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Affordable laptop recommendations: budget £350-£450

Magnus McGinty said:
If you’re attaching it to monitors is there any particular reason why it needs to be a laptop given desktops give way more bang for your buck?
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I'm hoping to escape this house and head for France and don't want to haul a desktop with me. I'll have to rent initially.
It might actually make more sense to buy over there.
Plans are a bit vague ATM, but I 'm going to need internet access right from the start.
 
gentlegreen said:
Hp website said no monitor connection with or without a usb- dock.
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Ah, okay. That's a limitation of the laptop itself rather than the USB port. Most non-professional level laptops (eg: the Elitebooks if you want HP) can be a bit funny with it. For example, my wife's Inspiron does it - it has a stylised "D" next to it; but a friend's Acer (which cost more at the time!) doesn't. I think you'll not find sub-£800 consumer gear that will do three.
I thought you meant the laptop supported it but the USB bandwidth was insufficient.
 
gentlegreen said:
I'm hoping to escape this house and head for France and don't want to haul a desktop with me. I'll have to rent initially.
It might actually make more sense to buy over there.
Plans are a bit vague ATM, but I 'm going to need internet access right from the start.
Click to expand...
It’s worth considering if the only advantage is the move. Way more horsepower pound for pound.
 
gentlegreen said:
I'm hoping to escape this house and head for France and don't want to haul a desktop with me. I'll have to rent initially.
It might actually make more sense to buy over there.
Plans are a bit vague ATM, but I 'm going to need internet access right from the start.
Click to expand...
When's the last time you defragged the harddrive on the desktop that started being glitchy? Doing that can often give a bit of a new lease of life. Also doing the software updates.

As far as buying a computer in France goes, be aware it will have an AZERTY keyboard, rather than a QWERTY keyboard.

That might be preferable, if you end up typing a fair amount of stuff in French, as it's easier to type letters with accents and cedilla etc.

It will take a wee bit of getting used to, if you're used to touch typing on a qwerty keyboard, as you need to retrain your muscle memory, but it's very doable, even though when you start you might make a lot of typos.

I've lived and worked in France, for two three-month stints, participating in EU-funded programmes, brushing up my French and doing internships in office-based roles, and I got used to using azerty keyboards very quickly.

(Or you can change the keyboard settings to switch it from qwerty to azerty, or vice versa, although if you do the letters on the keyboard won't necessarily correlate to what's typed.)
 
My PC is 11 years old and full of spiders lol. I have an SSD boot drive.

I would only use a laptop's own KB when actually on the move - but I'm a two finger typist and look at the keys !
My Android phone is currently set to French - which reminds me I may set Windows to French again ...
I anticipate getting asked to give basic IT assistance in France so will have to navigate the logiciels / applis in addition to the clavier ..
I could always take with me and plug in an ASCII keyboard if I felt the need ...
 
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Magnus McGinty said:
I had a bad experience selling a laptop on eBay where the buyer opened a dispute almost immediately which lasted months then closed that and opened another. In the end I just told him to send it back and I’d refund but completely unsurprisingly he didn’t bother. Months of headache for nothing.
That said I’ve sold loads of high value tech on there with no issues at all.
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I haven't sold anything on eBay since a buyer bought a fully working pristine CD player from me and forced me to refund him via a dispute. When the CD player was returned he had swapped my mint condition one with a totally trashed one.

Selling on eBay died the day they they gave 100% protection for the buyers and none for the sellers.
 
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Email from JL.
Even though they took my order, they found they were out of stock so I was able to cancel :)
Well that's another worry off my already anxious mind.
The money never left my account :)

I may see if I can get a really cheap reconditioned desktop as a stop-gap ...
Meanwhile I've turned off the sleep mode on this one as it may have been an issue...
 
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I reckon I'll take a punt on one of these reconditioned PCs from Amazon as a stop-gap ...
Or at least be ready to order one on my phone if this PC actually dies in the next 12 months - almost all of them will be higher spec than this one ...
I have a really dreadful old laptop I should be able to use if I can locate the PSU...

Dell or HP ??

 
There's old and there's second gen i3. If you could find a bit more money you could get a way more caperable machine.

I'd be looking for a 3/4th gen i5 min. I think the sweet spot second hand is 8th/9th gen i5, almost modern PCs but old enough to be about second hand in volume.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
There's old and there's second gen i3. If you could find a bit more money you could get a way more caperable machine.

I'd be looking for a 3/4th gen i5 min. I think the sweet spot second hand is 8th/9th gen i5, almost modern PCs but old enough to be about second hand in volume.
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Here's an example of an 8th Gen. You get 6 cores and would be cheap enough to upgrade if you needed more RAM.

www.ebay.co.uk

Dell OptiPlex 3060 i5-8500 PC 3.00GHz SFF 250GB SSD 8GB RAM DDR4 No OS | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell OptiPlex 3060 i5-8500 PC 3.00GHz SFF 250GB SSD 8GB RAM DDR4 No OS at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.
www.ebay.co.uk
 
spanish_tim said:
£350-£450 will buy you a very nice used laptop/PC with specs much higher the a new machine, 2021s £1000 machine is todays £350-£450 machine.
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Actually, the specs will be worse - CPUs have moved a lot in the past two years after stagnating for 5. But the build quality and user experience will be immensely superior.
 
