15-17″ (ideally 17″). I’ve looked at Dell but was hoping for something branded if possible?

Google chromebooks are too small 🙁

dell is a brand – much like heinz are a brand

Kronos – as found on barracuda bikes – is not a brand.

– reminds me of an argument i had with the moore large rep telling me his barracuda bikes had “branded” finishing kit 😀

Dell isn’t a brand?

You can get Office cheap if you’re a student, or there’s always LibreOffice. The preinstalled versions tend to be a fairly heavily hobbled “starter edition.”

It’s the inside that matters not the name – 2 Dell outlet laptops here bombproof, powerful and fast.

Google Docs or Open/Libre Office will do all but the very MS Specific stuff and your better of not going there really.

I got a 17″ Acer laptop from Acerdirect for what I thought was a decent price.
I think it was £550 and that’s for a decent-res 17″ screen, i5 processor with 6gig of ram & a 750gig hard drive.

It’s a bit flexi so I wouldn’t want to use it for work or for lugging around with me all the time. But I only use it at home and wanted the large screen for photo editing, 3D CAD and iPlayer.

Dell Outlet Store

Dell Outlet Store +1

Avoid Acer and you’ll be ok. Dell make good solid machines and their customer service always seems to be good (Unlike the times I’ve had to deal with Acer)

I never liked Dell, the one we had had a design flaw which made the power socket come loose constantly. And their bloatware was always quite bad ime.

I like Lenovo.

And if it’s not for your job (much) you can buy MS Office for £80 or so – amazing value for money.

you dont like dells bloatware and your suggesting lenovo- pull the udderone.

Ok fair play.. I can only comment on the hardware..!

give us a clue on what you call cheap. I find 500 squids the low end for something I would want to use but others might not

If you are editing docs that others are sending you in Word format then you may end up wanting to buy a copy of Word rather than the Google Docs/LibreOffice route. I used to swear by the alternatives until my wife had a couple of important docs toasted by switching back and forth. I think you can buy just Word for gbp 75 from Amazon. Beware the subscription copies of Office which are per year rather than one off costs

If you are creating yourself mainly rather than editing things from others then Google Docs/LibreOffice is great

On brands, loving ASUS hating Lenovo at the moment

check your employer doesnt do home copys of office via the microsoft download site cheap …. i got it through work for about 8 quid.

and plus 1 for leffeboy on the open office thing

my uni final year project was toasted by swapping back and forth.

I’ve had illegally downloaded versions of office 2007 on every pc I’ve ever owned, enterprise 2007 and d/l a keygen. I do have a legal version of Xp though. Pirate proxy ftw