought a Acer Aspire 5739G does all usual things very well

The wife and i both have dell xps 1330. Nothing but trouble – both graphics cards burned out, both have had harddrives replaced after a year. Also they run really hot, like fry an egg kind of hot. Popping in a cd sounds like a barnyard animal vomiting. Wouldn't buy a dell laptop again. Desktop yes, laptop no.

Parent's recently got a dell studio 15, seems the best of a bad lot when it comes to PC laptops, they're all so nasty and plasticy. But then also pretty cheap, so it's not all bad.

acers are decent, as are HP – lenovo are good for the money

don't rule out budget stuff, medion are decent as all the boards are much of a muchness regardless of the brand on them (exception to this rule is dell stuff which is all made inhouse in china and it's all nonstandard stuff, so if it goes wrong it's bin time)

oh yeah, don't partition windows, just install ubuntu, it's mature enough to work fine for the uninitiated now as long as you take the time to not just give up straight away just cos it isn't windoze 🙂

look out for a secondhand Mac so much better than a PC (IMO)

Toshiba here…had Toshiba laptops on and off for years and they have always proved to be good.

Acer or Lenovo are good value. Try http://www.ebuyer.com