I have a laptop, bought new in 2005. The screen only works if wiggled in a certain way, the battery has about had it, the internal battery which runs the clock and things has long since given up, as have the left mouse button and 2 of the USB ports. The down arrow and delete key are now also iffy. Oh, and the cover off the fan is missing so it tends to catch on items of clothing if used on one’s lap. Other than that it is fine, but I have been pursuaded to get a new one.
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I do not want a touch screen or tablet thing. I will not chnage my mind on this, we have some at work and they are a PITA. Quite like the look of those small netbook things but standard laptop fine too
It must be a windows system,XP or newer.
It must be able to run Word and Excel (I have the discs)
smaller is better, don’t need a huge scree
good battery life is important, say 5hrs+
I have a Taxc I-majic turbo trainer so need at least 1GB RAM and a 1.5GHz processor
Needs at least 2 standard USB connections.
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anything good out there for sub-£200? Is a refurbished one off fleaby a good plan or should I buy new?
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can you install software on a CD using an external drive if there is not one built in?
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cheers guys.

Sub £200 is tricky, secondhand would be the best route but I imagine that’s a bit of a minefield. £300-400 is where the mass market is for home laptops and where they start being properly usable.
You can get external USB CD drives to do installs from

FWIW I have seen a lot of cheap, failing, laptops after a year or two. I’d buy new and get a warranty; but that does mean more than £200 really.

Thanks guys. I was hoping someone would know of somewhere selling off new old stock cheap. My old laptop was only about £300 and that’s lasted 8yrs so far, and still going (mostly) If I had £400 I would probably blow it on a Chris King rear hub though… I’ll keep looking

Aaah but what’s £300 in “new money”? More like 400 I’d say.

anything good out there for sub-£200? Is a refurbished one off fleaby a good plan or should I buy new?

At that price, I’d be looking for 2nd hand and something relatively robust, like:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T410-Core-i5-14-1-with-4GB-New-500GB-disc-W7-Pro-64bit-/221267735337?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item338495b329

Looks good Cranberry, wonder how much bidding will go to? I’ll keep an eye on it.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BLACK-ASUS-1015PEM-10-1-DUAL-CORE-250GB-1GB-RAM-MINI-NETBOOK-LAPTOP-NEW-/271242577690?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item3f2751471a This any good for £225? Looks OK to me but I don’t know what Windows 7 Starter is? Will I lose much compared to Windows 7 Pro?
Only really use Word & Excel (2000), windows media player, my turbo trainer software and some picture editing, maybe PDFs or flash player sometimes.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-MINI-INTEL-ATOM-1-6-GHz-1GB-DDR3-320GB-10-1-WIN-7-WEBCAM-110-4112EA-NETBOOK-/290947972968?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item43bdd9bf68#ht_2462wt_1199 £170
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Inspiron-Mini-10-N455-1-66GHz-160GB-1GB-Windows-7-3-Year-Warranty-/360717288922?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item53fc6d05da#ht_1226wt_722 £190.
Any thoughts?

Cheap Dells here

http://www.mcs.com

bought a number of PCs from them over the years – reccomended vendor

Have a hunt around, for that price I’d go with refurbs which often come with warranty too. The very first thing on google had this as the first laptop: http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Refurbished_Grade_A1_Asus_X501U_Windows_7_Laptop__a1-X501U-XX049V/version.asp £199 and would do what you want. Only 3 months warranty though, I’m sure you could find better if you had a good look around.

Have you looked at Dell Outlet ?

I wouldn’t buy Win 7 machine with 1GB of RAM unless I was planning on buying more ASAP. Check also that there is a free slot to add more otherwise you’re up a creek without a paddle!

Not a second hand dell, the internals are all nonstandard and a pita to fix. Better to get a lenovo or asus

New laptops will all come with Windows 8. I’d heard all the talk of how terrible it is, but bought a Toshiba laptop for my wife, thinking “it’s surely not that bad is it?”.

Turns out it is. It’s utterly baffling. It seems like it’s designed to take all your ideas and preconceptions about how every other Windows OS might work and subtly twist them so that they become useless. As an extra bonus, the touchpad mouse driver disabled itself, which took me quite a while to figure out…

My wife uses it and seems happy enough but I think that’s because she only ever uses it for MS word.