Best 'value' laptop....

[NikNak]

So, my other half has a friend (in her early 70's.... but very sprightly) who wants to finally ditch her eMachine computer thats been upgraded soooo many times, it takes FOREVER to try and do anything. And no, it doesn't just need 'clearing out'.... its about 10 years old, has an ancient Pentium processor and about 250k of RAM..!! I told her its the equivalent of trying to drive an old moggy minor but also wants all today's fancy gizmos like air con, heated seats, power this, power that, etc etc..... it just cant cope

So her son has pointed her in the direction of a Lenovo from PC World for around 300 of her smackeroonies....

Not sure of the exact model, but.... i'm sure she can do better, which is why i'm asking you guys for you input/thoughts

I've had a very quick punt around, and came upon this.... http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Produ ... BU&sel=NTB what caught my eye was the 3 yr pick up and return warranty for £29

Any thoughts or better deals.... then please share


Nick

 

[Wuffles]

Pre-loaded with all the bloatware you'll ever need no doubt - once you get rid of that you're golden.

Try and up the budget slightly and get something with an SSD drive instead, it'll be markedly quicker.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I've had a very quick punt around, and came upon this.... http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Produ ... BU&sel=NTB what caught my eye was the 3 yr pick up and return warranty for £29

As a general rule, I'd never pay for extended warranties or insurance unless I could not afford the consequences of a failure / loss (e.g car and home insurance). They are offered to make money for the provider. So someone with a fair bit of inside knowledge has calculated the price to make a profit given the expected rate of claims / returns. Either they have their sums wrong, or on average you lose and they gain.

Remember that you get 2 years of warranty anyway - something to thank the EU for there. If it doesn't go wrong in 2 years, it probably won't in 3. And hey, you've got 2 years use out of it anyway.

Of course, that's just my thinking - others may view it differently.

Oh the laptop - I bought a similar HP one, but with an Intel processor a few months ago and it is fine. The options in that price range seemed much of a muchness; I was swayed by the HP one coming with Windows 10, rather than 8 (it's not for me - I'm a Linux type).

 

[Racers]

We use Lenovo's at work they seem very relyable, not tea or drop proof unfortunatly.

Pete

 

[LancsRick]

I'd pick up a basic Inspiron 15 from the Dell outlet personally. It'll be a fair bit cheaper than the HP offering, infinitely better built too.

 

[Mark A]

Last year I bought a A-grade refurbished HP Elitebook from Tier 1 Online and couldn't be happier wirh both the service and price.

I paid around £330 for a machine (upgrade the RAM and memory) which apparently cost about £1500 new.

Funny enough I'm going to look at another laptop for my father
on their website tonight.

Mark

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[Droogs]

Although Lenovo are now wholly Chinese owned they were the laptop division of IBM and have excellent build quality and reliability on the whole.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Dell infinitely better built? I had one ... one. I wouldn't touch Dell with yours.

 

[Jacob]

MacBook Air gets best value in most surveys and reviews.

 

[MIGNAL]

I got 9 years out of my first laptop, bought cheap as a return/refurb. It still works, although there's hardly a visible printed letter on the keyboard. When the software became more memory hungry I just loaded a stripped down linux version. It was fast enough but then again I don't do heavy graphics work. Personally I wouldn't pay more than £300. If it lasts it lasts. If it doesn't it's out of date anyway, which happens to them all irrespective of what they initially cost.

 

[AJB Temple]

Much of the time at home and when travelling I still use my 2011 vintage Macbook Air. Still going strong and I remain content with it. No idea what they cost now.

 

[Wuffles]

Much of the time at home and when travelling I still use my 2011 vintage Macbook Air. Still going strong and I remain content with it. No idea what they cost now.

Vintage

I'm still running (very happily) the first aluminium MacBook from 2008 - maxed out the ram and swapped out the hard drive for an SSD a while back and it still flies along nicely.

I wouldn't upgrade it yet, so it's given a few years worth of work - I still run virtual machines and stuff on it, I'm not a casual user either. Part of paying more up front I guess.

 

[Zeddedhed]

+1 for the MacBooks.

I'm running a 2009 15" UniBody Pro running El Capitan and Parallels for Windoze apps.

The kids use a MacBook White edition (bloody ancient) for games and stuff. My son is learning to code C# on it. Plenty of life in all of them (the computers, not the kids)

 

[AndyT]

If the main use of the laptop is for web browsing, email and entertainment, have you looked at whether a tablet might be a better option? Lots of people (inc many who are not so young) make the transition quite happily. The biggest advantages are the portability and the way that you don't have to wait ages before it's ready to use. Also ideal for video chats with grandchildren. Plenty of choice for under £300.

 

[MMUK]

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/a2-refur ... oCcvHw_wcB

Ideal for basic use, £150 manufacturer refurb.

 

[BearTricks]

If she's in her early 70s then I'm going to guess she isn't going to be playing any processor-intensive games or trying to render some 3D effects in Maya.

Honestly, the cheapest thing is probably the best provided the company aren't taking the piss by putting a flimsy piece of rubbish on the market. I regularly have 50 layers going in Photoshop and I get by on a £500 HP Pavilion. I'd probably advise against a Macbook because for the inflated price she's going to have to learn how to navigate a new operating system and all the jargon that goes with it, then she wont get the most out of it anyway.

 

[LancsRick]

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/a2-refurbished-acer-es1-512-15.6led-intel-celeron-n2840-4gb-500gb-dvd-smdl-a2-nx.mrwek.002/version.asp?refsource=LDadwords&crtag=LD&gclid=CjwKEAjwgbG5BRDp3oW3qdPiuCwSJAAQmoSDEB9XBQWKBOihK9sT4OE5EWEpULUFyshRzf9wBJsTsBoCcvHw_wcB

Ideal for basic use, £150 manufacturer refurb.

