Laptops

[[GSV]Trig]

Looking to buy 2 laptops.

Both must have wifi, lan and modem built in, cdr drive on one, both want XP Pro and 512Mb+ RAM.

Anyone know of any decent deals going on anywhere atm?

[Dougal]

Ebuyer have some great prices on their Turions.

[asdicus]

I would always recommend dell for laptops.

I have an oldish inspiron 8200 and it has performed well over the last 3 years. Dell are well-built, reliable and if you pick to right offer extremely good value for money. Avoid paying for the over-priced upgrades on the website - just pick a well-spec'd good value standard machine. Also if you like haggling get the price from the website and then ring them up - the sales advisors will often reduce the price if you say you will 'buy today' etc.

[Moby-Dick]

Dell if you are a brand whore

Acer if you are cheap

[[GSV]Trig]

I'm not cheap or a brank whore, the 2 that are being replaced are a Toshiba and a Dell....

[Moby-Dick]

what sort of budget have you got ?

what "kind" of laptop do you want ?

desktop deplacement luggable or uber portable use while standing up on a monorail type ?

[asdicus]

Just had a quick look at the dell website for their latest offers.

If you do not need to play games the inspiron 6000 offer for £571 including delivery and vat seems hard to beat. It includes wi-fi, lan, ,modem, dvd writer as standard with 768mb ram(special offer) and 60gb hd. Make sure you spec the 1 yr collect return warranty to get the low price.

Generally dell always get good reviews for their notebooks although the after sales support from india can be a little dodgy at times.

[Moby-Dick]

thats a good price - what about OS ?

if you have a tame dell accoutn manager , try and grab them just before their sales month is up and you haul in a few bargains

[[GSV]Trig]

The 2 machines being replaced are laptops, both users already have desktop machines.
The oldest one of the pair is an oooold p2 laptop but it does for what the user wants, only got win98 on it, 128mb ram, something reliable good on battery will be ok for him, just want it to have wifi/lan and modem built in.
The other is the bosses laptop, hes got a Tecra M2 atm, 1.7ghz iirc, 512mb 40gb hdd, wifi/lan/modem his machine is more of a desktop replacement as he uses it at home a lot and takes it to spain/china etc when hes out and about...

[asdicus]

The dell inspiron 6000 offer I mentioned includes xp home - xp prof is £58.75 if necessary.

It sounds like the users do not require to play games - which is good becuase the dell offer notebook includes a celeron m processor and integrated graphics - fine for work but useless for gaming.

If you are buying 2 notebooks at once you really should talk to the dell sales reps - it gives you even more haggling opportunity. Be ruthless with them - on a good day you might get real lucky !

[[GSV]Trig]

Right, had a quick poke around and found the Acer 8104WLMi for the boss and the 4401Lmi or 4651LCi for the marketting chap..

Anyone any other suggestions now you know roughly what I'm looking at?

[daverobev]

Acer are sposed to be pretty shoddy I think.

The boss' laptop - you aren't gonna get MUCH better to be fair, so unless there's something seriously wrong with it I'd stay put.

The other one...how long a battery life do you want? Tecra A2s are ok for that kind of stuff I think, and not expensive....or an Sat Pro M30 if you can find one...

[[GSV]Trig]

I did have one of them Vaio's in for a reinstall the other week, must say it was a damned fine bit of kit, nice and small, wasnt uber fast in the CPU side of things but had everything built in and was quite compact...

[trashcanmonkey]

Yep, The FS Vaio's are tres sweet, currently tryin to find some green stuff to buy one.
There good looking and have a reasonable range with different oomph per buck.