Help choosing a laptop for friends mum!

[Belloni]

Howdy fellers, my friend wants to buy his mum a laptop for her boyfriend and came to me because i'm cool lol

So basically, price range is around £600-700, main use is for music and general use, e.g internet etc.

Help me out please! Thanks

 

[Ian]

Do you need it to be able to run games at all, and does it need to be particularly portable (or would a 17" monster one be better?).

That amount of money should buy quite a decent machine, and I'll have a look once I know the above

 

[Belloni]

I doubt she'll be playing that many games lol

A nice screen for general use i suspect though.

 

[Ian]

I've had a look at the Dell site as I can't fault the Dell laptop I've got, so that's my personal choice - there are some other good makes out there. I'm surprised at how much prices have come down actually, they have more ram and bigger hard drives than my main PC

To be honest, even the low end Dell 1525's look like they will be powerful enough for your mums friend - and its about half the budget:

Inspiron 1525
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5800 (2.0 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 - English
15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display with TrueLife™
Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)
1 Year Limited Warranty - Collect & Return

£389 inc delivery + 1 year warranty.

These other ones also look good:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/147754 - 17" Toshiba P300 £420
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149335 - HP 6735s £390
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152652 - Lenovo 3000 N500 £350

They all have slight diffences such as screen size, but all are powerful enough to run office/internet/music apps quickly (but games won't run well on any of them).

 

[murdoch]

Both PCWorld & Staples have good offers on at the moment, i would go for a Toshiba myself.

 

[Belloni]

Yeah got dell recommended too, came to around £665 with the upgrades i chose, so thanks alot!

 

[Waynos_Face]

Link to which one you picked???

 

[Belloni]

I can't link it as it's upgraded but i changed the following -

T8100
Truelife screen
4GB (is including in price, special offer!)
320GB upgrade
256MB nVidia 8400M

 

[G~MAN]

Can't fault my Dell as of yet touch wood.

Are you sure she requires all the upgrades? You could save yourself or her a few bob otherwise as she probably won't require it all?

 

[Madxgraphics]

Can't fault Dell meself either..Have had a few in me time and a few have gone wrong, always had brilliant Customer support/services from them..And their response at repairs and returning equipment has always been pretty speedy..