Looking for a laptop for the family for the normal: iTunes photos and word processing as well as Internet, looking to spend under £400. Are laptops much of muchness at that price point or does anyone know of any great bargains I should know about? Looking at an acer Aspire 5733 which seems pretty good. Any recomendations?
Cheers Mat

Asda and PC World seem to be among the cheapest websites to buy stuff. PC World had some good bargains on when I last looked.

Pick up all the laptops you can find at that price, grasp it firmly and try and twist it. Buy the one that doesn’t feel like it’s made out of cheap plastic and cheese string.

Laptops get quite a bit of physical abuse – it needs to be able to cope with it or it’ll start acting up really quite quickly. Much more important than whether it has an extra ~10% of ‘performance’

Rachel

And, to be honest, at the kind of price bracket, I’d buy an iPad instead – it’s well built.

Rachel

I have an Acer Aspire 5742 I dont need anymore. Pretty new still, top notch condition wise could almost pass as new… plenty powerfull to run what you list and more.

i5 460M, 4GB Ram, 500GB hdd, 15.4″

listed here… but i’d consider a ‘special’ deal for a fellow STW-er 🙂

And, to be honest, at the kind of price bracket, I’d buy an iPad instead – it’s well built.

Rachel

I tend to agree. Especially if your interests are as you describe. Unless ‘word processing’ is writing reports and novels rather than the odd, short, letter.

there are some good refurb offers at the apple store now. OK, older machines, but I’d rather have my 2006 macbook pro than a brand new £350 PC.

Have a look at this place – had very good service from them
saveonlaptops

Eh? A 16 gb iPad won’t hold my iTunes, has no USB to transfer my iTunes and I’ve an iPhone already surely a small iPad? I’ve considered an iPad but really don’t think it’s an option at under £400 because as I mentioned my phone has the same capacity. Liking the idea of a refurbished mac book, but where from? Thanks for the suggestions people, could well be interested moose mail me in profile please!

I can’t see how an iPad would actually fit with what the OP actually stated that he needed the new machine for:

Word Processing – no keyboard
Photo storoage – £400 will get you only 16Gb of storage that can’t be expanded = FAIL
Music storage and playing – see the FAIL above.

There’s a report that ASDA will be selling laptops cheaply in the run up to Christmas, any one got any experience of the Satellite C660-2IZ ?

I quite like the look of this model below on the PC World website.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-series-3-np300e5a-a01dx-15-6-laptop-silver-11296544-pdt.html

I have precisely 40 pence set aside towards it and hope to have enough pennies to buy it by next Easter. And by Xmas I’m sure I’ll have at least ooh £1.74 saved. Oh well it might be two Easters after next that I actually buy one, and the spec will hopefully be 1TB hard drive and 8GB RAM, and it will also have a plug-in that makes nice cups of tea …