Have your say & ask the experts

Just had insurance claim approved for the laptop my darling son killed a few weeks ago (by knocking his drink all over it whilst powered up!). So I'm getting £550 of vouchers to use at Comet . Although I've had 'possession' of a number of laptops over the years through work, I've never actually bought one! Any suggestions from personal experience so I can whittle down the choices?

cheers

You ask an open ended question. Its difficult to make a recommendation with specifying a criteria. I was actually researching laptops in the £500-£550 price bracket myself last week. I found this Acer met my requirements:

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_Timeline_3810TG-354G32n_Laptop_LX.PE70X.035/version.asp?refsource=ldfroogle

 The screen size is my initial screening factor - 13.3" is the sweet spot for me. Then mass and battery life. Hardware performance is actually secondary requirements for me because I do not have need a desktop replacement. Something light, portable and reasonable performance with a decent battery life. People have differing requirements.

In help chosing your laptop I'd start with screen size as your starting point.

Comet do Acer but not sure if they sell that model. You be tempted to get a MacBook but I can't advise you Apple. Anyway, why did your insurance company give you Comet vouchers for your settlement?

Good luck!

No personal experience with buying laptops but I have built a few pc's. The best advice I can give is to get the fastest processor you can find with the biggest amount of memory your budget allows. If you want to play games then look for a half decent dedicated graphics card as well, 256mb gfx card as a minimum.

Just had a look on Comet website and spotted this, £100 off but it's still £50 over budget it does have the fastest processor and the most memory (4 Gb) at that price point though plus 320Gb hardrive. Also has a decent dedicated graphics card if you wanted to play games on it, dvd burner and it also plays Blu-Rays and has an HDMI out. It says on the product info that there is a windows 7 upgrade option, don't know if this is a free upgrade though. Looking at some of the cheaper laptop specs I would say that it would be £50 well spent over the others at £600

DistortedVision:

You ask an open ended question.

Yes, I now realise that, having spent a couple of hours looking around!  Last time I purchased a laptop (as part of my job, where brand etc are dictated to you before you start picking a model) there were only "laptops" - none of this "desktop replacement laptop" or "netbooks" etc etc... I clearly need to make that decision first! The old laptop was only really used for internet surfing, primarily because that was about all it could handle. So whilst a netbook seems an obvious choice, budget seems to allow for something much better and you never know, I might get into this PC-based music thing after all!

As for the vouchers, that is "just the way they do it" (not a direct quote) - I believe it is common in the industry. Insurance company approves the claim, passes it on to another company who find a current model that matches the spec of the original laptop, and bases the amount of the settlement on the value of that. Which, in insurance parlance, is what they call "like for like" replacement. It would have been nice to have the cash, or at least not be restricted to Comet, but I'm not too fussed - the old laptop really was on it's last legs anyway.

SpiceWeasel:

No personal experience with buying laptops
but I have built a few pc's. The best advice I can give is to get the
fastest processor you can find with the biggest amount of memory your
budget allows. If you want to play games then look for a half decent
dedicated graphics card as well, 256mb gfx card as a minimum.

Just had a look on Comet website and spotted this,
£100 off but it's still £50 over budget it does have the fastest
processor and the most memory (4 Gb) at that price point though plus
320Gb hardrive. Also has a decent dedicated graphics card if you wanted
to play games on it, dvd burner and it also plays Blu-Rays and has an
HDMI out. It says on the product info that there is a windows 7 upgrade
option, don't know if this is a free upgrade though. Looking at some of
the cheaper laptop specs I would say that it would be £50 well spent
over the others at £600

Cheers - that does look pretty good and I do like the idea of an HDMI out. Have heard the "Acer" name quite a lot, but never actually seen or used one.

Btw that laptop I linked to is an online only purchase, you can't buy it instore.

If you can I would try and have a look in a local Comet (or other electrical outlet) and see what the quality is like on the different manufacturers they stock. It might help to narrow down your choices, especially if you see something similar in action.
That Acer does look like alot of laptop for the money though, and should last you a good few years at least before you need to think about another upgrade.

Whatever laptop you decide on I would try and get an Intel over an AMD processor, generally the Intels are faster at number crunching than the equivalent AMD.

I might upgrade my old Toshiba lappie shortly for something sleeker and shinier. Min specs: HDD 320GB and 3GB. Ideally 500GB, 4GB, Windows 7, and a great battery life. Budget = £499.

I thought I had seen one (Acer, IIRC) in Currys recently that came w/o any optical drive and looked the part. Now it's gone it seems, and I can't remember the model number or any useful details. Would anyone know anything about drive-less laptops (other than the Mac one)? Cheers.

If you can make the effort, it's worth searching out some reviews - similarly-specced computers, even with the same processor, memory & hard disk, don't all perform the same!

momo72:

I might upgrade my old Toshiba lappie shortly for something sleeker and shinier. Min specs: HDD 320GB and 3GB. Ideally 500GB, 4GB, Windows 7, and a great battery life. Budget = £499.

I thought I had seen one (Acer, IIRC) in Currys recently that came w/o any optical drive and looked the part. Now it's gone it seems, and I can't remember the model number or any useful details. Would anyone know anything about drive-less laptops (other than the Mac one)? Cheers.

JohnDuncan:

Good experiences with Acer and Sony Vaio, bad experiences with Compaq and HP. Have found Dell very reliable for desktops but haven't had one of their laptops, and found them a bit overpriced anyway. If I had to buy my own for £500 right now I would almost certainly buy Acer.

Ooh, really? I have to admit I have a thing against Acer's - but have absolutely nothing to base that opinion on! Probably because I've only been involved in the corporate side of laptop purchasing, where Dell and HP tend to dominate... did Acer have a bit of a bad name in their early years...?... I'm just trying to work out why I'm so dismissive of the brand without any good reason! 

Cheers JD.

I have to say, this is a complete nightmare being tied to one retailer (as this is an insurance claim). I am definitely going to contact the insurance company and find out what the deal would be should I lose my hi-fi/AV system for whatever reason - if they told me I'd have to replace all my equipment through a high street retail chain.... arrgghhh! Might be time to shop around for a new insurance deal - oh, the excitement!

Found a Toshiba that ticks all the boxes, but is uglier than a very ugly piece of kit. Or a slightly less well-specced Sony Vaio that is just lovely. £499 from Comet. I'm also considering keeping the current Tosh and upgrading the memory and HDD. Rarrr, decision, decision... Thanks all for your suggestions and comments!

This is probably a rare event, but I bought an Acer laptop from a local Comet store a couple of years ago.    They had 21 in stock, they told me when they checked their system.

Unless it was a faulty batch, I got the duff one!     A couple of weeks after purchase, it suddenly went off.   I thought the battery needed recharging, but the whole thing was dead apart from the monitor (you could see the backlight).    No system error or anything, it wouldn't do anything.   I assume it was a major fault on the motherboard, or the processor died.

But I wouldn't let that put you off Acer!    A friend has one, and it's fine.    Obviously, with any brand or product there are going to be people unlucky enough to have a bad experience.

Personally, I would not buy any expensive items from Sharp or Philips, due to the number of faulty ones I've had over the years (but that's another story), but I expect most people have no problems with them.