Crankygirl is off to uni and needs a needs a lap top to take notes and do course work . Having last bought one ten years ago she is totally confused by the range on offer . So suggestions please .
Budget 400 quid . Must be light for walking /cycling to and from . Fast start up . Main use word processing excel and internet .
Ta

Dell

My daughter has had a £300 Packhard Bell laptop on windows 7 Premium for the last 2.5 years and its been really reliable. In fact, all our household has PB pooters and they’ve been pretty good.

Dell.

Try their Clearance Outlet on t’internet.

Ta guys, was looking at this one in Dell outlet: this one
Looked good but am I missing anything obvious? Current ancient laptop was an inspiron, been v happy with it but far too heavy & slow now. Was also looking at lenovo thinkpads – any good? Getting v confused about amd vs intel processors…

Hello,
Im coming towards the end of my uni degree and had the same conundrum as you . One thing that you might consider is seeing if your uni has any deals with outlets/manufactures.
Some of the guys on my course all went the Apple route and others also went with a dell and gained some good deals.

Heres the dell student offer
dell student offer laptops

its about 100 quid above your budget , wait for a bit and you’ll find some good deals (I waited and got a real good deal)

good luck with uni

woops my typing is really slow !

ThinkPad X201 i5. Fast, compact, build quality is in a different league to the likes of Dell.

Picked one up for under <300 the other day.

I was in this situation 8 years back
But we went the Apple route and was the best we ever done for our Daughter

For one you buy the One 2 One package for a total year
you get unlimited one 2 one training on the software and the Mac
and you also have the availability for Apple’s Genius tech heads
whom help you on any upgrades or external components on your
computer.

Apple are doing 10% interest free at the moment but unsure if you get
the Student discount as well.

Apple 10% interest free deal

Have to say after 8 years my Daughter is still using her Mac Book
and not failed one bit or crashed un like my Three PC’s over the same period.

Lol that’s funny. I was looking at laptops for the flat because we have 1 desktop and it’s just convenient to have a laptop in the sitting room and upon looking on Currys or PCWorld, don’t remember which, there was 22 laptops for sale ranging from £380-400…How the heck do you decide which to buy? Lol…

22 laptops for sale ranging from £380-400…How the heck do you decide which to buy?

Narrow it down:

Apple, Win7 or Win8.

Screen size.

One you have your ‘top 5’ or so, look at the specs. Processors, i.e. some will be i3 and some will be the more expensive i5, RAM, more is always better. Do you want a num pad?

Then when you can’t choose between the last two, go for the best looker 🙂

How the heck do you decide which to buy?

I would also avoid any that come with ‘free’ things like printers, that seems to always reduce the spec. Of the computer for the price.

Have to say after 8 years my Daughter is still using her Mac Book

Are MacBooks available in that price range yet? I might be interested if they were