Page 1 of Best laptop for about £400

Does anyone have any recomendations? :)

The one currently being advertised by PCWorld looks a pretty good deal to me for £399
www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/editorial/dell-1545

The battery is only 4-cell (which means it won`t last a huge amount of time when not plugged into the wall) - but that doesn`t matter to a lot of people, and if you`re just using for document creation/Internet/e-mail etc. then you shouldn`t find it an issue.
If you`re planning on having it plugged in most of the time then this obviously isn`t a problem.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

Blu ray one for £399 at pc world also, close to buying it myself :)


www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/909576

Thanks. The Dell looks slick. Is there a reason why you would choose this over, say, the Toshiba that PC World have for the same price?
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/editorial/toshiba-l300-13s
:)

I`ve never heard of Advent - am I just out of touch? I`m clearly pretty clueless as I don`t really know what the benefits of Bluetooth are. Is it just a way of watching DVDs? :/

I think I want a 15" screen and there was an Advent one on the PC World website but it only had a 1GB memory, which didn`t seem like much.

This item was edited on Sunday, 4th January 2009, 00:07

Personally I`d stick to a laptop using an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
They are fantastic in terms of performance ("bang for buck") and power saving etc. I`ve not much experience with the AMD Turion processors - but the Intel C2D chips are very good.

The Advent (they`ve been making laptops for a while) 6441 laptop is OK, but I think it uses one of the older Intel CPUs (not C2D). I suspect that`s how they`re able to put a Blu-ray drive in there and keep it under £400.
If you don`t know what Blu-ray is - then I wouldn`t worry about having it :D

For information purposes:
What is Blu-ray? www.blu-ray.com/info/

And you`re right to be concerned about the 1GB memory. If you`re going to have Windows Vista on the laptop, then a minimum of 2GB is recommended, although a lot of laptops now provide 3GB.
Having said that, laptop memory is usually fairly cheap and easy to install, so could be upgraded.

Hope that helps
Miles

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

Thanks Miles - that`s very helpful :D

One last question - there`s a Sony Vaio available now in this price range - wold you rate that?

Can you post the link to it?

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

Sony - Produce some excellent laptops, but their strength is in premium products at very premium prices; so they wouldn`t be my first choice for a budget laptop. They also don`t have the best reputation for reliability.

Advent - This is a DSG branding that they apply to products sourced from many different manufacturers. This generally means that you are stuck with DSG as your sole source of support. In the event of problems you are unable to escalate resolution with the manufacturer. DSG tech support does not have a good reputation. I would usually avoid DSG but admit to having an Advent 4211 which I know is a re-badged MSI Wind. DSG are much slower to release fixes and upgrades than the manufacturer.

Toshiba - Used to be the best laptops, they damn nearly invented the concept. However their more recent products (last 5 years) have received a lot of flack for poor design and reliability.

My recommendations would be Dell, Lenovo (if you can find a good deal), Acer, and HP. These are all solid companies producing excellent products, they do produce rogue products, but at least you can be confident that they will be there to fix it. Acer have a bit of a reputation for slow turn-around on repairs, but they produce outstandingly high value products.

Funnily enough, i saw it in PC World but can only find it on the website on thislink, then it won`t give more info

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/editorial/sony-vaio-laptops/?camp_id=ppc_google_brandlaptops_sony_laptops

Thankyou bytemaster, will look into Lenovo too, as I haven`t heard of them. Saw quite a good Dell but it was a bit chunky. Am getting really confused now - think I will have to go back to the shop and have another look!