Laptop for me mammy. :)

MagicMarker

As the title suggests, I'd like to buy a laptop for the mother. Currently she uses a really old dell inspiron that takes about 5 minutes to open a firefox browser!

She only does light browsing for facebook and youtube so I'm not looking for a mega machine. But I would like something that's sleek with a decent size screen that doesn't weigh an absolute ton, and a good battery life would be nice.

It's been a couple of years since I've had to look for laptops so I'm a little out of touch, so can someone point me in the right direction? Budget is up to 500.

Cheers.

Voodu Child

Link

Core i3, 3GB ram, 15.6" screen and Win7 for £380 (free shipping). Didn't do the conversion (they charge Irish vat) but it'll be well under €500 anyway.

Slightly crap keyboard (the keys are up on stalks) but a fairly slim machine, not too bulky.

Jonny7

just a little note

switch to chrome from firefox its much faster on older machines

and get windows care free from download.com, run it and clean up all the trash and junk, etc on the machine (if you haven't already done this)

perhaps pick up some cheap ram too just to speed it up

Its amazing what a little spring clean, some ram and chrome can do to old machines

MagicMarker

Cheers voodu that looks perfect.

Hey Jonny that's certainly an option but it would be like putting new wheels on an old robin reliant.

I was mistaken originally, it's actually not an old inspiron, it's an old lattitude so it's had it's day! Plus it's the mothers birthday so I may as well treat her.

Any other recommendations welcome.

PaudyW

check dell website they had a couple of good machines for about 400 bucks earlier in the month, seem to be better then the offers in pc world etc, was looking for one for my mammy too

Voodu Child

MagicMarker wrote: »

Cheers voodu that looks perfect.

Its gone up £20 since I posted, but still fairly good value.

Generally the Amazon top sellers is a good way to spot ones that have decent reductions. Looking at it now , theres a few other decent ones: Another Acer for £380, a Toshiba for £340 and a Sony for £360.

The Sony has a weak processor (AMD mobile CPUs arent great) but in other respects it should be very nice, with a decent keyboard and good build quality. If power wasnt important I might go for that over the Acer I linked before.

Frank Grimes Jr

If she does not do Skype or IM via webcam and has a wireless network then how about an Apple ipad? Declutter the old laptop and use it to back up the ipad to itunes and for printing/ webcam duties. I'm guessing you've ruled it out already though but its a fantastic device. Got the mother an ipad at xmas and it has become the 'go to' device for everything internet except video Skyping.

Amalgam

Voodu Child wrote: »

Slightly crap keyboard (the keys are up on stalks) but a fairly slim machine, not too bulky.

Totally flat keys, which Acer seems to favour, to cut costs.. Lack of tactile feedback, hopeless for touch typing.

You will not appreciate how rotten it is to use this type of keyboard until you have it in front of you. OP might take a trip to the local PC World to physically get a hands on experience.

MagicMarker

Frank Grimes Jr wrote: »

If she does not do Skype or IM via webcam and has a wireless network then how about an Apple ipad? Declutter the old laptop and use it to back up the ipad to itunes and for printing/ webcam duties. I'm guessing you've ruled it out already though but its a fantastic device. Got the mother an ipad at xmas and it has become the 'go to' device for everything internet except video Skyping.

An iPad is an option I suppose, but my mother is not tech savvy. A move from XP to Windows 7 will probably be hard enough, I think moving straight on to an iPad would be just expecting too much tbh.