While we’re doing laptops on here, my aged Sony laptop is crippled. I’ve had enough. Used for googling and storing, sorting photos etc and some spreadsheet work. Spends most of its life docked to a big screen and wireless keyboard/ mouse at home.

I’ve got a work laptop which is a dell latitude 5450 and the wife has a work dell 7250 both are smart, highly functional and great to use. I’ve been really impressed with the recent dell products.

I have a dell dock station that both fit onto, my plan is to get a dell laptop for home use (no way of using work pcs for home use – security issues) , that way I can save messing around with cables when working from home and using the big screen/ keyboard. The only dells that use the edock are the higher end latitude ones like the ones we have from work. They are apple prices but mil spec and seem to put up with getting knocked around etc.

So in searching I’ve found a number of online sellers and some on eba who offer refurbished very recent high end dell laptops for a good saving. Does anyone have any experience of this? Are they reliable and worth bothering with generally? I’d steer clear of older laptops most likely.

Also i3, i5, i7 what is the difference here? My current Sony laptop is an i3 processor with 4mg ram. I guess a newer laptop with an I 5 processor and 8 my ram would be fine. Prob looking at an ssd hard disc in max cap if poss.

Any ideas?

Have you checked the Dell refurbished shop?

The I processor range has been out a while, the model number will tell you where it sits (Tom’s hardware do charts) but a modern i3 is potentially better than an old 5 etc. But for your use i5 moderniish and 8gb would be fine

my previous laptop was a dell bought off ebay from a licensed re-furbisher.
bloody brilliant, lasted years. came with all install cds. good experience. no worries.

bought one for my mrs same way, different seller. not quite as good. a bti older stock i think. didn’t last as well.

either way it’s a fine way to buy in my experience.

in effect a new computer, though not necessarily latest model.

Go for it – i5 + 8GB + SSD. I’m using a refurbed Dell 5430 i5 with SSD and just 4GB of RAM. Works great.

Yep, on dell website latest models are now hybrids, not worried about that or touchscreens as I have Ipad for that. Just want something quick ish to manage storage, plot routes, sync garmin, sort and manage photos, do a bit of spreadsheet work, bit of googling etc…

Do also look into faffing with an SSD yourself. I bought HP Envy A10/8gb (MacBook Pro copy) as a box open/return for £420, then bought 200gb Toshiba SSD £45. It took less than an hour to ‘clone’ the HDD onto SSD, then swap them over. The laptop on first start optimised for SSD.

How do I know who’s a licensed refurbished? I guess they’ll say.

I’d go for a Dell Latitude model ( the business range), rather than the Inspiron. The build quality is better, so should be more durable as a 2nd hand buy.

That said the dell range from 3-4 years ago is not their best. I’d be tempted to get a new dell 5000 series. We’ve just ordered some for work and I’ve been impressed by the quality & weight.

Get it straight from dell outlet, stock updated around 3pm every day Mon-Fri – you need to act quick, as it’s where most of the ebay resellers pick their stock from i think – the dell outlet prices are always well under what the ebay resellers sell them on for.

Scratch and dent are the best value. Our IT dept buy all the company laptops through here – don’t think any of them have had an identifiable scratch.

Don’t forget to add VAT onto the prices.

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandid=6&c=uk&cs=ukdfb1&l=en&s=dfb

i3, i5, i7 what is the difference here?

With laptops, you need to check out the specific model number of the CPU and then check it out on Tom’s Hardware or similar site. Some laptop chips are optimized for low power consumption, others for higher performance. The i3/i5/i7 designation itself doesn’t tell you very much.

Intel CPU families
I personally have a Latitude E5530. (£140) Came with an i3, put a i7 quad core processor in (£70) and upgraded to 12gb ram. (£35) And cloned my hard drive onto a 1 TB drive. (£30)
Runs Windows 7 pro 64 bit and a virtual machine quite happily.
The earlier series i processors were limited to 8 gb of memory.
I like the business machines as they are easy to upgrade and generally robust.