Best laptop for ~£450?

[RDL]

Hi,

Want to buy a new laptop for around £450, won't be used for gaming, basically just for general work / web browsing, and poker. Have been out of the market for a while now so a bit behind, what's the best to get?

It will also be hooked up to my 24" monitor around half the time, however still wont be performing much resource heavy tasks.

Fire away!

[Barry]

I'll always suggest the Aspire 6930G, cracking laptop and you cn pick them up refrebed with 12 month warranty for £400

[RDL]

Cheers Barry.

What about something like this?

Get's a good review and looks nice, and with an ASUS sticker I'd expect good quality.

[NigelC]

Have you looked at any Acer laptops? There's some decent Acer Aspire models from the low £300s but for around your budget there's some models like the 5741 or the Timeline 8471? Worth taking a look at in my opinion.

[MSIC]

Just a thought, but since you mention that it'll be plugged in to a monitor half of the time, would you also want a seperate keyboard and mouse?
There are of course good laptops with (relatively) great keyboards, such as a Macbook or a number of ASUS's and Sony's (but not all). Conversely, many Acer's come with poor keyboards in my view in order to give better value in terms of specs.

In terms of value for money, laptops at the 15" size tend to offer the best processors, RAM and hard drives for the money.

On the other hand, if you still need something portable for half of your time, this ASUS UL30A (13") is well regarded and a great bargain:
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/bro.../buy/ASUS-UL30

For smaller still, my HP DM1 (11.6") is reviewed in my sig.