I need a new laptop

wannabecyclist

Any techno savvy people here? I could do with a new laptop, only need it so I can do my self employed side job on it. So would need a basic cheap one but has a DVD drive and doesn't take an age to load up. Will need to buy an office package as I need excel to do my accounts and be able to install a printer/copier/scanner to it.

Bottom entry ones come in at £299,99 and then the cheapest office package I can find is the home and student 2010 which is about £70. Does this seem right?

Thanks

RideOnTime

wannabecyclist wrote:

Bottom entry ones come in

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

arran77

RideOnTime wrote:

wannabecyclist wrote:

Bottom entry ones come in

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

He's right, what he's on about is one of these....



The grille on the floor is for the air conditioning to cool the room when you run the supercomputer, it's called up-flow air conditioning, some people still refer to it as a bottom entry unit.

RideOnTime

Oh please ^^^^
This is like Carry on up the laptop...

arran77

RideOnTime wrote:

Oh please ^^^^
This is like Carry on up the laptop...

I sh1t you not, how do you think all this interweb malarkey works

Back on topic though, I reckon one of those is a bit OTT for the OP, probably costs a bit more than £299.99 as well.

wannabecyclist

One track minds

arran77

wannabecyclist wrote:

One track minds

No no, I quite agree with you, ROT is the sexual deviant

Back to your question though there is a place not far from where I live that does second hand laptops and computers....

http://www.tech-renew.com/mid-range-laptops-26-c.asp

Might be worth seeing if there is a similar place near you.

Also the student version of Office is only sold to 'students', not sure how they prove it though!!

wannabecyclist

that is great thanks, will have a look for refurbished ones. Got to be careful though with used ones, last thing I want is someone sticking a Trojan up my hard drive.

:shock:

craker

Does it have to be Excel? Open Office / LibreOffice etc are mostly Excel compatible, perfectly usable and come at a great price (£0).

There's various outlets for s/h laptops if you don't mind taking the risk (some laptops may have had a hard life), you can get a 2Gb Core i3 for less than £100.

RideOnTime

VTech

if you want a cheap laptop with good backup service get yourself to tesco.

nathancom

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ is the most comprehensive site for laptops. You get what you pay for with tech and £300 is not very much of anything.

You might be better off looking at tablets. Why do you need a dvd drive? You can use google docs for most spreadsheeting, Google have just done a major upgrade and it is free.

veterangaz

My accountant and some of my clients still use excel so it is easier to have that as it stops any conflicting problems happening. I thought I best have a DVD drive as if I get a new printer, to use it via the wi-fi you sometimes have to put a disc in to install it and match them together?

RDW

veterangaz wrote:

My accountant and some of my clients still use excel so it is easier to have that as it stops any conflicting problems happening. I thought I best have a DVD drive as if I get a new printer, to use it via the wi-fi you sometimes have to put a disc in to install it and match them together?

I haven't had a printer in recent years that you need to use a CD/DVD with - the printer software is always available to download, and Windows should be able to find any printers on your local network. On the other hand, you might want to watch DVDs!

There's always LibreOffice (or the related OpenOffice), but you can sometimes run into compatibility problems with complex MS Office documents.

https://www.libreoffice.org/
https://www.openoffice.org/

Can't beat the price, though!

wannabecyclist

What about this, as I probably don't need a disc drive (sadly no longer a student so the days of playing Championship Manager in my are long gone) and it comes with Office installed which saves me forking out for that! Never used a netbook, but I literally just need this for reviewing scanned documents that are sent to me, making basic spreadsheets and sending scanned documents back. Touchscreen is a bit odd but I guess that is how it is going these days.

http://tinyurl.com/olertgp

nathancom

wannabecyclist wrote:

What about this, as I probably don't need a disc drive (sadly no longer a student so the days of playing Championship Manager in my are long gone) and it comes with Office installed which saves me forking out for that! Never used a netbook, but I literally just need this for reviewing scanned documents that are sent to me, making basic spreadsheets and sending scanned documents back. Touchscreen is a bit odd but I guess that is how it is going these days.

http://tinyurl.com/olertgp

Yeah that is what you can expect for the money. It will not be fast and responsive and you would probably save a lot of annoyance down the line by spending a little bit more for something like this:
http://www.johnlewis.com/asus-x550ca-la ... ction=jump
It is significantly better for a small bit more money. The one you linked to is like a net book from 3 years ago and they ended up being more hassle than you can imagine due to the low ram and poor processor. Top end phones are more powerful.

mr_goo

Try Novatech

http://www.novatech.co.uk/laptop/?s=1

Good quality and good price. Though a tad over you budget.

What ever you do never buy a Sony Vaio. They are utter cr4p, hence why Sony are dropping them. We bought a bespoke Vaio last year for my sons 18th, cost about £900. It crashed about 5-6 times within the first week, not something one expects at that price. Took us 3 months to get our money back. Got one from Novatech at similar spec and £300 less.