Laptop prices

luckat

Got a friend who's looking at buying a laptop. She started out thinking about the Dell deal for something like 700 eurons.

She's now up to double that price, having upped her ante to a 2.6GHz Pentum (was Celeron) processor, a 40GB (was 30GB) hard drive, 512MB (was 256MB) RAM. There's a printer thrown in. The battery is 8-cell lithium, and the guy on the phone said it would probably do about four hours max at a stretch. The screen is 14" TFT, as far as I remember.

It no longer sounds such a bargain to me - but am I wrong? And what's a really good bargain in a laptop, at the kind of spec she now wants? (And maybe with better battery life; I mean, what's the point of having a laptop with lousy battery life...)

YDEHS

All laptops have crap batteries AFAIK.

The only person I know who uses a laptop in the middle of a field is the AI man....

and you don't want to hear that story.

luckat

Oh, and he wants her to pay around €100 for a one-year licence for McAfee, which sounds a bit hairy to me.

Winters

A Centrino processor should give a little better battery life over a P4 due to the fact tis designed purly for laptops.

4 Hours aint that bad aswell. Remember everything inside a laptop needs power to run. We are not talking about 1.5v for your cd player but monitor, dvd etc. Until they work on a differant way of having portable power, hydrogen for example you are stuck with chemical batteries as we use today.

Dont pay €100 for McAfee either. Grab yourself AVG [grisoft.com, its a free virus scanner thats as good as if not better then McAfree.

ChipZilla

Well, you are paying for the name and the support when you buy a Dell, IBM, Toshiba, etc. Don't be swayed by stuff like free printers or guff from sales droids. I'd love to see a €1400 laptop with a battery that lasts four hours - but I don't think such a thing exists (I could be wrong)
You could save a few hundred and buy a piece of crap from Advent, Tiny, Time or any other brand flogged by PC World.

What does your friend want to do with the laptop? Is she going to be travelling with it, or is it going to sit in the one place all the time?

On a side note, I don't really like the current Dell laptops much. They're a bit too plastic-y. For a cheap work laptop I'd prefer an IBM R series or a HP nx9000.

ColmC

well if ya want battery life ya gotta go for a centrino processor.......go a sony vaio pcg-v505ex meself in may.....

centrino 1.5
60gb HD
512ram
12.1" (this thing is portable)

for 1500 euro...........in america.

Get 5 hours from the battery with light use.

Not sure what anybody else out there thinks but, i'm not a fan of dell.
Cost far too much i think....for 1400/1500 euro you should be getting a top machine.

Best buy.....get someone to carry one over from america! great saving
2nd Best....try some uk website...friends getting a nice machine at about the same budget from somewhere like www.acer.co.uk.

Think that really annoys me about dell is that they rip the piss when you make the slightest upgrade to there basic offers.

.....my 2 cents

luckat

She's going to be using it mainly for writing; she'll be travelling at times, though a lot of the time it'll sit in her room with plays being typed on it, plus some dialup internet use.

This is the only laptop she's going to buy in the next five years, most likely, so I'd like her to get the best spec she can afford.

Where's the best place to buy, for someone who's not too techie, and worries about what to do if something goes wrong?

Winters

Originally posted by luckat
This is the only laptop she's going to buy in the next five years, most likely, so I'd like her to get the best spec she can afford.

Dont bother spending top money on it if all she is going to be doing is a bit of surfing and word processing. I can do that with my P2, 333mhz 64mb ram 6gb hdd laptop as good as she will be able to probably do that on a €1,600 Dell laptop. [Though my battery for it lasts only like 40min now].

Dont try and get a top spec box that will cost you your right testical if its only going to be used for basic things.

luckat

Winters, I disagree; but anyway, where's the best place to buy a laptop, please?

Emboss

ballymun

luckat

Hmm. Thanks for your help; I'll take a look on Dabs for her.

Rew

Have a look at Acer Laptops on http://www.elara.ie also try Laptopshop.co.uk.

I have a top of the line Acer and im very happy with it, I have the 3 year warrenty including accedintal damage which I would recomend.

ChipZilla

I wouldn't spend €1500 on a machine for writing either - that's a really stupid waste of money, specially if it's going to be on a desk most of the time. Any old desktop PC with windows 95 would do for that, but hey it's not my money being blown...

If you must have a dell, SterlingXS have a 2.8Ghz Inspiron 5150 for £740 (€1109):

http://www.sterlingxs.co.uk/scpages/newlaptops.html

Or look at the Dell Outlet for cheap machines:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/inspn?c=uk&l=en&s=dfh

Tom Dunne

Originally posted by YDEHS
All laptops have crap batteries AFAIK

What a moronic statement.

luckat - Dell have a couple of laptops for around 750 Euro. They are very basic (small hard-drive, 256Mb memory), but if all your friend is going to be doing is basic typing and dial-up, these should suffice. The model is the Inspiron 1000.

