I’m after buying a new laptop and think i’ve narrowed it down to one of these but I’m finding the range on offer totally bewildering. Does anyone know if there is anywhere in the UK that have these on display as i’d like to take a look before I commit to buying one.

I’ll be using it as my home laptop but it will also need to run Autocad and posibly Autodesk Revit in the future, so I’m looking for one with minimum I5 processor/4GB ram and a half decent graphics card (or so i’ve been told). Thanks in advance for any replies!

I’ve got a four year old Thinkpad that I bought off my last employer. Its on its second battery and has seen thousands of hours of use and has performed faultlessly. Not the most exciting laptop to look at but damn solid.

work laptop is an X200 and it’s bombproof – used 8+ hours a day for a couple of years now and not a whimper or a scratch
conversely, have a C200 at home which is admittedly cheaper but it’s only used evenings and is falling to bits – screen connection is lose, keys fallen off, case is cracked in multiple places, all scratched up
.
not sure if this helps, but you’re right to see/ try before you buy!

Shyamtronics on the Tottenham Court Rd in London stocks them, well it does IBM Thinkpads which I think are the same thing. I used to buy them from there for a company I used to work for, very robust and good warranty too.

Yep – Shyam has the biggest selection I’ve seen. From what I’ve seen, the low end consumer models are not great but the high end stuff is still really well build.

Also got one about 4 years old. Used most days still looks brand new, Acer stuff we’ve had in the past slowly fell to bits inside 18 months.

Performance was never great on Vista so put Ubuntu on. Perfect for everyday browsing not sure I’d recommend my model for anything strenuous unless you spend.