Laptop advice

[THE_Liam]

Help me out folks, I know very little about computers but this seems like a good deal:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-LATITUDE-...19f1a568b2

Thoughts?

[toseland]

nope...

get a lenovo..


end of.

although it pains me to say this, go and have a look for some prices in somewhere like PC world, they are quite competative for things like laptops etc.

[THE_Liam]

Had a look at Lenovo, they start at about £300? Am I looking in the wrong place?

[Ruan]

Lol!

Don't buy anything from a place that says "DUAL CORE 2X 2.4GHZ = 4.8GHZ!!!1111oneone" that's like saying you've got two engines that do 6000rpm therefore it's now 12000rpm!!!

Or as an easier one to digest, you've got two cars doing 100mph, therefore you've got a 200mph car!!! It makes no sense.

I'd be looking at HP Business Line machines like the HP Probooks or the last of the HP NC series - I like them a lot to be honest, Lenovo these days sadly are living on the reputation of the IBM Thinkpad - they do a few good machines, but the vast majority of the cheap ones are crap.

Dell Latitude are OK - but cheaply made tbh...

[Toms306]

If you look in pc world etc they often have good deals, particularly now were heading towards Xmas.

Bought a decent laptop brand new with £150 off in the pc world sale last year! .

[vento85]

I have a Dell Latitude 6410, they can be picked up cheap on ebay.

It does everything I need, I upgraded to a i7 cpu and 8gb of ram. But the i7 does get hot, so wasnt the best upgrade as the heatsink and fan just able handles the extra heat, so I will probably go back to the i5.

[Paisleycheesewarrior]

Be wary of Lenovo's mine had a good spec 2 yrs ago at the £450 mark (I3, Separate Graphics card, 1TB, 8GB & Blu-ray), but the chassis has needed the power socket replacing twice, a new lid as the screen was coming off of the hinges (I sent the first one back under warranty because it did this after 4 months), and the headphones socket is knacked!

But it plays football manager easily

[Eeyore]

message me on fb and Ill sort this out for you. As ruan says stay clear of stupid logic like that. I would avoid ebay unless its an outlet seller!

Ebuyer has always been the best for me! Dont listen to Tom. PC world will have deals but itll just match the normal price of others!


What kind of specs are you looking for? Price? What kind of programs will you be running?

[THE_Liam]

Thanks guys. Rowell, I'm looking to spend around £150 if that's even possible, bit skint just now. Don't know anything about specs but it'll be Chrome, MS Office, and then retro console emulators up to maybe Dreamcast level. Tell you what, I'll buy you a beer on Saturday and we can have a chat about it?

[r3k1355]

Don't buy anything from that place, because they are clearly utter lady gardens

Quoted for the truth

[Eeyore]

Thanks guys. Rowell, I'm looking to spend around £150 if that's even possible, bit skint just now. Don't know anything about specs but it'll be Chrome, MS Office, and then retro console emulators up to maybe Dreamcast level. Tell you what, I'll buy you a beer on Saturday and we can have a chat about it?

ill have a look for you later tonight buddy.

[THE_Liam]

Thanks guys. Rowell, I'm looking to spend around £150 if that's even possible, bit skint just now. Don't know anything about specs but it'll be Chrome, MS Office, and then retro console emulators up to maybe Dreamcast level. Tell you what, I'll buy you a beer on Saturday and we can have a chat about it?

ill have a look for you later tonight buddy.

Thanks pal

[Eeyore]

Right lets get looking... im writing this as i look through ebuyer. My first thoughts are that £150 is not a lot and I doubt you will find anything more than a dual core for that money. What have you currently got? Dont want to get anything worse than that! Also what kind of form are we looking at?

Im going to go with what I presume you want... £150, around 17inch screen, and enough processing power, graphics and memory for browsing, office and at a push the retro emulators. Should be fine for stuff that old. So what im thinking is dual core, whatever graphics we can get, and if possible 4GB of memory. As for harddrive space probably around 160GB. Anything more is a bonus but you can always swap it at a later stage for a bigger one. Operating system wise... windows 7 if possible as 8 is terrible.

*starts looking*

This is instantly a struggle as things tend to start after £200 as a minimum. A lot of these offers have cash back so if you have something to trade in then i guess that helps... but for £40 or so probably worth selling elsewhere to get more...

