I am going self employed as from next week and have realised I will definitely need a laptop mainly for report writing, emails and reviewing and copying DVD video footage.

I need something that is quite robust as I work outdoors / from a boat or vehicle quite often and something that will have a 15” or bigger screen, dvd writer, large hard drive, wireless connectivity and good battery life.

I have a budget of around £400 and I don’t need any software.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received as I know nothing about computers!

So far I have been recommended Acer, Asus, Eclipse, Compaq and HP machines.. are these any good?

Well, you won’t get anything even slightly ruggedised for that money so you’ll just have to be careful!

From your list I’d go for HP, I’ve been unimpressed by the build quality of the others in the past but they may have improved since I last handled them. If I were you I’d add Toshiba and Lenovo, then get looking for deals on the web.

IME get whatever is reduced from Currys this week and avoid PC World as they will have the same offer with complimentary rubbish customer service.

I need something that is quite robust as I work outdoors / from a boat or vehicle quite often and something that will have a 15” or bigger screen, dvd writer, large hard drive, wireless connectivity and good battery life.

+

budget of around £400

= The moon on a stick.

I’d say that you really need to look at your budget and/or requirements. If you need tough then a 2nd hand Toughbook from Ebay, if you need cheap, then you might just be able to pick something up for £400 ( though probably not with all the things you are asking for above ).

something that will have a 15” or bigger screen

and good battery life.

The bad news is that you are probably going to need to decide which of these is most important as they tend to be incompatible with each other.

Gti junior has an Acer notebook and I can’t believe how incredibly robust it is.

My Dell on the other hand was a piece of shite; it kept overheating.

Dell Outlet

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/dfo/df.aspx?refid=df&s=dfo

So far I have been recommended Acer, Asus, Eclipse, Compaq and HP machines.. are these any good?

Yes, yes, no, yes, yes.

If I were you I’d add Toshiba and Lenovo

+1. I’d go as far as to say that, for the life you’ve got planned for it, you need to add Lenovo to the list and then remove all the others. Up until relatively recently they still forged Thinkpads in the fires of Mordor.

We use HP EliteBook 6930p at work – not ruggedised (used to use a Panasonic years ago that was) but pretty robust for what they are.