My 10 yr old dell if finally dying, what to replace it with?

Mostly surfing/iplayer/YouTube, lots of docs, spreadsheets for work.

Budget £500-£700

Whats your main use going to be, do you need/want a blue ray drive, mobile graphics card for light gaming/video editing?

Not fussed about blue ray, good graphics card the current one on this is poop.

Anything with an i5 processor should see you well,

with mobile graphics and blu ray
1

witout blue ray and mibile graphics, the onboard will still be ok though

2

dell are doing a very reasonable inspiron i5 for about £450. only 4mb ram but upgradeable.

no need for anything above an i5 for those requirements.

We have just got a new Samsung RF511, its ace.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-rf511-15-6-laptop-black-11296546-pdt.html?srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~UFP-Laptop~11296546~LT&mctag=gg_goog_7904&gclid=CJibmbLmi60CFUQMfAodtl1Fng

I bought one of these about 6 weeks ago:

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.212-7205.aspx

Proving to be perfectly capable so far. Usual browsing/YT/iPlayer as well as work stuff which includes spreadsheet apps – one 3MB file has of the order of 8000 rows, each with about 10 formulae so around 80,000 calculations which are done in the blink of an eye.

It’s got an integrated Intel HD graphics chip so it’s pretty basic from that point of view but i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD all seems good value for £400.

Downsides? Plasticky (though v. light), keyboard has begun so squeek a bit, battery life not great. May or may not be deal-breakers.

Pleased so far.

Oh yeah – sound is a bit pish so I spent a bit extra on a USB-powered speaker bar. Also a USB wireless mouse because I’m not a fan of trackpads.

(Extra £35 all in)

XPS L502x
Processor : Intel Core i7-2630QM processor 2.00 GHz
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
6 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz Memory (2 DIMMs)
750 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Display: 15.6 inch High Definition Display with TrueLife
Graphics : 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M Graphics card
English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64Bit OS)
Back Up Media Not Included
Wireless: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 (1×2 b/g/n+ Bluetooth Combo Card

what about this? £500