1- Lenovo B50 -http://www.ebuyer.com/645880-lenovo-b50-laptop-mca28uk - £200



So this has a dual core running at about 1.9GHZ (Q4,2013). It has 4GB of memory which is great and a 320GB HDD which is good. Its a slim form and has a 16" screen. Its running windows 8.1 but looks like you dont have much of a choice here. Its 64bit at least so should be okay. It reviews well at 8.1/10 so this would be my first choice. Only weights 2.15KG and it has a DVD drive which a lot of the small form laptops wont have. 5 hours battery life and if the other lenovo devices are anything to go by then you can get bigger batteries. Mine lasts for about 7 hours!

2 - Toshiba Satellite Pro C50-A-1MM - http://www.ebuyer.com/639630-toshiba-sat...e-038041en - £200



This is the only other real player in the price range. Its got a older intel celeron processor (Q3,2013) which uses more power so is less efficient than the other. Its dual core too and runs the same 1.9GHZ speed as the other. Again its got 4GB of memory but this time a 500GB HDD. Exactly the same screen and resolution as the Lenovo.

*Verdict*

Everything for this price is going to be pretty much the same but the Lenovo is the better option here. It has a more modern and efficient processor. They both probably have the same graphics which i would describe as 'limited'. Both are essentially business brands of laptops. The Toshiba has more hard drive capacity but as I say you can swap this out. What may be the case here is that although the Toshiba has more storage it will be slower to access it.

I recommend the Lenovo. It looks a lot sleeker and having used one for the past year I can say that the build quality is great. Look at the keyboards on both of them. The toshiba looks matted and cheap. The lenovo looks shiny and if its the same keyboard as mine (which it does look like it is) then its a pleasure to use!

You arent going to get a lot for your money but I would suggest this is the best youre going to get.

[Ruan]

PERSONALLY wouldn't get new.

You're better off getting a slightly older, used, but shit hot older machine...

That's my personal opinion mind...

[Eeyore]

PERSONALLY wouldn't get new.

You're better off getting a slightly older, used, but shit hot older machine...

That's my personal opinion mind...

yeh I was only looking at new. Liam if you are going to get second hand then really you want to be getting one off a friend. Ebay is probably a bit dodgey. Any high street place like CEX etc is just poor. Very rarely do you get a second hand price cheaper than what it actually costs new online.

[Ruan]

More than you wanted to spend, but cracking deal:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-PRO-BOOK-S-...27ecdb0c13

Again slightly more - but they're OK machines - still i3 Westmere era so fairly modern CPU still.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Immaculate-HP-...2a451eb8ee

This one about bang on what you wanted to spend:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-6560b-Probo...2596c2a613

[THE_Liam]

Right lets get looking... im writing this as i look through ebuyer. My first thoughts are that £150 is not a lot and I doubt you will find anything more than a dual core for that money. What have you currently got? Dont want to get anything worse than that! Also what kind of form are we looking at?

Im going to go with what I presume you want... £150, around 17inch screen, and enough processing power, graphics and memory for browsing, office and at a push the retro emulators. Should be fine for stuff that old. So what im thinking is dual core, whatever graphics we can get, and if possible 4GB of memory. As for harddrive space probably around 160GB. Anything more is a bonus but you can always swap it at a later stage for a bigger one. Operating system wise... windows 7 if possible as 8 is terrible.

*starts looking*

This is instantly a struggle as things tend to start after £200 as a minimum. A lot of these offers have cash back so if you have something to trade in then i guess that helps... but for £40 or so probably worth selling elsewhere to get more...

1- Lenovo B50 -http://www.ebuyer.com/645880-lenovo-b50-laptop-mca28uk - £200



So this has a dual core running at about 1.9GHZ (Q4,2013). It has 4GB of memory which is great and a 320GB HDD which is good. Its a slim form and has a 16" screen. Its running windows 8.1 but looks like you dont have much of a choice here. Its 64bit at least so should be okay. It reviews well at 8.1/10 so this would be my first choice. Only weights 2.15KG and it has a DVD drive which a lot of the small form laptops wont have. 5 hours battery life and if the other lenovo devices are anything to go by then you can get bigger batteries. Mine lasts for about 7 hours!

2 - Toshiba Satellite Pro C50-A-1MM - http://www.ebuyer.com/639630-toshiba-sat...e-038041en - £200



This is the only other real player in the price range. Its got a older intel celeron processor (Q3,2013) which uses more power so is less efficient than the other. Its dual core too and runs the same 1.9GHZ speed as the other. Again its got 4GB of memory but this time a 500GB HDD. Exactly the same screen and resolution as the Lenovo.

