Re: New laptop quandry only £450 budget (sorry, long post)

In article news:<TXyIh.2068$DX5.1042@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, BillL wrote:
A friend's asked me to find a new laptop for less than £450. It wont be
used for anything but word processing, email and the internet. The friend
also wants it to have onboard wireless capabilities.

Just about every notebook these days has WiFi.

I normally recommend IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads -- really well-built machines with
excellent keyboards -- but the only ThinkPad that alls within your price range
(an R51e model) is not the lightest of notebooks.

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=IBYA04MP4

I quite like the HP/Compaq nx6325. Use your favourite search engine to find the
best price, but this'll give you the spec:
http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=HPNX63251

It has the WiFi you're looking for and a decent amount of hard disk and RAM. It
uses AMD's Turion 64 X2 CPU, which is comparable to intel's core duo (NOT core
2 duo) notebook CPUs but costs less, which helps HP hit your price point with a
pretty good machine. A 15" 1024x768 display is pretty standard at this sort of
price; I'd go for a higher resolution, but it'd cost a lot more. The only bad
point, really, is that the optical drive is a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo rather than a
DVD writer.

Anyway I've narrowed it down to these two choices:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/product/ADVENT/7113/958726

http://flingk.com/cxxsl5s

I wouldn't touch the Advent as I know nothing about it ... It may be competent
kit but is very unlikely to be good value as it comes from PC World.

The Dell looks nice, but is more than your budget (and it cost another £80 on
top to get the version with the Turion X2 CPU -- the HP machine I mentioned is
slightly lower-spec'd but much better value).

The machines I've mentioned are listed with XP but other dealers may sell them
with one of the entry-level Vista versions. As long as the price is the same I
don't think it matters much which you get. There are improvements in Vista that
can make a PC more secure, but can also interact badly with some third-party
software -- if you end up turning off the security enhancements to get your
software to work then they might as well not be there. The other things that
are new in Vista are a more annoyingly graphical appearance (which uses up some
of the PC's power and memory) and some support for Digital Rights Management
(which you don't really want, but MS would like you to have).

So, given a free choice, I'd pick XP over Vista -- but if you get Vista with
the machine it won't be the end of the world. Linux would be a good choice,
too, for your friend's intended uses.

The links I've given here are to Insight.com, not because they're the best
dealer or have the best prices (though they're not bad) but because they have a
good website and a wide range of stock. Shop around.

Cheers,
Daniel.


.

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