New Laptop Advice

C

cj10jeeper

Lifer
 Lichfield, England
Nothing to do with Zeds but outside my area of knowledge here.

I need a new laptop for my daughter for uni. Budget around £500. I know we need a 15.6 screen and ideally a separate numeric keypad. Aside that they all seem much of a muchness as she'll never uset eh full capabilities.

Front runner is the Sony VPC EE2E1E/W1 with a 2 year warranty from any one of several bricks and mortar retailers.

Interested in any recommendations??
 
Apple macbook :thumbsup: Thats all i would ever use now. But TBH Acer are a cheaper brand, but you get more with them than you do with Sony. And in my experience they all die after 2 years anyway :lol:
 
Check HP website. My desktop and laptop are HP. Customer service is good if you need them.

Sony is good, but expensive compared to other machines with similar specifications.
 
They are not bad, and never had any bad experiences with them.

Funnily my old PC was an HP pavilion, like a small tower PC. Which the motherboard went after just under 2 years, and replacements were cray money and renowned for blowing :o But im sure HP are good, but would never have another for that reason. Cost me £800 and was so so slow from day one, and that was the top spec one! All i use it for is the net and storing pictures really, oh and the odd word document.
It took about 5 seconds to open a folder! No joke! And that was from day one, which i thought was odd :roll:
 
After nearly 20 years of PCs (including Toshiba and IBM/Lenovo laptops) and two years of Apple experience, I'd recommend the Macbook or Macbook Pro with MS Office. Ease of use, long battery life and won't become outdated too soon. The user experience is very refined IMO. They cost more than your budget, but you don't have to pay for virus scanners.
 
cj10jeeper said:
Budget is £500 and hate Macs anyway.
Click to expand...
x1
My HP are reliable. After many years, only a new DVD drive was needed for the desktop last year. But my HP laptop and desktop were refurbished from HP direct via eBay.

http://h40059.www4.hp.com/uk/homelaptops/index.php
 
OK - let me be clearer - £500 is the budget, tops, and won't make it to £850 of Macs. This is for a Uni student and it's more likley to be lost or wrecked after 3 years use.

ksher - I'll tale a look at HP - any specific model you aor anyone suggest?
 
cj10jeeper said:
ksher - I'll tale a look at HP - any specific model you aor anyone suggest?
Click to expand...

http://h40059.www4.hp.com/uk/homelaptops/index.php

If your daughter uses it mainly for school work and internet (not for gaming), then your budget should be enough for a good laptop.
 
Does the Uni she is going to not have any schemes in place for buying laptops at reduced prices?

I would have thought Dell would be worth a look also. They are part of the NNA (National Notebook Agreement) for most Universities.
 
Z4 Beemer said:
Does the Uni she is going to not have any schemes in place for buying laptops at reduced prices?

I would have thought Dell would be worth a look also. They are part of the NNA (National Notebook Agreement) for most Universities.
Click to expand...

News to me - never heard of the scheme. Will do some research though :thumbsup:
 
Viao's do indeed look nice, but often lack substance (like most offerings from Apple imo)... I wouldn't touch Acer with a barge pole. ASUS used to make Vaio's, unsure if they still do, but they certainly make some nice laptops themselves!

I do love my Dells, only had 1 go wrong with a duff trackpad out of about 7 in total... They out-sorced someone to fix it within 3 hours (YES! 3 hours!) of me calling. Got my latest 13z from Dell Outlet (Reconditioned) - £370 for a 13"LED, 1.2Ghz ULV Core2, 320GB 7200rpm hdd, Nvidia Gfx, 4GB Ram and a 8+hr battery under good usage!

MSI X600 is >£100 less than the Vaio (SCAN have them), sacrifces an optical drive (buy a USB one if needed!) and a little processor speed for mobility and slimness - looks great, almost Macbookish too! Shame I cant really see any great Dell deals :(
 
chris said:
Apple macbook :thumbsup: Thats all i would ever use now. But TBH Acer are a cheaper brand, but you get more with them than you do with Sony. And in my experience they all die after 2 years anyway :lol:
Click to expand...

+1

I used PC's for many years ... mow only Mac's
 
at work I've had 2 Dell laptops over the last 8-ish years and I can't remember anything going wrong with them, and as a computer programmer I use them day in day out, at work, at home and abroad.

Hardware's not my area, but maybe consider the Dell Inspiron 15.
 
Yeah, I'm a MacBook Pro user myself. Have Windows 7 on a partition.

Don't know what they'd call them on that side of the pond, but here the preferred laptops at UNC are Lenovo (formerly IBM).
 
Have you looked at Samsung. Very highly specced machines with a very good reputation for build quality at this price. You would even have some change on the below.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/276-6254886-4891117?ref_=asc_df_B003EJPK36773423&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&a=B003EJPK36&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B003EJPK36
 
I bought a Mac for my daughter using the student card, saves up to 40% so I added some bits as well like the warranty for 3 years.

You know my business - I buy / sell a few hundred laptops as a small part of it as well each year and there are only two makes I buy:

- Lenovo
- Apple

For students, the Mac is way, way more sophisticated, stable and after 2 years still boot up with the exact same speed as day one. If you buy the warranty pack for 3 years, it includes ALL Apple products you have (like wireless time capsules etc). By far the best deal around.

I can put money on it that if you buy an HP, Acer, Dell etc - you will have a dud machine in a years time. I have tried and thrown them all away and the only machine that I can guarantee that will work after 3 years are the Lenovo and Apple machines.
 
pvr said:
If you buy the warranty pack for 3 years, it includes ALL Apple products you have (like wireless time capsules etc). By far the best deal around.
Click to expand...

All Apple equipment bought for Higher Education come with 3 years warranty as default so no need to pay extra for it.

On the Apple website going through the HE store, the entry level Macbook costs £729.68 Depending on her University it might be a bit more depending on its size and how prestigious it is! :D

If you do decide to go down the Apple route worth checking the software she needs to use will run on Mac's, or else you'll be looking at dual-booting or running an MS Windows virtual machine.

2.4GHz : 250GB Macbook
* 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 2GB DDR3 memory
* 250GB hard drive1
* 8x double-layer SuperDrive
* NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics
* Built-in 10-hour battery2
* Polycarbonate unibody enclosure

* Ships: Within 24hrs
* Free Shipping
* £729.68
 
Aaaargh - Macs are a total 'NO' Don't want them. I'm sure they are awesome, but to repeat way above her budget and no desire to have dual operating system, etc. Also the chances of theft are way greater than on an anonymous Sony, Samsung, Lenovo, etc.

Great lead on the Uni Notebook programme. Am checking it out, but strangely the prices seem higher than normal retail.

Frankly if it were my decision I reckon I'd go for the Comet deal where they bang out a 15" Compaq for £329. 3gb memory, 320gd hd.

Mafoo - Samsung - good suggestion. Like the looks of them and features/price

Smokin / pvr - Lenovo are great - solid and relaible. I have 3 but they are bricks :thumbsdown:

Ed - MSI - never heard of them but on the case :thumbsup:

Sorry if I missed anyone - great help and really appreciated :thumbsup:

Oh and for those interested - University of Birmingham to study Law. Proud dad when his daughter achieved 10+ GCSE at A/A* and 3A at A Grafted her ar*e off for 6 months leading up to them including taking LNAT test and got what she wanted :thumbsup:
 
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