Chz said:
Actually, the specs will be worse - CPUs have moved a lot in the past two years after stagnating for 5. But the build quality and user experience will be immensely superior.
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Not in the real world and of course depending on what you use the machine for; the majority of people don't use applications that will put any real strain on resources, they under use them. A budget of £450 won't get you a high specked new machine, £450 will get you a very well specked used machine. Not my money so I don't care, just offering alternates.
 
£450 gets you 6-10 cores now, which is (IMO, of course) a noticeable jump from the 2 and 4 core Latitudes and Thinkpads you'd get for the money.
If that's enough for you - that's great! You get a much better built machine for the money. But the performance delta is there and it's not insignificant like it was in the past. Hex-core Ryzens can be had for very little these days.
If your laptop mostly stays on a desk and plugged in 95% of the time, I'd argue for performance over durability. If you're a true mobile warrior, then the business-class laptop is probably the better buy unless you're truly hurting for more CPU.
 
Chz said:
£450 gets you 6-10 cores now, which is (IMO, of course) a noticeable jump from the 2 and 4 core Latitudes and Thinkpads you'd get for the money.
If that's enough for you - that's great! You get a much better built machine for the money. But the performance delta is there and it's not insignificant like it was in the past. Hex-core Ryzens can be had for very little these days.
If your laptop mostly stays on a desk and plugged in 95% of the time, I'd argue for performance over durability. If you're a true mobile warrior, then the business-class laptop is probably the better buy unless you're truly hurting for more CPU.
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Dell Latitudes still come with quad intel's unless you're paying proper money. In fact I was surprised that the latest mobile i3s are still duel core. I know not all cores are equal, but I find it hilarious we send out hex core desktops to users who won't do much more then surf the web. I've got 4 VMs running on a i5 9500t.
 
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UnderOpenSky said:
Dell Latitudes still come with quad intel's unless you're paying proper money. In fact I was surprised that the latest mobile i3s are still duel core. I know not all cores are equal, but I find it hilarious we send out hex core desktops to users who won't do much more then surf the web. I've got 4 VMs running on a i5 9500t.
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I get what you mean there, but in the context of over £1000 they're nearly all 8-10 core now. I'm not sure those sub-1K ones should even count as Latitudes! :D The high end Inspirons sell at the same price and are suspiciously similar in many ways.

I'm not actually that fussed over the CPU on my work machine. I have an 11th gen quad like the cheap Lats have, and that's fine so long as I have gobs of RAM and a big NVMe disk. I'd probably want to fetch an 8 core Ryzen for my own duty if I actually liked using laptops. I know, it's sad that I follow the market so much just to keep my wife content with hers.
 
Chz said:
I get what you mean there, but in the context of over £1000 they're nearly all 8-10 core now. I'm not sure those sub-1K ones should even count as Latitudes! :D The high end Inspirons sell at the same price and are suspiciously similar in many ways.

I'm not actually that fussed over the CPU on my work machine. I have an 11th gen quad like the cheap Lats have, and that's fine so long as I have gobs of RAM and a big NVMe disk. I'd probably want to fetch an 8 core Ryzen for my own duty if I actually liked using laptops. I know, it's sad that I follow the market so much just to keep my wife content with hers.
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I'd not had much dealings with laptops until I started working here, especially business grade ones. Do the Inspirons feel much cheaper then a Latitude? The boss won't quote for anything lower then a Latitude or OptiPlex so I don't get a chance to play with them. I've also got an 11th Gen Lat for work, I'm quite impressed with it, but when I'm allowed an upgrade I'll probably ask for the 15" one to get a numpad as well as the bigger screen.
 
UnderOpenSky said:
I'd not had much dealings with laptops until I started working here, especially business grade ones. Do the Inspirons feel much cheaper then a Latitude? The boss won't quote for anything lower then a Latitude or OptiPlex so I don't get a chance to play with them. I've also got an 11th Gen Lat for work, I'm quite impressed with it, but when I'm allowed an upgrade I'll probably ask for the 15" one to get a numpad as well as the bigger screen.
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For the end user, I don't think there's a lot in it. The Lats are certainly more durable and get a different support operation behind them though. The shell of both might be aluminium now, but the Lats should (I mean, I haven't checked recently) have a magnesium frame inside that can cope with a lot more beatings. If you're just using the thing and expect a replacement PC when it goes bust and just sync everything you need off of OneDrive anyhow, you probably don't care about any of that.

Personally, I'd try and score an XPS.
 
