A friend has asked me to advise on the purchase of a laptop but I don't know very much about them. Budget is ~£700 but after looking around there doesn't seem to be much difference in the features offered at this price so which are more reliable, - Intel or AMD based machines, and does any particular make have a good reputation for quality ?

I think it will mosty be used as a desktop machine anyway "but it would be nice to use it on my knee while I watch TV" :D

If they're planning to have it on their knee make sure they get something that uses a mobile version of the processor rather than a standard one. This will create less heat and the battery life will be longer. I've managed to burn my legs before on a Toshiba laptop that used a standard 2.4Ghz P4 processor.

Depends on what you want to do.

I have a couple of the Fujitsu Amilo L1300's and as a good priced all rounder they are a great laptop at £500 but if you want to be playing the latest games that req high end graphics etc... its not for you. As a general machine with wifi and dvd rw, its good but another 256 of RAM did make it a lot happpier.

The wife has a Sony Vaio that is the all singing, all dancing P4 3.06 gig wth 128 ATI graphics etc etc etc and that runs everything you throw at it but at a grand... it should do !!!

My advice would be to get a list made up of exactly what you expect/want to use it for and then look closer ;)

We've got some good deals on asus laptops at Very PC.
Unlike the competition they have a 2year warranty as standard and I think they're really stylish.

You can download the brochure here
http://www.very-pc.co.uk/home/

For £829, you get one with a Turion 64 cpu, Nvidia 7300 (yes, 7 series!, normally you only get 6 or 5 series) graphics, Widescreen TFT, wireless lan, digital webcam, 512MB RAM, 60GB, DVDRW, a 2yr warranty, Carry Case, Mouse.
Awesome,

Thanks for the replies.

Apart from surfing she only mentioned doing her husband's business accounts/tax returns

Pete1024 - that Asus Value AMD Laptop looks reasonable. How many USB ports ? - and would you be prepared to uninstall Norton and replace it with Grisoft AVG for her ?

I've just bought one from Dell - they've got good spec, which you can tweak to fit, and come within a week of ordering, not bad for making it from scratch. They have different offers on each week - this week it's free double memory and up to £100 off.
Beware though - their "headline" price becomes much more expensive when you click through to "customise" the machine before buying it, because they automatically add on 3 year collect and return warranty (they do point it out but it can be a bit of a shock). Knock that down to a 1 yr warranty and you're £130 better off again...

If that's all they are planning to do with it then the budget Amilo machines are quite good. To be honest anything will do what they are after! you might as well get a second hand one and spend the rest of the money on beer.
If the beer idea does not apeal then don't bother with the top end Centrino models, just get a Celeron one or something similar.

Aldi have a pretty powerful one in at the minute for £729.
Comes with a decent spec, dvd burner and digital tv tuner.

http://www.aldi.co.uk/

and click on "specials"

Thanks for the replies.

Apart from surfing she only mentioned doing her husband's business accounts/tax returns

Pete1024 - that Asus Value AMD Laptop looks reasonable. How many USB ports ? - and would you be prepared to uninstall Norton and replace it with Grisoft AVG for her ?

AVG, no problem £0
or she can have Kaspersky for £15.

and remeber you get a 2yr warranty as standard plus a carry case and optical mouse.

Ports:
1 x EPP/ECP Parallel port/D-sub 25-pin
1 x Headphone-out jack
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x Line-in Jack
1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
4 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x Type II PCMCIA 2.1 compliant
1 x SIR-115.2Kbps supported
1 x VGA Out

plus a memory card reader built in

Tesco have got 20% of some acer laptop.

Thanks Pete1024.

Tesco have got 20% of some acer laptop.

Yes she phoned me about that, - Acer Aspire reduced from £479 to £383 but no model number or specs in the ad - convinced her it was unlikely to meet her needs, - but she was disappointed about losing all those club points :hihi:

Thanks for the thought though :)

Why on earth wont it meet her needs? She wants it to browse the bloody interenet and a bit of office work! Oh well, obviously money to burn. She asks your advise then says they are not good enough. No pleasing some people.
:D

Aldi have a pretty powerful one in at the minute for £729.
Comes with a decent spec, dvd burner and digital tv tuner.


A Freeview STB in a laptop !? These Germans :shakes:, but they probaby do have digital TV aerial connections on German trains.

Thanks anyway :)

Why on earth wont it meet her needs? She wants it to browse the bloody interenet and a bit of office work! Oh well, obviously money to burn. She asks your advise then says they are not good enough. No pleasing some people.
:D

Sorry, - didn't mean to be dismissive. Don't think a bottom-end model would have a particulary good screen, enough RAM for XP, a decent size HDD or a DVD writer. She started out thinking around £700 so that's where I'm looking.

My experience is that people start out looking at min reqirements but usually end up wishing they had a lot more :)

Whatever you decide, make sure you budget in the cost of a three year warranty because it will break down sometime after twelve months. We have around 90 staff laptops and have seen reliability drop considerably in many brands these past few years.

Even something simple like a backlight failure will cost £300+.

Whatever you decide, make sure you budget in the cost of a three year warranty because it will break down sometime after twelve months. We have around 90 staff laptops and have seen reliability drop considerably in many brands these past few years.


Thanks - have had that in mind.

At the moment the favourite is looking like the Asus ASUS A6712U-LH. Well within budget at ~£530 mail order and comes with two years warranty extendible to 3 years for £90. Good general features and connectivity, - the only downside is the fitted drive is a 4200 one but £100 for an upgrade to 5400 is a bit of a rip-off IMO.

Main problem has been finding a website to compare lots of machines but the PC World business catalogue comes up with specs for 340 !! :)

http://www.pcwb.com/catalogue/computers%20&%20notebooks/Mobile%20Computing/Notebooks

if you pm me the specs I'll see if I can match them and the price.

As an absolute beginner on Laptops, I am considering purchasing one to be able to carry it with me, however, I need to use the internet whilst I am out and about.

Can anyone advise me please which model laptop? and what extras do I require, to be able to use the net whilst I am mobile? thanks in advance for any help.

What else do you plan to do with it Hal? If you're only surfing the net a pocket PC or Palm PDA may be more useful (and cheaper). Other than that you may like to consider a lightweight laptop. They are similar in design to older laptops - in they don't feature an internal CD or floppy drive. They're far more lightweight and battery life lasts much longer. You could even convert your own DVDs to DivX format and copy them across to the hard drive.

What else do you plan to do with it Hal? If you're only surfing the net a pocket PC or Palm PDA may be more useful (and cheaper). Other than that you may like to consider a lightweight laptop. They are similar in design to older laptops - in they don't feature an internal CD or floppy drive. They're far more lightweight and battery life lasts much longer. You could even convert your own DVDs to DivX format and copy them across to the hard drive.

Thank you for that Alch. I will consider what you have said, which is good advice.
Hal.