..yet another "what laptop" query.....

[jonnie comet]

Sorry 'bout this, but........

Daughter1, on her way to Uni'. Apparently she absolutely has to have a lap top....

What will she need ?.......Where from ?........Is there a lot of difference between Vista home basic/premium ?.....I do know that I need to price in a decent warranty......

I'm at a bit of a loss, and advice is thin on the ground. Very grateful for any help offered.......

 

[Barleymo]

If all she needs it for is word, excel, browsing the net and messenger then buy the cheapest you can, £350ish should do. it will come with either vista basic or xp, either one of these will be ok.

 

[centaur]

Also, get whichever laptop insured whilst she's at Uni and travelling with it !

 

[Monsieur]

Dell seem to do some reasonably priced laptops - insurance would be a good idea

 

[Macca2321]

www.laptopsdirect.co.uk

Good place to start

 

[nick]

Just bought a Dell Inspiron 6400 for the same purpose (Daughter off to Uni).

Good spec, and good price. Reliable brand (in my experience).

I did opt for the 3 year warranty - it cold have a hard life and getting it repaired quickly could be important.

I also went for XP, not Vista. I use both at work and am not greatly impressed with Vista, particularly when trying to find additional software or device drivers.

 

[garfield]

the laptops you can buy from aren't too bad, friend who is a serious IT geek bought an Acer and it does all the simple stuff pretty well

 

[rc mad]

i bought a acer aspire 9300 laptop from 's for 500 notes. It's got a 17 inch widescreen, dvd burner, built in wifi, 2GHz processor and vista home premium.

It came with 1Gb of ram, i've stuck 2gb of ram in it and its great

 

[garfield]

i bought a acer aspire 9300 laptop from 's for 500 notes. It's got a 17 inch widescreen, dvd burner, built in wifi, 2GHz processor and vista home premium.

It came with 1Gb of ram, i've stuck 2gb of ram in it and its great

see told you.....

 

[jonnie comet]

Thank you for the replies.

I appreciate your input....plenty to go on there......

Cheers........

 

[exeter_lad]

PC World?

Might be a bit late for your purposes now, but when I bought my daughter's laptop for Uni I considered 3 things.

1. It will go wrong
2. It will go wrong just before an important piece of work has to be handed in
3. I will have to deal with an upset daughter, miles away, expecting me to get it sorted.

So I went to PC World, found a knowledgeable guy (yes, they do have them) and came up with a good deal on a Toshiba with Office Professional (student costed version), Anti-virus, wireless networked, trendy bag, etc, etc PLUS the longest extended warranty I could get.

Several years on points 1 nd 2 above happened - but not 3. The laptop has had problems - these were sorted out in quick time in the local PC World (she had lived in 4 different locations since buying it) - no worries about having to send it somewhere and hope it would return. Added to which, there is a free annual health check built in to the warranty.

All I have done is add some memory (cost about £15) to speed up start up.

Would not normally recommend the PC World option - but in this case it was well worth it.

 

[Pukmeister]

Make sure you buy her a USB memory stick to BACK UP all her work on, much quicker and safer/more robust than recordable CD/DVD.

They're cheap as chips (no pun intended).

Insist that she gets in the habit of saving her important data all the time just in case things go wrong.

She'll thank you when the feckin' thing dies and she hasn't lost a few thousand hours worth of studies. Laptops can be repaired/replaced. Lost data is much more difficult if not impossible.

 

[jonnie comet]

exeter lad and Pukmeister......Thanks for the advice.....Appreciated....