[Closed] Laptop purchase question, help me please.

For that price you are looking at refurbish ones.

Laptop Direct

For non-refurbish ones you are looking at minimum £400 to £450 budget unless there are sales.

Thanks squire

That's both a bizarrely specific price and an oddly vague / random spec. Has she already found something she's trying to improve on or something?

If I were you I'd be asking what she's going to be doing with it and advising from there rather than trying to match up numbers she's potentially just pulled out of her arse. As an "IT guy" there's a dozen questions you could and should be asking before being in a position to offer informed advice. A modern gen9 i3 will demolish a ten year old gen1 i7, in isolation those specs are meaningless.

The laptop is for her son who's going to university, so I felt that we could lower processing power if needed, but keeping ram would be useful.

It's in theory for coursework etc mostly and well, browsing of course

Agree that the spec listed you won't find for less than £450 new (more if it's with an SSD which should also be on the required list). For £279 you might get a decent refurb but it's a bit pot luck then

I just picked up a refurbished  lenovo t450 with i5, 8gb and 256 ssd of laptopandpcwarehouse on ebay for £269.Have to say i am chuffed with it and it looks like new, there are cheaper ones available too but didn't look as clean or had no pics etc.

Tech guy on Radio Scotia, who is pretty good, was talking about laptops last week, main gist of it is that you're far better buying a 1 or 2 year old sale model, as it'll have a higher spec than a current model, ie a 450 reduced to 300 will be better than a new one that is 300 quid, his logic is that the tech is just not moving on the way it used to, and the margin on a 300 quid laptop is tiny, hence the year or two model that was 450 quid will have better spec.

Made sense to me, but it's early in the morning!

A modern gen9 i3 will demolish a ten year old gen1 i7, in isolation those specs are meaningless.

I agree. Clever Intel marketing on the i3/5/7 means folk don't realise.

That budget is more than tight.

I've no personal experience so cannot vouch for them, but I tripped over this place a few weeks back and they look very competitively priced.

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/

I've just priced up a T440 to the OP's spec, and it comes in at 60p over budget, so pretty much prefect unless you're Mr Mann off of that Little Britain. Hard to beat a Lenovo T-series.

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/lenovo-t440-14-uk-configure-to-order?c_b=8749

CURRENT CONFIGURATION
£279.60 Inc. VAT
1 x Lenovo T440 - 14" i5-4300U (A+-Grade) - UK Keyboard
1 x No Keyboard Required
1 x 8GB - DDR3L 1600MHz (PC3L-12800S, 2RX8)
1 x 240GB - SATA (6G) SSD - Major Brand New