Don't know the company, but if they're legit then that looks pretty good...

 

[owsnap]

Please DO NOT buy these brand laptops:
HP (has always been terrible and always will be seems like,except few models..)
DELL (used to be good quality business end stuff, not anymore)
Toshiba ( specially this!! more or less everything they make is pile of $hit)

I would not get a Mac because I hate the OS and they are overpriced as well,however they have good build quality,that's about it tho.
Acer's are fine so are ASUS and MSI, but I would go for a lenovo business end used/refurb ones


what size does she needs? the standard 14-15inch I guess?
Lenovo t430 than I guess would be fine with I5 processor, they still have top performing specs ,they are bombproof and try to buy an used refurb from business sellers on ebay you can get lucky and get a laptop that has been used for as much as 20hours only-brand new.
I would not buy a brand new Lenovo laptop in the £300 budget tho as they are ''value stuf'' , the t430 used to be over £1000 when new, now can be had for £150 and they are as good as it gets performance/ value for money and build quality wise!

 

[AES]

All the while I was working full time I was buying Compaq (first) which then became HP. Total 3 machines since 2003 - I really did need a laptop 'cos I had to work anywhere and everywhere. Never had any real problems with them but they were PRICEY (though not as bad as Apple).

Looked at Apple several times but not only were they VERY pricey but at the time I needed compatibility with others all over the world and say what you like, Apple wasn't then very compatible in ALL cases (I tried several times and a loose group of us loosely working together ALWAYS had a problem with one bloke who was strictly Apple). No idea what that problem's like now though.

About 2 years ago, just as MS XP was coming to an end I needed a new machine and mainly (actually only) because it was the only machine I could find that didn't already have Win 8 pre-installed (I'd seen my wife struggling with that thanks) I bought a Lenovo, model B590 laptop - mainly 'cos it had Win 7 (which IMHO isn't as bad as Win 8 but still worse that XP).

Anyway the Lenovo was pretty cheap (about the equivalent of 250 quid if I remember, which at the time was cheap for Switzerland) which was another Lenovo attraction. I was told afterwards that the internal hardware is not as well specified as the top range HPs I'd had before, but whether or not that's true I can't say - what I can say though is that so far it's been just as reliable as the HPs (and the Compaq before them), and touch wood it seems set to remain that way

Another advantage for me was that the Lenovo had quite a bit of easy to use software problem diagnostics built in which, as they have Lenovo's name on them and not MS, I assume is the reason that these are better than what I'd had before on the HP machines.

So personally I'd say Lenovo could be a good bet, and I guess the current models are still good value for money.

But at the same time as buying the laptop it became necessary for me to finally retire (medical) so I wonder if she actually needs a laptop (or portability at all come to that)? Why not a desktop, which always used to be cheaper than the equivalent laptops (over here anyway)?

Apart from the fact that I can take the laptop to the sitting room with me (which I do sometimes) I sometimes wonder why I bought a laptop instead of a desktop, as I hardly travel now and rarely take the machine with me - for me, and perhaps for Granny too, perhaps a desktop machine would suit just as well?

HTH

AES

 

[owsnap]

All the while I was working full time I was buying Compaq (first) which then became HP. Total 3 machines since 2003 - I really did need a laptop 'cos I had to work anywhere and everywhere. Never had any real problems with them but they were PRICEY (though not as bad as Apple).

Looked at Apple several times but not only were they VERY pricey but at the time I needed compatibility with others all over the world and say what you like, Apple wasn't then very compatible in ALL cases (I tried several times and a loose group of us loosely working together ALWAYS had a problem with one bloke who was strictly Apple). No idea what that problem's like now though.

About 2 years ago, just as MS XP was coming to an end I needed a new machine and mainly (actually only) because it was the only machine I could find that didn't already have Win 8 pre-installed (I'd seen my wife struggling with that thanks) I bought a Lenovo, model B590 laptop - mainly 'cos it had Win 7 (which IMHO isn't as bad as Win 8 but still worse that XP).

Anyway the Lenovo was pretty cheap (about the equivalent of 250 quid if I remember, which at the time was cheap for Switzerland) which was another Lenovo attraction. I was told afterwards that the internal hardware is not as well specified as the top range HPs I'd had before, but whether or not that's true I can't say - what I can say though is that so far it's been just as reliable as the HPs (and the Compaq before them), and touch wood it seems set to remain that way

Another advantage for me was that the Lenovo had quite a bit of easy to use software problem diagnostics built in which, as they have Lenovo's name on them and not MS, I assume is the reason that these are better than what I'd had before on the HP machines.

So personally I'd say Lenovo could be a good bet, and I guess the current models are still good value for money.

But at the same time as buying the laptop it became necessary for me to finally retire (medical) so I wonder if she actually needs a laptop (or portability at all come to that)? Why not a desktop, which always used to be cheaper than the equivalent laptops (over here anyway)?

Apart from the fact that I can take the laptop to the sitting room with me (which I do sometimes) I sometimes wonder why I bought a laptop instead of a desktop, as I hardly travel now and rarely take the machine with me - for me, and perhaps for Granny too, perhaps a desktop machine would suit just as well?

HTH

AES

that why you have a small laptop with good internal specs like lenovo x240-x250 for example which you can put in a larger coat pocket ,once you need productivity just plug a couple external monitors to it and you have a desktop computer now.., productivity on a laptop is just pathetic