O/T Looking to buy a laptop

Need advice/pointers to buying a good laptop for around £400, I haven't a clue Any help would be appreciated

Lenovo

Lenovo

^

Toshiba Satillite, Still have mine from 2002, although it wont work for long on the battery power any more. but the new ones are great.
TOSHIBA SATELLITE PROC660 - £370
2.4Ghz i3 Pentium processor version

you can get good ones now in tesco as well dont worry about hard drive space go more for faster proceser amd memory size you can always get portable hard drive to boost hard drive space and thier quite cheap now

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-s ... otUKDeals~

http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/te ... ID=1546795

http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics/prod/MEDION®%20AKOYA®%20P7615%2017.3%22%20Laptop%20(MD97516)%20/30011312A1
£412 reduced from £729

A lot depends on what you would use it for. What to consider:
Size & weight - look for something ultra portable if you're going to be carrying it around. If you're just going to use it in the house then go for the max size possible.
Hard Drive - 500GB is enough for most people unless you're going to store tons of music & films.
RAM - depends what version of Windows you are running. Personally I would go for 64 bit so you would need at least 4GB of memory.
Processor - go for a newer processor. For that price the best you are likely to get is an Intel i3 processor, maybe an i5. Check the benchmarks here - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php.
Graphics Card - don't bother unless you're into online gaming as they push the price up drastically. Integrated Intel graphics is ok for most people.

Check the battery life, you need an integrated card reader (most have them), minimum of 3 usb ports, must have a DVD rewriter (some of the smaller ones don't), do you need bluetooth (it's handy to connect phone to laptop), consider one with a HDMI connection, do you need an integrated webcam & microphone.

As far as make is concerned you could ask 10 people and each could give you a different answer. There are some to avoid - Advent, Emachines, Packard Bell, Fujitsu. For some reason Dell & Acer laptops have had a lot of problems recently. Makes that have a good reputation - HP, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony.

If you go to places like Comet or PCWorld you're not likely to get a good deal. I've always bought off ebay and never had a problem - here's one example http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Pavilion-G7-17-3-HD-Screen-6GB-RAM-750GB-HDD-Bluetooth-HDMI-/271041028795?forcev4exp=true#ht_3939wt_1344. Also have a look at the Argos Outlet on ebay as they sometimes have bargains - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Argos-Outlet?_rdc=1. One of the links above was for Sainsburys, they do have some bargains on laptops instore - all about being there at the right time.

Hope this helps.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-s ... 7-pdt.html
This one ^
better be quick though, they going fast.
you can claim £100 back from samsung.

Lenovo

^

100% this.

What are you suing it for. What Stan_B says makes the most sense, however if a 64 bit OS is going to cost more, I would forego that and stick with the 32 bit.

Main issue I have with laptops is the processors are generally shite. But I have always used a desktop with good parts.

You want a decent Cache with your CPU and a nice bit of RAM in your laptop really. And make sure you get a decent Anti Virus (NOT NORTON!!!!) NOD32 is the best i've used

Cheers lads thanks for the help and tips

What will you be using it for!?

Mainly home computing save photos bit of gaming

What kind of games?

GFX based? Or Database based?

E.G. Skyrim? Or Football Manager?

Football manager mainly

Toshiba Satillite, Still have mine from 2002, although it wont work for long on the battery power any more. but the new ones are great.
TOSHIBA SATELLITE PROC660 - £370
2.4Ghz i3 Pentium processor version

Agree, I've had mine since 2007....still going strong ....might look like a dinosaur...but does the job

If you use any internet sites like Currys, Comet, Dixon's, Pcworld, John Lewis or even Tesco's or Asda's, in order to purchase your laptop (or anything else for that matter), if you sign up to a cashback site like www.Quidco.com or www.Topcashback.com, you'll earn yourself a few quid back as well!

I use Quidco myself, who charge you £5 per year, but only if you make more than £5 per year!

If you don't make more than £5 in cashback, Quidco keep any cashback under the £5 you've earned from the online retailers, but they don't charge you anything!

It only takes a few minutes to set up an account and you have to provide your bank details, but it's definitely worth it, as you've got nothing to lose and I made nearly £200 in cashback last year!

If £400 is your budget, i'de recommend;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Series- ... =8-2-fkmr0

you've got the B950 CPU with a clock speed of 2.1ghz and 2MB of L3 Cache,
6GB of DDR3 RAM
The GFX is Intels HD 3000 integrated, which isnt built for games, so you will be looking at a crappy frame rate if you want the game to look half decent - but then it depends on what you want to play. It is very good for picture viewing, watching high quality videos ect.

Like I say, If you wanted a better GFX option for games I can look further

Found a better option for games

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-s ... 5-pdt.html