Laptop buying advice

[shabba 10]

Need a laptop to do office work and just browsing the net, 2-3 hours use a day.

What laptop and spec can you guys recommend, want it to be fairly fast...

 

Thanks

[Timeh 10]

An I3 would do.

Look here

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/st/core-i3-laptops

[geared 317]

Sky are supposedly giving away free laptops to new customers at the moment.

 

Might be worth looking into???

[shabba 10]

I am already with sky, so that's a no no....

 

one of my friends has a hp i3 4gb ram laptop and it seems slow to me, so need something a little faster?

[geared 317]

Yep, although the year and chip spec is important too.

 

The i3 is the generic name for an Intel Line of chips, but roughly each year they kick out a new one with a 10-20% improvement over the last one.

 

There's also a number of i3 chips, so for example a 2 year old bottom range i3 Vs a new top range i3 would be like night and day.

[gillybear 10]

I am already with sky, so that's a no no....

 

one of my friends has a hp i3 4gb ram laptop and it seems slow to me, so need something a little faster?

 

A poorly maintained laptop can be very slow, People are amazed at speed differences after i give them a "Spring Clean"

[Jomie 30]

How much do you want to pay? A relative got a nice HP laptop for £349 from PC World the other week. It has 8GB RAM and 1TB HD. They sold out very quickly but this one looks very similar although a bit more expensive. It's white/silver and looks really nice. The laptop seems quite fast too. I'd probably put a SSD in it and sell the hard drive or use it for storage. 8GB RAM seems best for Windows.

[tzijlstra 11]

If you want it to be quick for that sort of use, get one with an SSD. For what you want the i3 suggestion is spot on, no need to go for anything more powerful. An SSD will ensure Windows starts up in under 10 seconds (I have my desktop starting a clean install of Win10 in under 7 seconds now) and make it more responsive. If you do lots of browsing with plenty of tabs open, whilst running office, a music player like Spotify or watching something on Youtube, you will need probably a minimum of 6GB RAM. Graphic performance shouldn't matter too much to you, unless you want to play the odd game as well, in which case look for something like a 750M graphics card.

[shabba 10]

thanks guys, I want to spent around 300-400, the one my friend has is a new hp i3 4gb ram one but seemed slow to me, so I probs do need a 8gb ram, is this day and night difference?

 

I have seen a refurbished apple MacBook i3 for lot more than I want to pay but am considering it as I want something to last me a good few years, are these good laptops?

[Cyclone 10]

Need a laptop to do office work and just browsing the net, 2-3 hours use a day.

What laptop and spec can you guys recommend, want it to be fairly fast...

 

Thanks

 

Do you want it to be light, or to have a large screen, or to have a good battery life? What budget do you have?

 

With laptops the screen size/weight/portability/speed are always going to be a compromise, the more you spend, the more you can have of all of them (or less of the weight).

[shabba 10]

want it to be fairly light, have a 13inch screen and good battery life, around 300-400ish?

[bergerr 10]

Acer Aspire ES1-512-P84G

Intel Pentium N3540 2.16 GHz Processor

4 GB DDR3L SDRAM. No CD Drive.

500 GB Storage; No optical drive

15.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixels, LED-lit Screen

Windows 8.1

Maybe take a look here for some ideas and views: http://pc4u.org/best-cheap-laptop-under-300-dollars-for-gaming-and-office/

Edited October 14, 2015 by bergerr