Recommend a Laptop.

[Geoff]

A friend of mine is off to uni this year. She wants to buy a laptop. She wants something with WiFi, 80Gb-ish HDD, 512mb ram, a 3 year warenty and 'not too heavy' (so I'm leaning towards notebook personally) for around 500 quid. She wont be doing anything more stressful than word processing, surfing the net and listening to mp3s I expect.

 

Any suggestions? The Acer's look decent to me.

[Ric_]

Speak to Stu at 1st Technology on 01254 878800 - I bought 2 Fujitsu-Siemens machines (P4m with 512MB and 20GB HDD) for £295 each - they were just a few months old.

 

It all depends on what he has in but he often has something to please all.

[RobC]

The Fujitsu machines sound like a good deal, and they are pretty reliable too when in use by staff everyday (which should make them more than robust enough for your friend's use...!)

 

Failing that, I agree with Geoff, as i've always had a soft spot for Acers. I would recommend trying to get a good value extended warranty with it. Normally I would avoid these like the plague, but I've had them (through Comet) for all my laptops and it's proved invaluable on several occasions.

[Dos_Box]

Acers' do look good. Unfortunetely their after sales is awful. We brought 2 high end models last year and on both machines the touchpad failed within the first month. We phoned Acer UK, a courier turned up the next day and took them away. It then took them 3 months to fix and return them. We at the ICT Centre can no longer recommend Acer as a supplier to schools because of this (and my phoning up every other day just to be told that they were being worked on which was obviously a lie).

[Netman]

Agree totally about Acer - not bad machines when working but the warranty side is poor... personally always stick with IBM Thinkpad or Toshiba where possible - some very good deals around at the moment on both these...

[mrtechsystems]

Yeah I agree with Netman

 

Toshiba gr8 for support highly recommend

[Ric_]

Never really liked Toshibas too much - my favourites are the Compaq/HP Evo nx-series. Excellent build quality and they look nice too!

 

I try to buy stuff that I know won't go wrong - I don't like sending stuff for repair (too many bad experiences).

[tarquel]

Horror stories about Acer eh? *gets worried*

 

My notebook: Acer TravelMate 8104WLMi - reviewed here - XP PRO SP2 - Pentium M 2.0G - 1G DDR2 533 - ATI M X700 128M - 15.4" and more

[from my msfn sig btw]

 

Much cheaper than a Dell or HP equivelent at the time - plus Custom PC had a preview of it and said was a good one....

 

And how right they were - kicks serious bottom [gave up on the Smart Card reader tho - nearly locked myself out of the laptop completely when the card buggered up Thank god I created a master / emergency one first lol :S

 

I'd say got for the Acer - ~1.6 centrino / AMD Sempron M / AMD Turon 64 wud be fine if she only wants it for word processing/internet. I would have thought you'd be able to get for about that much.

 

Either that or a cheapo HP - tho you might be hard pushed to get the stats you want for the price with a HP.

 

Regards

N.

[drjturner]

I would stay away from Acer personally. With all the troubles our support dept have to deal with when supporting them. We had one a year back where the VGA connector had come away from the motherboard. USB drivers are generic Windows XP ones and some hardware does not always work.

 

Our sales team use Dell Latitudes or HP nx series as said before they are good. Toshibas generally ok. Sony's watch the battery life as they are not usually that good. Asus are good as well.

 

 

 

Best Regards

 

Dan Turner

Promethean

 

 

The views expressed in this statement may not necessarily be the views held by Promethean Technologies Group Ltd

[Dos_Box]

I think we've established that Acer do not cut the mustard in the after sales side of things. They do make fantastic kit which almost always receive favorable reviews, but it's no use if you don't get to use it!

Incedentally, I've just taken delivery of a brand new Dell Latitude D510 with Pentium M, Centrino, DVD burner, 60 Gig HD and 512MB RAM all for the princely sum of £750 with educational discount. Its quite fast too

[StewartKnight]

I got an Acer with the 64bit processor. Now I realise that it's a waste of time. Sure, the 64bit processor will be great... in a desktop, but no-one is going to write 64bit drivers for the laptops, so it's great to say I've got a 64bit computer, but the reality is, it's only worth bragging rights

[Ric_]

I got an Acer with the 64bit processor. Now I realise that it's a waste of time. Sure, the 64bit processor will be great... in a desktop, but no-one is going to write 64bit drivers for the laptops, so it's great to say I've got a 64bit computer, but the reality is, it's only worth bragging rights

 

A little off topic... If you want a 64-bit laptop, buy the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation containing a Sparc chip!!!

[StewartKnight]

A little off topic... If you want a 64-bit laptop, buy the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation containing a Sparc chip!!!

 

Huuum.... think I'll give that a miss. They're more than my budget for the year!

 

How many have you got???!!!???

[Ric_]

A little off topic... If you want a 64-bit laptop, buy the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation containing a Sparc chip!!!

 

Huuum.... think I'll give that a miss. They're more than my budget for the year!

 

How many have you got???!!!???

Unfortunately I have a Windows network so my management tools wouldn't work in the OS I could use a Citrix session but it kind of defeats the point.

 

Quite tempted to try to get one of the new Sun Opteron workstations (they look gorgeous) but we'll have to see how much spare money there is at the end of the year

[mac_shinobi]

http://www.whatlaptop.co.uk is a great starting point , you can even purchase there monthly magazine and they compare and contrast all sorts of laptop, pda, notebook things and when I have read them they comment on after sales support and such like and that gives you a good idea with regards to that side of things.

 

I must admit out of 3 or 4 laptops I have had in the past the samsung has come out on top for me, they had great support, I sent mine back once they arranged collection, paid for the repairs and it came back a few days later as good as new and the problem I had with it was a minor one anyway and I didnt end up waiting on the telephone I was put straight through to customer / tech support and gave them my reference number and just arranged for collection.

 

I didnt really hear that many good things about toshiba when I have looked into laptops but I must agree with the previous posts with regards to HP and IBM.

 

That was a few years ago though so things might have changed since then.

[kingswood]

I have a Dell Inspiron 510m and it's...interesting, but I also have an HP nx9020 and it cost £600 less than the Dell and beats it on everything but battery life!

 

HP are becoming my most-liked laptop manufacturer on the Windows side of things for sure. My preferred laptop is (obviously) an Apple. I love my little iBook G4 with about 5 hours battery life and its sleek (and light) design...

 

Paul