Laptop advice wanted….

i am on the look out for a new laptop around the £400 mark. i have looked around and found 2 possibles: Acer from Tesco and this Sony Vaio from John Lewis.

If you were spending £400 on a new laptop, which would you get and why? what will the extra 1gig of ram do for performance of the laptop? or are there better deals out there?

Ebuyer?

if i was spending £400 on a laptop i would wait a bit and spend £500. the build quality on those cheaper laptops is appalling

but otherwise i’d go for the sony as it comes with a 2 year warranty

i have an older N-series laptop and it’s been ok

if i was spending £400 on a laptop i would wait a bit and spend £500. the build quality on those cheaper laptops is appalling

Never had a problem?

Sony’s are rediculously overpriced, you get a 12 month old low power processor for twice the cost.

Some cheaper laptops have poor build standards, but I never spend over 400 quid on a laptop and the ones I have used over the years have been fine.

Try http://www.ebuyer.com

I have also purchased lots of laptops for both clients and friends. Usually Acer or Toshiba. Celeron processors are ones to avoid IME.

Sony has always been over priced! IMO

That particular Sony might be, but it depends what deals you get. Picked up a Sony with a Core 2 Duo and a proper video card for £400 a few weeks ago – was a cracking deal, and arguably better specced than anything else I could have got for the price (given I wanted something I could do mild gaming on, so didn’t want onboard graphics). Sadly no longer available, and couldn’t see any similar deals where I got it from (CDiscount[/url]) – thanks for whoever it was on here tipped me off to that.

The are the equivalent to Marin/Mondeo but I still think the Dell laptops are a decent build, you should get a decent spec one for £400 – the old man has just ordered one, I’ve not seen it yet. They’ve probably still got a sale on – might get free delivery or something –
http://www.dell.co.uk/offers

i get constantly fed up of people moaning when their cheap laptops collapse. maybe it’s because in my job it gets put in the back of vans and carted around and on and off airplanes and shoved into peoples crammed car boots. to me, that’s the really important factor governing a choice of laptop. if i wanted something reliable to use the kind of applications that demand high processor speeds and a lot of RAM then I’d buy a desktop

or a mac

oh and i’d second that Dell are better than people think. i don’t like them because they are HUGE at that price point but they seem to work ok

i’m also looking for a laptop in that range, indeed popped into the local comet this morning to see some ‘in the flesh’ as it were.

what struck me was that, on the face of it at least, there was’nt a massivly discernable build quality difference between so called budget brands like acer and the more expensive toshiba/sony etc. the nastiest looking/feeling one was quite a pricey toshiba, i was surprised.

argos have a deal on a sony for under 400quid, decent hd/ram but its an older processor. comet have quite a good looking deal on an acer (5735 model i think – i can check if you need the info) with a 2 core duo processor, 3 or 4m of ram and a decent hd. at about 380 it stands up well pricewise against the www based sites.

also have a look here…

http://www.computerbuyer.co.uk/labs/212/pound500-laptops/products.html

Had a Vaio a few years ago, very good but you pay for the name, & if you want the latest spec chips etc they’re bloody expensive.
Replaced it with a Dell about 2yrs ago. Hasn’t skipped a beat reliability wise but it took some damage when our 3yr old decided to push it off the dining room table. It mangled the DVD drive & broke one of the hinges. Being a Dell its fairly common & a new DVD drive & lid assembly cost a whopping £41 from Ebay.

I always think about the after sales support when buying so I would look at a Vaio or Dell.

I happen to look on PC world yesterday and saw, then purchased a very well speced HP.

This one below

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/908015

It seems to be a bargain price, and only just more than what you wanted to spend

I got a Samsung R510 from John Lewis a month ago. More then £400 but less than £500. The real clincher was the two year warranty offered for free by John Lewis. The laptop is working well too with loads of publishing software on it and me dragging it on the train every day. Though I guess only time will tell how it holds up.