*Verdict*

Everything for this price is going to be pretty much the same but the Lenovo is the better option here. It has a more modern and efficient processor. They both probably have the same graphics which i would describe as 'limited'. Both are essentially business brands of laptops. The Toshiba has more hard drive capacity but as I say you can swap this out. What may be the case here is that although the Toshiba has more storage it will be slower to access it.

I recommend the Lenovo. It looks a lot sleeker and having used one for the past year I can say that the build quality is great. Look at the keyboards on both of them. The toshiba looks matted and cheap. The lenovo looks shiny and if its the same keyboard as mine (which it does look like it is) then its a pleasure to use!

You arent going to get a lot for your money but I would suggest this is the best youre going to get.

Right, that is an awesome write up Sam, thank you. Here's what I currently have, and it plays most emulators fairly well, but is now painfully slow and has a tiny screen:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-EEE-R101-16...B005FM0GGQ

I really like the look of that Lenovo, and I don't mind something that can be upgraded, and to be fair I don't mind stretching a little bit further for something like that that's brand new. That's the new leader!

More than you wanted to spend, but cracking deal:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-PRO-BOOK-S-...27ecdb0c13

Again slightly more - but they're OK machines - still i3 Westmere era so fairly modern CPU still.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Immaculate-HP-...2a451eb8ee

This one about bang on what you wanted to spend:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-6560b-Probo...2596c2a613

To be honest mate while I don't doubt these are far better machines, I've totally gone off the idea of buying used - spoke to a few people at work who have had bad experiences, including one who was accused of being a paedo because of some dodgy stuff on a not quite fully formatted hard drive, that he was lucky to be able to prove was downloaded a year before he bought the machine...

[Razorback_Rob]

I can vouch as Sam has said. Ebuyer are brilliant for techy sales.

Nova tech are good too

[Eeyore]

oh yeh that lenovo will dominate a EEE PC. I still have my Samsung NC10. Netbooks had a short life which was unfortunate. They were great for carrying around and were perfect for school and uni though! Battery life on mine was like 8 hours too!

Just to let you know that the Lenovo B50 is currently on a daily deal at £169 after cashback. Not sure how the cashback bit actually works :/

http://www.ebuyer.com/645880-lenovo-b50-laptop-mca28uk

[THE_Liam]

Thanks man. Waiting for payday

[lolsteve]

Bought a hp DV6 before started uni for £360 and it's still going strong today with only one key that fell off. That was on ebuyer and would recommend HP.. although weirdly I would not advise Compaq(even though it's just HP with a different name), they fall to bits in seconds
Novatech do good spec for the money and seem to last well enough, think you can get them cheaper as well if they don't include a operating system..which is easily and cheapily resolved

[THE_Liam]

Just to update this, my lass decided to buy me one for Christmas so I went to buy the Lenovo one you suggested Rowell, turns out they now do an upgraded model with better specs for the same price and £30 cashback so went for that. Cheers mate

[Eeyore]

Yay! Great news! Enjoy!

[1616six]

Just to update this, my lass decided to buy me one for Christmas so I went to buy the Lenovo one you suggested Rowell, turns out they now do an upgraded model with better specs for the same price and £30 cashback so went for that. Cheers mate

Do you have a link for the one you ended up getting Liam?

[THE_Liam]

Just to update this, my lass decided to buy me one for Christmas so I went to buy the Lenovo one you suggested Rowell, turns out they now do an upgraded model with better specs for the same price and £30 cashback so went for that. Cheers mate

Do you have a link for the one you ended up getting Liam?

I don't right now buddy but its the Lenovo B50-30, search that on ebuyer and you should find it.

[1616six]

Thanks mate, found it.

Will order one shortly!

[THE_Liam]

Just to say, currently on the laptop in question right now and it's epic, and it plays emulator games flawlessly, most powerful I've run on it is N64 but that was perfect with zero slowdown even when outputting it's signal to a 42 inch plasma!

Thanks again Rowell, love you xxx

JJ, how's yours?

[1616six]

Liam I went for a HP Quadcore £199 jobby which also seems epic glad yours is going well!

[THE_Liam]

Liam I went for a HP Quadcore £199 jobby which also seems epic glad yours is going well!

Thanks mate, I'm pretty happy, but then again I have been using a 4 year old Asus netbook for a long time...

[MisterGTR]

Liam I went for a HP Quadcore £199 jobby which also seems epic glad yours is going well!

Good choice.