Chz said:
£450 gets you 6-10 cores now, which is (IMO, of course) a noticeable jump from the 2 and 4 core Latitudes and Thinkpads you'd get for the money.
If that's enough for you - that's great! You get a much better built machine for the money. But the performance delta is there and it's not insignificant like it was in the past. Hex-core Ryzens can be had for very little these days.
If your laptop mostly stays on a desk and plugged in 95% of the time, I'd argue for performance over durability. If you're a true mobile warrior, then the business-class laptop is probably the better buy unless you're truly hurting for more CPU.
Click to expand...
Not sure about build quality, Thinkpads are well put together from my experience. I get laptops (mostly) from my son who's a network engineer and when he comes across a pile of machines marked for disposal he asks for permission to take them; he gives them to me (retired from army, nursing and a radio ham) to fettle and I donate them to people who need a machine, Scouts, Army Cadets et al and the thinkpads are well put together and very easy to strip and fettle..

My main PC is i9 based and used for general stuff like Office and photo/video editing, the machine I'm typing this on is a 3 year old i7 in my radio shack and for things like Office/internet/social media and ham radio software its just as responsive as the i9.

Don't write off a high spec used machine.
 
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Chz said:
For the end user, I don't think there's a lot in it. The Lats are certainly more durable and get a different support operation behind them though. The shell of both might be aluminium now, but the Lats should (I mean, I haven't checked recently) have a magnesium frame inside that can cope with a lot more beatings. If you're just using the thing and expect a replacement PC when it goes bust and just sync everything you need off of OneDrive anyhow, you probably don't care about any of that.

Personally, I'd try and score an XPS.
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That makes sense then we won't go lower the latitudes as it looks bad on us if they break to soon. Users might not care, but the people who pay for them do. Had the joy this afternoon of contacting Dell to get a quote for a new screen on one this afternoon. I expect it will expensive. At least I got the user to admit that yes they might have left a load of heavy books on it over the holidays and that it didn't just happen as they first claimed.

The 15" XPSs do look nice, probably a bit much though as I'm not out and about that often. The boss has one of the 13" ones. Can't say I'd want to do much work on something that size.
 
I previously owned a Dell Inspiron which I brought from their outlet store in 2014. It was an absolute work horse and took all of the abuse I threw at it until it finally gave up the ghost last year.

Because I was so impressed with it I purchased another one last year. Big fucking mistake. They have gone from being solid as a fucking rock to having the building quality of melted Lego. Couldn't get the thing to work faster than 1MPH before I lost patience and smashed the fucking thing to death.

Will never buy a Dell ever again after owning that useless built in gaga land piece of fucking shit :mad:
 
Just be polite but firm with the warranty/support team. Just like with cars, lemons get made sometimes. But unlike with cars, you can very often talk your way into a full replacement. I always buy the extended on-site support, and it's proven to be well worth it.
 
ultra cheap Lenovo Thinkpad X260 Core i5-6200U 2.30GHz 8GB 256GB SSD Webcam HDMI Laptop as seen on HUKD

Very Good - Refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad X260 Core i5-6200U 2.30GHz 8GB 256GB SSD £106.24 with code at newandusedlaptops4u via eBay | hotukdeals

www.hotukdeals.com www.hotukdeals.com
£125, down to £106 with the code on HUKD

Love the keyboards on these older ThinkPads - I had a X260 or a X230 in the past for Uni - loved it, 12.5in screen meant it was easier to carry around although it's age means it isn't as light as modern machines, obvs.
 
The CPU was trash when it was new, and you've no upgrade path to Windows 11 unless it's 8th gen+. Also, no FHD screen.
Honestly, I know it's cheap but you can spend a bit more and get a lot better specs-wise. There does exist a point when being a Thinkpad isn't enough to compensate for how rubbish the specs are.
 
It's... Okay for the price.
The reason the Lenovo dock costs £200 is because the laptop doesn't actually support video out over USB-C, so the dock has to have the gubbins for it.
Even then I'd be quite surprised if it had the bandwidth to drive two screens. That's professional-level stuff, and you pay for it. Best to use the HDMI port for one screen, and if that's not sufficient look at some used Thinkpads or Latitudes.
 
Chz said:
It's... Okay for the price.
The reason the Lenovo dock costs £200 is because the laptop doesn't actually support video out over USB-C, so the dock has to have the gubbins for it.
Even then I'd be quite surprised if it had the bandwidth to drive two screens. That's professional-level stuff, and you pay for it. Best to use the HDMI port for one screen, and if that's not sufficient look at some used Thinkpads or Latitudes.
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Ah bugger. Where do you find the specs regarding it not doing video out?

I googled it's SKU and got this page

Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (15) Intel | 15" powerful and affordable laptop

The IdeaPad 5 (15) brings you more for less, by blending affordability and luxury with sleek design and feel, Dolby Audio™, and powerful Intel® processing options.
www.lenovo.com
 
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