Laptops

markos1963

Any recommendations for a laptop upto 500 quid. Its for my son(11yo) Doesn't need to be big or portable as its going to be mainly used at home. He will use it for internet browsing and playing faily low level game/sims like Microsoft Railway and Flight 2004.

redddraggon

Dell - I always get my laptops from them (but build my own desktops), they seem to have the best deals/specs for the money whenever I look.

I got a new Dell about a month or 2 ago - £560, Runs Vista Home Prem, 3GB, ATI video, 320GB HDD, HDMI output, C2D T5600, 17" display (1440x900) and runs my required gaming needs - plays Counterstrike at decentish settings, Speakers are crap though, but I used a headset most of the time anyway.

edhornby

laptops direct have really good choices

if you are going to get a laptop that will have games on, you need to make sure that there is a dedicated graphics chip and dedicated graphics memory - even though it's for low intensity games, laptops now all have vista on them and the 2 things in combination stack up

I rate HP laptops, dell are ok also...acer or asus are good too

Skiddypants

ACER are pish!

As long as the laptop doesnt have a Celeron Processor (even if it is dual core), 2 gig + of RAM (especially if it runs vista), should be able to get a decent lappy for £500.00 nowadays, mines was £500 last year and it can run games better than my daughters which was bought not so long ago ( her mother didnt have a clue - told her to ask me first)

robbarker

Dell seem quite good - we use them at work. Have a look at the Linux option too - it would teach him that there's more to computing than Windoze, and it works a whole lot better than Vista on a medium spec machine. Not sure about train sims but XPlane, which does run on Linux, is by far the best flight sim out there and knocks the MS one into a cocked hat.

markos1963

robbarker wrote:

Dell seem quite good - we use them at work. Have a look at the Linux option too - it would teach him that there's more to computing than Windoze, and it works a whole lot better than Vista on a medium spec machine. Not sure about train sims but XPlane, which does run on Linux, is by far the best flight sim out there and knocks the MS one into a cocked hat.

Cheers for that but with so much school work done on Windows I suppose Linux would cause hassle.

ride_whenever

Not really, openoffice will take approximately 30secs to change over into.

robbarker

markos1963 wrote:

Cheers for that but with so much school work done on Windows I suppose Linux would cause hassle.

Not necessarily - the free OpenOffice software is pretty-much fully compatible with Office now, with only the most elaborate macro-rich documents and spreadsheets glitching.

Most win32 apps can also be run under Linux. The standard Ubuntu installation that most new PCs are loaded with has the Wine windows emulator built in.

alfablue

Asus (not Acer) have excellent laptops at good prices, they have excellent build quality. Asus build laptops for many big name brands. Got a couple from ebuyer recently.

redddraggon

robbarker wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

Cheers for that but with so much school work done on Windows I suppose Linux would cause hassle.

Not necessarily - the free OpenOffice software is pretty-much fully compatible with Office now, with only the most elaborate macro-rich documents and spreadsheets glitching.

Most win32 apps can also be run under Linux. The standard Ubuntu installation that most new PCs are loaded with has the Wine windows emulator built in.

For me Linux is pish, I live with two software engineers - one uses Linux near exclusively, the other Vista exclusively, and the one who uses Linux has to keep rebooting to Vista to do stuff - both do the same work so it seems silly to me when one can do all the work on Vista, to keeping booting OSs - Linux use just seems like a "statement" to me.

I've tried multiple distros, and not one has been successful for me, Linux is "free" and you get what you pay for. I could live with linux on a machine that just did my work though.....

Wine...................might as well use windows............Windows can do everything

markos1963

robbarker wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

Cheers for that but with so much school work done on Windows I suppose Linux would cause hassle.

Not necessarily - the free OpenOffice software is pretty-much fully compatible with Office now, with only the most elaborate macro-rich documents and spreadsheets glitching.

Most win32 apps can also be run under Linux. The standard Ubuntu installation that most new PCs are loaded with has the Wine windows emulator built in.

Shows just how little I know!

bornagainbiker

Save some money and buy a refurbished one

misco.co.uk do good deals (this is a clearance item)

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/Sea ... CatId=2524

dell have a refurbished site

If I was getting one now I'd probably go for the Samsung NC10 netbook.

Al_38

I really don't rate HP's - personally I think they are a complete pile of junk.

Mine survived 2 years of uni where all it did was sit on my desk. In that period of time it needed 2 new hard discs (inside a year). Then the VGA chip on the motherboard failed. which was repaired. and then failed again. and was repaired. And then it failed again. It was then repaired but during testing by the repair company, the rest of the motherboard failed too. And they got in 5 replacement motherboards but each had its own fault too so the whole thing was irreparable.

The companies who repaired it said they see a lot of Hp machines come in with problems, and in my own opinion whoever designed the cooling for it got something badly wrong as no laptop should get as hot as it did - i think this was the cause of the problems.

wiffachip

which reminds me, there is a Dell laptop behind our couch waiting for me to phone a bloke in India to try and get it fixed under warranty, but I just can't be *rsed. He won't understand me and vice versa, it's a pain in the neck.That's what I don't like about Dells, you can't take them back to the shop, though I think I saw PC world advertising Dells recently.

Laptops are like cars,bikes etc - somebody will swear by one make, somebody else will hate it, don't dwell on it, just go out and buy one. If he's owt like my kids, it will be behind the couch in 12 months, broken, waiting for a repair

Mark Alexander

Macs are the way to go

scwxx77

If you seriously consider linux then I'd recommend going to Linux Emporium where they come configured and you don't have to worry about compatibility issues.

I'd also get SuSE 11 instead of Ubuntu. GNOME sucks.

turkeytickler

have you considered a netbook?

small form factor, solid state storage both very child compatible..... should be able to handle low end games (although not sure what the graphics hardware is like)....

try googling "netbook" and see what you get...

choice of xp or linux

dirt cheap too so you can spend the difference on bike bits