I friend is wanting to purchase a laptop for her son to take to uni, and mentioned a figure of £400. I said that for college work she needn't spend much more than £300 and should consider spending the rest on some sort of accidental damage cover.
I see that you can get a basic (P4500, 3GB RAM, 320GB disk I think) Dell Inspiron 15 with 1 year's accidental damage cover and 10 day collect and return repair for about £350 - I'm no great fan of Dells (work one is fine) but that seems worth considering.
She's on quite a tight budget so cheaper suggestions welcome, but she tells me that son is 'accident prone' so I think the cover is quite important.
BTW I haven't asked her whether he could manage with just a desktop. Or, indeed, nothing at all.
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Can't give specific advice, but laptops can be heavy if you are carrying them around all day. And the standard laptop type bag is easily spotted and grabbed by thiefs. I've got a jolly nice rucksack for mine, purpose made so has a padded laptop pocket, but does not shriek "laptop inside".
Agreed on accidental damage cover, student+heavy fragile object=accident waiting to happen.
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>> Can't give specific advice, but laptops can be heavy if you are carrying them around
>> all day.
I know - I often run 9 miles a day with mine in the £8 SportsDirect own-brand rucksack on my back :)
Actually it's only a 12" so it's not too bad. And it's a work one, so is covered for accidental damage, which was handy when I destroyed the display about a week after getting it.
www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?t=106&v=f
But if I'd have just spent my own money on it I'd have been pretty annoyed, and out of pocket.
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Would a netbook do? Plenty of dual core stuff around at 200 quid or so, a lot easier than lumping a full on laptop around and a darned sight cheaper.
www.dixons.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-one-522-netbook-olive-10671504-pdt.html?srcid=369&xtor=AL-63
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The ideal size for a laptop you lug about all the time is probably 13". And for that you pay a premium. I'm not saying you need to go for something as expensive as a Macbook to be paying a premium. The Sony VAIO S is meant to be good but also expensive.
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Have a look at Lenovo, very good value for what you get, and built quality is usually better than the likes of HP etc for the same price.
As for accidental damage warranties you will need to check the exclusions. The two most common damage repairs are laptop screens and DC jacks. A laptop screen is usually around £110 fully fitted, and DC jacks around £75 fitted.
DC jacks are such a common problem I would be surprised if one of the cheaper warranty packages would cover this.
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>> Have a look at Lenovo, very good value for what you get, and built quality
>> is usually better than the likes of HP etc for the same price.
I'd need to know how much the equivalent of Dell's repair and acc. damage cover would be though. That's really what makes the Dell attractive, that you just tick the boxes on the order form.
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>> I'd need to know how much the equivalent of Dell's repair and acc. damage cover
>> would be though.
Sorry - just having a look on the Lenovo site now...
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>> The ideal size for a laptop you lug about all the time is probably 13".
>> And for that you pay a premium.
Budget rules it out then.
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>> Would a netbook do?
Not sure - do you think that one you linked would be up to running Office? The 1GB memory would be my worry. And the small(er) screen might be an issue if he's going to be using it a lot. But significant advantages, as you say.
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No, a Netbook wont do for college. You will need office (or the open office equiv) and that struggles on a netbook.
Yeah check out the web specials for lenovo, they also have an ebay web site.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 10 Sep 11 at 17:19
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Parts may be more of an issue for Lenovo, but have never had to order any. I've found Samsung parts can be very expensive, but there are clones which can be had for a lot cheaper, e.g I got a cloned keyboard for £30, instead of the £100+ for the official one.
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The lenovo service manuals are all available on line, complete with part numbers and the parts are easy to get, but expensive.
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Make sure she waits until she's actually at uni before buying Office - price drops to something insane like £39.
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Open Office may well do too, as will Office Starter edition. It just depends on the complicity of the documents.
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My single core first generation netbook runs OpenOffice fine, i would hope a newer dual core could cope, OK it's an expensive experiment if it can't. Not tried MS Office beyond 2003 and trying to keep it that way.
Like Alfa says, around 40 quid if you can vaguely be described as a student:-
www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Office_2010-software.aspx
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>> Make sure she waits until she's actually at uni before buying Office - price drops
>> to something insane like £39.
Get it and install it before you go for £37 tinyurl.com/3mmvqob
This is the full version of Office not the £90 Student edition PC World try to kid you is good value.
(Apologies to Spamcan61 overlooked your post!)
Last edited by: Victorbox on Sun 11 Sep 11 at 09:00
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Thanks everyone. She's gone for this £380 Acer from eBuyer, my first suggestion before I started looking for cheaper options:
www.ebuyer.com/268391-acer-aspire-5750-laptop-lx-r9702-072
A bit OTT, but better over specced than under I guess. Don't know what she's doing about damage cover etc.
I'd already told her about software4students - we got our Office from them.
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A nice laptop that, with a Sanybridge mobile processor too, so heat shouldn't be an issue. Mine runs at 25c on my desktop, that is in a desktop but it is also the desktop version which runs hotter.
It is a long way from those god damn awful HP laptops with P4s which would idle at 70c.
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Focus is right to advise the student to, er, focus on security.
There are burglars in Durham who have the start of term marked in their diaries.
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Piggybacking on this thread eldest daughter has just started 6th form and we've decided a laptop for her would be appropriate now. PC World collect in store is easy for me and she wants a red one. Not paying over £400. That brings us to three available today.
Advent with a dual core Celeron T3500, Dell with dual core Pentium B940, Toshiba with dual core AMD A4-3300M. All meet the specs she needs in other respects so wondered if there were any strong thoughts on the brands and/or processor types?
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There's probably little in it, but I have the impression Advent is cheap and nasty, Dell can be OK, but Toshiba is the best brand of the three.
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Forget Advent, spares are too hard to get, for example you spill some beer in the keyboard, on the Dell and Toshiba I could get a replacement for around £15-£30 but on the Advent it would be much harder.#
It is not so much that Advent is cheap and nasty, but think of it like a Proton, spares will be hard to get hold off compared to a Ford (Dell). To make matters worse they are a DSGi brand, and they are not exactly known for their customer service.
If you cans stretch to a slightly better processor I would, as it will pay in the long term as it will last longer although it will probably break before then anyway.
I am a big fan of Lenovo lately,
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Daughter chose Dell mainly due to it's shade of red which she much admired compared with the Toshiba which felt better quality and had a nicer keyboard with similar spec for £30 less.
This 6th form period is the start of her independent choices as far as we're concerned so I didn't interfere.
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...Daughter chose Dell mainly due to it's shade of red...
Good a reason as any, the girl should go far.
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>>>the girl should go far
Very much looking forward to it being on her money.
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Laptop for college - Slidingpillar
