New Laptop

[mac]

I need a new laptop just for internet and basic word and excel, been looking around but what do i go for looking up to £350. Some have AMD E series dual core processor others intel celeron,same with ram,hard drive you can have 4or 6 GB and 500 to 1TB whats best?

 

[GB]

I need a new laptop just for internet and basic word and excel, been looking around but what do i go for looking up to £350. Some have AMD E series dual core processor others intel celeron,

Stay away from Celeron, they maybe cheap but most are slow.

For your budget you could get http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5089105.htm

same with ram,hard drive you can have 4or 6 GB and 500 to 1TB whats best?

The 4 or 6 you state is for RAM rather than hard drives. For your needs 4 is plenty. Hard drive capacity requirements and what is best are more dependent on individual requirements. How much you download stuff, how quick you want things to open or boot up etc. Again for you I'd say 500GB is plenty.

 

[mac]

Thank you for your reply just seen in argos sale a toshiba cat num 508/9813 AMD E series processor 6GB ram 750GB hard drive for £299.99 with what you have said this could be ok for me. I don't realy download much but i do spend alot of time on the web and don't want to be waiting for things.

 

[SS4]

Thank you for your reply just seen in argos sale a toshiba cat num 508/9813 AMD E series processor 6GB ram 750GB hard drive for £299.99 with what you have said this could be ok for me. I don't realy download much but i do spend alot of time on the web and don't want to be waiting for things.

Really? That's coming up at £450 for me.

It would certainly do what you want it to do. If you want to speed up your browsing experience you can set your browser's cache and/or profile to run in RAM which is faster than having it run off the disk but at the cost of not saving between sessions (cache is usually wiped anyway)

 

[mac]

It's in the sale starting Christmas Day

 

[Crossover]

If the budget will run to it, I would also suggest keeping clear of Celerons (and other single core processors) - I was rebuilding a colleagues laptop the other week with such a processor and just running Windows update totally killed doing anything else on it!

 

[Haydn1971]

Bit of a wild card, but have you considered a tablet ? The iPad might be past your budget, but lots of android versions out there - if all you are doing is basic word processing and spreadsheets, you might find one of these better. Use of my main powerhouse PC dropped to less than 25% after I got my iPad a couple of years ago.

 

[SS4]

Bit of a wild card, but have you considered a tablet ? The iPad might be past your budget, but lots of android versions out there - if all you are doing is basic word processing and spreadsheets, you might find one of these better. Use of my main powerhouse PC dropped to less than 25% after I got my iPad a couple of years ago.

Word processing without a physical keyboard? I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Haydn1971]

I do all of my forum posts and e-mail without a physical keyboard - some people adapt, some people can't - without trying you won't know for sure.

Like I said, bit of a wild card

 

[sonic2009]

Bit of a wild card, but have you considered a tablet ? The iPad might be past your budget, but lots of android versions out there - if all you are doing is basic word processing and spreadsheets, you might find one of these better. Use of my main powerhouse PC dropped to less than 25% after I got my iPad a couple of years ago.

Word processing without a physical keyboard? I wouldn't recommend it.

You can get keyboards for tablets.

 

[tony_mac]

If the budget will run to it, I would also suggest keeping clear of Celerons (and other single core processors) - I was rebuilding a colleagues laptop the other week with such a processor and just running Windows update totally killed doing anything else on it!

Are there any single-core Celerons still around?
I have an SU2300, which is dual-core, and also seems to be faster than many E series processors (including the E1-1200). I wouldn't rule it out based on the word 'Celeron'.

This one looks decent for the budget, but it's only a 14" display so it depends on how much you value portability.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-pavilion-ultrabook-was-500-now-yours-for-just-339-possibly-51-quidco-288-hp-store-1420320

 

[Crossover]

Not sure. The one I rebuilt wasn't even two years old I don't think. More to the point it was single core, no HT, and was by far the limiting factor of the laptop!

I recently advised on a Samsung for a local church - I think it was about £360 from eBuyer - i3 processor and 4GB RAM. I have it to install the necessary software on it and set up for their use - quick enough, though the top is a bit flexible, it is still well built for the price. Unfortunately, I don't think it is available anymore

 

[maniacmartin]

I bought a second hand Thinkpad X60 from ebay for under £100 - even with Linux it isn't the speediest kid on the block, but was certainly cheap.

If buying new, then I'd agree with all of the advice above. Personally for laptops I like to see them 'in the flesh' and try out the keyboard before buying, as there are some laptop keyboards which I cannot touch-type on - keys laid out oddly or feel too spongey etc.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Thank you for your reply just seen in argos sale a toshiba cat num 508/9813 AMD E series processor 6GB ram 750GB hard drive for £299.99 with what you have said this could be ok for me. I don't realy download much but i do spend alot of time on the web and don't want to be waiting for things.

If you don't want to be waiting for stuff downloading then make sure you get a fast internet connection. Which computer you have isn't very important in that regard, it's how good your Internet connection is.

 

[Furrball]

Check www.dell.co.uk/outlet. You can get some nice bargains from here, even more so when they are doing free delivery.

You can get this for about £350, Core i3, dedicated graphics card

Inspiron 14 - N4050
Inspiron 14 - N4050
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-2350M (2.30Ghz, 3M cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
4 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz (1 DIMMs)
320 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
8X DVD+/- RW Drive
Display: 14.0 Inch High Definition (1366x768) WLED Display with TrueLife
Graphics : 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6470M
English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64Bit OS)
Wireless : Dell Wireless 802.11g/n + Bluetooth v3.0+HS Card
LCD Back Cover : Obsidian Black
6 Cell Primary Battery, 48W
Internal Qwerty Keyboard

 

[mac]

Thank you for all your advice,think i will go for the Toshiba from Argos for £299.99 it seems to have what you think i need.

 

[tony_mac]

I would probably consider going for a faster processor; while that one will do, having more 'power' may make things a bit smoother, particularly if you do more demanding things in the future.

The Asus K55A (508/8979), for the same price, has a much faster processor (about twice as fast), and for an extra £20 the Toshiba C855 (508/7705), is faster again.

Using figures from http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

the C850 has a rating of 721 (an E1-1200), the K55A has a rating of 1461 (a B820), and the C855 has a rating of 1808 (B950).

 

[mac]

Bought the C855 now need windows office 2010 but it's very expensive but i think there is a company that makes copies that you can download for free anyone no it's name.

 

[maniacmartin]

LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice) is similar and free

 

[Furrball]

Or OpenOffice, or buy the Home and Student version for under £100 assuming the laptop is for personal use.

 

[SS4]

LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice) is similar and free

I'll second that. Unless the OP needs outlook in which case Thunderbird may suit your [OP] needs

edit: don't get free confused with illegal, it's perfectly above board to download libreoffice and not pay

 

[mac]

Another question for you, new computer has got windows 8 when you move the cursor across the screen it brings up the time and date in the middle and a list of things down the right hand side.This is getting annoying anyone no how to stop it?