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Affordable laptop recommendations: budget £350-£450

Lenovo have a sale on the Thinkpad Edge series right now. It's quite rare to get a small non-netbook laptop for under £400 so I've already ordered an Edge E320:

Product SKU: 1298CTO
Product Name: ThinkPad Edge Edge E320 - 1 Year Depot Warranty

- Intel Pentium Dual Core B950M Processor (2.1GHz, 2MB L3, 1333MHz)
- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64
- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 English
- 13.3" W HD (1366 x 768) LED, Anti-Glare, Low-light sensitive HD Webcam, Heatwave Red (w/o WWAN)
- Intel HD Graphics
- 2 GB DDR3 - 1333MHz (1 DIMM)
- Keyboard UK English
- 320 GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
- Country Pack United Kingdom with Line cord & 65W AC adapter
- Bluetooth 3.0
- Language Pack WE(FR/GE/IT/IT/DU/EN)


Qty Ordered: 1
Amount: £258.32 (before taxes, shipping, etc.)

The Pentium B950 is a Sandy Bridge based processor. You lose 1MB of cache and hyperthreading versus the i3, but it's still dual core and plenty fast. The i3 upgrade was £60 and not, IMO, worth it. There's also an AMD based E325 but it's not much cheaper.

Store: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...ory&issCategory=/Notebooks/ThinkPad notebooks
 
The touchpad is a bit crummy and the screen is what you'd expect for the price. In all other ways, it's absolutely a great machine. Added 4GB of RAM from Ebuyer at half the price they wanted - all of about £16 to bring it up to 6GB. At some point I'll look into adding an SSD.

If you're going to order base and add your own stuff, be aware that it's pretty slim so you need a 7mm HDD size. Not many are that thin.

I see the Intel deal is not quite what it was last week. It's still a good deal at under £450, but the AMD option is now competitive being around £80 cheaper.
 
I probably should have read this thread before going out and buying a new laptop yesterday! However, I'm well pleased with the HP Pavilion G6 I've bought. £350 or thereabouts, from PC World. I could have spent less if I'd bought an Asus or a Lenovo but I've heard horror stories about both of them, although I might have looked more seriously at the Lenovo in the light of some of the comments on here. Either way, I'm happy with the HP, which feels like a quality product, is sufficiently well specced for my work needs (which are hardly demanding tbh) and has quite good graphics and sound for watching films.

But then, any laptop would look good after my heavy, creaky old Advent. It's so nice to have one that doesn't overheat and cut out all the time, and whose battery actually holds charge!
 
Starts watching thread intently. Starting a new job soon and can't take my desktop with me. Anything is going to seem like a downgrade, so no point spending loads, but need something with more beef then my Netbook!
 
do yourself a favor and consider an iPad or other tablet especially if you have a decent desktop.
 
paulE said:
do yourself a favor and consider an iPad or other tablet especially if you have a decent desktop.
Click to expand...

To limited. I've got a phone which has broadly the same functionality and it would drive me mad.

I'm going to be away from my desktop for months, rather then a few days at a time. :(
 
paulE said:
do yourself a favor and consider an iPad or other tablet especially if you have a decent desktop.
Click to expand...
But then you're fucked for most of the tasks a laptop does well - e.g. run Photoshop and other full-fat, industry standard apps, offer a wide collection of USB ports, ethernet, SD card slots etc etc, and, of course, include a proper keyboard instead of a fiddly onscreen one.
 
Global Stoner said:
To limited. I've got a phone which has broadly the same functionality and it would drive me mad.

I'm going to be away from my desktop for months, rather then a few days at a time. :(
Click to expand...
then i guess yer stuck. the screens on phones however seem way to small to use Apps like Word, Powerpoint, Pages or even as a eReader plus they can't run very long when in use. when i made the switch to a tablet i was happy not to have to lug that puppy(MacBook) around anymore. i hadn't used the optical drive in ages and maybe used Photoshop once or twice in the years i owned it. my iPad runs for 10 hours something the laptop or a phone could never do and it never gets Hot! only you know best what your needs are. cheers
 
paulE said:
then i guess yer stuck. the screens on phones however seem way to small to use Apps like Word, Powerpoint, Pages or even as a eReader plus they can't run very long when in use. when i made the switch to a tablet i was happy not to have to lug that puppy(MacBook) around anymore. i hadn't used the optical drive in ages and maybe used Photoshop once or twice in the years i owned it. my iPad runs for 10 hours something the laptop or a phone could never do and it never gets Hot! only you know best what your needs are. cheers
Click to expand...
For a lot of users, programs like Word, Excel, Photoshop etc are everyday items, and a proper keyboard is essential.
 
TBH if I was going to replace my netbook I'd seriously consider one. They have they're place that's for sure, but everyone's needs are different.
 
Roadkill said:
Definitely.

I can't see the point of tablets, frankly. They're basically just toys atm.
Click to expand...
what ever works for folks. i am sure some thought why switch to an iPod when you have portable a cd player. have fun lugging your laptops around.
 
I'd agree they're a decent alternative to netbooks. I never got the point of netbooks either, given that they're too slow for many applications, the screen is far too puny and low-res, and the resulting teensy keyboards are abominable. So I can see a tablet of sorts to replace a 10-11" netbook.

To replace a proper 13+" (13 is where you start getting proper keyboards) laptop though? Not a chance.

As for recommendations, Lenovo's got the 15" AMD-powered Thinkpad Edge going for a base price of £285 at the moment. Less CPU horsepower than the Intel, but far better graphics oomph. If it's like the 13" ones, it's the only "chiclet" keyboard I've ever used and not hated (and that includes the Macbook). They want £44 to bring it to 6GB of RAM, but you can do it yourself for under £20.

Lots of vendors have sales in preparation for the Ivy Bridge processors coming out in a couple of months. But IB isn't so much of an advance that it's worth waiting and passing up a good sale price.
 
Hiya all you geeky types. :D

I am after a lap top, I want portable and slim rather than huge screen and movies. I have £400 to spend.

What looks good?
 
It's not the slimmest thing in town, but it's great value at £369.

P600-0276388-07.jpg

Toshiba Satellite Pro C660-255 Laptop
Intel Core i3 Sandybridge 2310M 2.10GHz
6GB RAM
500GB HDD
15.6" HD
DVD±RW
Intel HD
Webcam
Windows 7 Home Premium 64
Click to expand...
http://www.ebuyer.com/276388-toshiba-satellite-pro-c660-255-laptop-psc1me-00q00ken

*edit: synchronicity!
 
I'm sure there may be a new laptop from MoonOnAStick Inc that may be able to provide a powerful, ultra-slim gaming machine for under £400.

:D
 
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