Anyone know a nice laptop for ~£300? (UK)

[miggols99]

My sister is looking around for a nicer laptop. What she wants is:


Nice design
Webcam
~£300
Not too big (15.4" or 14")

She wants Windows on it, but no-OS laptops are fine because I have a Windows XP CD.

[scottuss]

I've got a Asus eee 701, sub-notebook. It's pretty good and well under £300. However, there is the Acer Aspire One, that looks pretty neat too.

Google them both and see what you think

[miggols99]

The question is, are they easy to read stuff on? I asked her if she wanted a netbook and she said no because she will probably be doing some graphics work on it and doesn't want to squint. And how are the keyboards? Are they usable for typing quite a lot? This laptop will be for college...

[CirtexHosting]

Have you tried search on the Amazon?

[paul101]

if she's going to do some graphics work, i recommend a 15-17 inch screen :)

[scottuss]

Yeah it's not too bad for typing to be honest. It takes some getting used to I have to admit. To be fair, the Acer Aspire One will probably be the better option then.

There is a larger screen version of the 701 (the 901?) but it will be over £300 I think, and not really worth the money considering you can get a much more powerful machine for about the same money.

If you need to keep it under £300 with built in webcam, it's probably gonna be a sub-notebook.

Although I do remember E-buyer having a HP for under £300...

http://www.ebuyer.com/special/1674?tb=3

[miggols99]

So I guess the ultraportables are out then? I don't want to make the mistake again to choose a horrible, heavy, overheating cheap laptop for her...may have a look at that HP. Apparently it is very cool, but not so great looking.

[paul101]

www.play.com



some good deals in there :)

[miggols99]

Looks like they have Acer laptops there. What are they like? If they're so cheap there must be..?

[paul101]

ive never had experience with acer laptops, so couldn't tell

[tom66]

My Dell Inspiron is about £320, but I've had a few problems with it. If it matters, it works perfectly with Ubuntu apart from the microphone input. But no webcam.

[scottuss]

My girlfriend's brother has this one:

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/653/860/-/3595260/Acer-Aspire-5315-Celeron-M-540-1-83GHz-1GB-80GB-15-4-DVD-SM-Vista-Home-Basic-Laptop-Notebook/Product.html?searchtype=genre


it's very good for the money, quite nippy and the screen is very good quality.
Downsides:

The sound is a bit quiet even on full volume,

It has Vista Basic

[gn2]

Here's a few: http://tinyurl.com/582cq5

I particularly like the 12" MSI ones at the bottom of the page.

12" is a good size, good resolution, much better than any "netbook" and still quite portable and has an optical drive.

[SarahKH]

You say this laptop is for college/university? I hate to break this to you but I'd phone the insurance company and find out if it's covered (assuming the person is in halls). Anyway, my paranoia aside..

Three options as far as I can tell.

1. Buy something like a ASUS 701, a 16GB SDHC card and mate it to a 2nd hand TFT, USB Keyboard and mouse. Basically, on the move the person has an ultra-portable and when they get home, ten min fiddling with cables and it's a low powered desktop machine. I'd consider a 1G DDR2 SO-DIMM as well but that's me.

2. Poke around ebay. You can find 2nd hand refurb ThinkPad T40's and T41's for 200 notes or so. The T series is considered to be the 'road warrior' option so usually has all the goodies (WiFi, Bluetooth and optical) in it.

3. Poke around the Dell factory refurb store. You often find canceled orders and refurb stuff appearing. Usually not a lot of £££ for quite a bit of machine, as a bonus it comes with the usual Dell warranty... that may or may not be worth the paper its printed on but hey.

As to the 701's keyboard, I wouldn't want to type a whole book on the thing, but it's good for making edits, e-mail and posting on ubuntuforms. For heavy duty typing I use an ancient IBM USB keyboard (not a clicky one though).