Stephen

Lidl and Aldi have offers every 6 months or so of decent hi-spec laptops. Probably not ideal however,

Kazu

__________________

All laptops have crap batteries AFAIK. The only person I know who uses a laptop in the middle of a field is the AI man.... and you don't want to hear that story.

YDEHS lol what the hell was the AI man doing with a laptop out in a field

the_viper2kie

If she's only gonna be writing on it and not looking to play games or anything i would definately reconmend an apple iBook...I got one last february for college work(MP3 playback, DVD oh and the odd essay and report!!) and it has been the best thing i've ever bought...
its cheap really small and portable and the battery is pretty good, get about 6 hours max with just a 12inch screen. My experience with dell and ibm laptops is that the battery deteriorates after a while and my dad now needs to have his 18month old laptop plugged in all the time-so much for portable computing!!

I know every1 will start dissing apple computers now but dont knock them till you try them! they are simple to use and never once has it crashed on me...unlike my dell desktop i'm on now!!

check them out anyway mine was 1200euro and i got a student discount on top of that...they've just released a new range so they're even selling off the old stock..(just a slower chip) but then she aint gonna be doin number crunching or anything too taxing on it!!

luckat

Tom - She started out with the idea of getting a Dell Inspiron 1000; I suggested that she double the RAM, the sales staff suggested she upgrade from Celeron to Pentium chip... and so on.

If it were myself, I'd get it, with more RAM, maybe think about a faster chip; she's heart-set on the printer, for some reason. Anyway, she's coming over to me tomorrow and we'll take a look online.

I think she likes the idea of Dell because it's guaranteed and you know you can shriek for help if you get into trouble...

Stephen

she can save a few hundred quid on the dell if she opts for the 1 year warranty instead of the 3 year one. There's a slight risk in that but if she takes care of the machine she should be ok. If there's anything inherently wrong with it it will probably show up in the first couple of months anyway.

We have a lot of shiny new Dell Latitude D600 centrinos here in work, and about half of their trackpads started going mental within a couple of months (just scrolling off the screen by themselves). All fixed under warranty. Other than that they're nice little machines - i prefer the Latitudes to Inspirons, they look sleeker and are fairly lightweight. you won't be playing any games on them though.

Rew

Originally posted by Stephen
she can save a few hundred quid on the dell if she opts for the 1 year warranty instead of the 3 year one. There's a slight risk in that but if she takes care of the machine she should be ok. If there's anything inherently wrong with it it will probably show up in the first couple of months anyway.

If its the only laptop she is going to buy in the next 5 years the 3 year warrenty is a good idea. Generally Laptops fail alot more often then a desktop. Iv bought alot of Dells for my office and I definatly recomend keeping the extra warrenty. Iv seen keybords where the keys start going dead one by one, motherbords that have to be replaced, screens going wonky, disks failing, the case starting to come appart amoung other things.

Tom Dunne

Originally posted by luckat
Tom - She started out with the idea of getting a Dell Inspiron 1000; I suggested that she double the RAM,

Doh! I've just read your initial post. I'm a little asleep today, sorry.

I agree the extra memory would be worth it (512Mb), but the rest should be fine.

Regarding the printer - remember you can pick up a colour printer in the likes of PC World (boo, hiss) for 65 Euro, so don't let your friend get hung up on that. I also saw a link on Boards somewhere (can't find it now) to Tom's Hardware about a comparison of Pentium 4 to Celeron. Suffice to say my next laptop will be a Celeron.

luckat

When she rang Dell, she was asked was she a business or a home user, and she hummed and hawed, and said, well, small business. She was asked for a VAT number, and when she didn't have one, was put through to the 'home user' section, she says.

Now, looking at the website, Latitude only seem to be available to businesses, not to home users.

luckat

Hmm. Took a look at the small business section, and the Latitude 100L does look nice. Thanks!

Hagar

I have found with Dell Latitudes after a while the keys start to mark the screen and there is very little you can do about it.
It takes time for it to happen so maybe an extended warranty would be worth considering.

Raskolnikov

Tell your friend to hold on to her money and get the cheapo €700 laptop. You could spend twice that on what look like worthwhile upgrades without actually ever needing them. 512Mb Ram is nice but the rest of the upgrades are pointless (processor, HD, graphics card, etc).

Rew

Originally posted by Hagar
I have found with Dell Latitudes after a while the keys start to mark the screen and there is very little you can do about it.
It takes time for it to happen so maybe an extended warranty would be worth considering.

It happens with an awfull lot of laptops esp. now they are getting smaller and thiner. I use the cloth that was seperating the keyboard and screen when I opend the box. Bit of a pain in the ass but worth it. Iv seen thin neoprean ones in Apple Stores as well. Doubt they will cover it under warrenty...