Laptop for pensioners

[GreenPiggy]

Greetings Hexorians,

I have been placed in the unenviable position of having to recommend(and probably buy) laptops for my Mother in Law to be and her sister(1 each) and given that my knowledge of such things is minimal I have come to beg for advice.
The requirements are as follows:

Usage is pretty much only for office productivity and looking at Chrome.
15" or larger screen(pensioners and eyesight issues..)
'Large' hard drive to store photos - I'm guessing 320GB or 500GB should be fine, ideally a hybrid SSD?
Everything else I pretty much don't care about, but since I live 300 miles away from them, perhaps some sort of maintenance plan might be good in case they spill coffee on them...
Budget ideally would be in the £500 sort of area, but is pretty variable higher or lower.
Anyway apologies for burdening the forum with this but the world of laptops is proving terribly confusing to me

[jimbouk]

Generic Dell high screen size low resolution 15" laptop. Could get a refurb one if they're feeling cheap!

[scaryjim]

I'd look for something with 1TB hard drive, 8GB of RAM, and the cheapest/lowest grade CPU you can find

My new laptop has 8GB/1TB HDD, and feels just as responsive as my old laptop (4GB/120GB SSD). I went for one with a high end AMD APU and it still only rolled out at just over £400, so with a lower end APU or Celeron it should still be pretty cheap.

I did see a 17" AMD laptop somewhere at a good price too though - will try to find the link again...

[circuitmonkey]

Kind of out of touch with current laptop specs to make a recommendation, but I strongly advice that your install something like team viewer, has saved me a few hour long phone based support calls from relatives for something that could take you a few minutes.

[Saracen]

At the risk of stereotyping pensioners (though after that "eyesight" crack of yours, I think I'm safe .... consider weight.

Is this "laptop" actually going to be used as a portable device, or just a convenient all-in-one unit, plonked on a table and never moved. If the latter, weight doesn't matter, but if the former .... ???

Also, is a laptop the best idea, or a hybrid tablet with keyboard?

As I understand it (from another thread) Asus Transformer T100 comes with Office (though which bits I don't know) which presumably takes care of office productivity.

Could external wifi storage (like a wifi-equipped external HD) or a cloud account, deal with the need for photo storage, etc?

If so, then a tablet certainly has many advantages for convenient browsing, etc.

If not, then I'd go with the generic Dell, Toshiba, etc. And therefore, keep an eye on PC World, John Lewis, etc, for "deals", and on the Dell website, etc.

I know it's a bit of an oblique answer, and may not be suitable, but it's just a thought.

[Dooms]

Picked up a laptop for parents the other month.

Went for a Dell Refurb direct from Dell and got a 17inch, i3 Sandy, 6GB Ram, 500Gb HDD jobby which was in a completely new shell and couldn't even tell it was refurbed for a lovely price of £250

edit: oh and the 1st thing I did was get loginme back on there for support reasons

[Saracen]

Very good sounding deal, Dooms. Wouldn't mind that myself.

[Dooms]

Annoyingly can't link to laptops on the Dell Outlet store but they currently have the newer model of the one I picked up for Parents:

Inspiron 17R - 5721
Inspiron 17R - 5721
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-3217U (3M Cache, 1.8 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphic 4000
Windows® 8 Pro
6 GB DDR3 Dual Channel 1600MHz (2 DIMMs)
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
8X DVD+/- RW Drive
17.3 inch High Definition+ (1600 x 900) LED Display with TrueLife
Back Up Media Not Included
Windows 8 Professional (64 Bit OS)
Wireless : Intel Centrino Advanced-N 2230 (2x2, a/g/n) + Bluetooth
LCD Back Cover : Silver
Battery : Primary 6-cell 65W/HR
Internal Qwerty Keyboard

£380

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This Lenovo seems reasonable for the price:

http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops...05s/#customize

Lenovo seem quite reliable AFAIK.

[Saracen]

Annoyingly can't link to laptops on the Dell Outlet store but they currently have the newer model of the one I picked up for Parents:

Inspiron 17R - 5721
Inspiron 17R - 5721
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-3217U (3M Cache, 1.8 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphic 4000
Windows® 8 Pro
6 GB DDR3 Dual Channel 1600MHz (2 DIMMs)
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
8X DVD+/- RW Drive
17.3 inch High Definition+ (1600 x 900) LED Display with TrueLife
Back Up Media Not Included
Windows 8 Professional (64 Bit OS)
Wireless : Intel Centrino Advanced-N 2230 (2x2, a/g/n) + Bluetooth
LCD Back Cover : Silver
Battery : Primary 6-cell 65W/HR
Internal Qwerty Keyboard

£380

Thanks for that. More than 50% more expensive than your refurb, though £380 compared to £250).

[herulach]

Asda/tesco are also worth a look for this kind of thing. When I was looking for swmbo about 2 months ago PC world had a 17” Toshiba w/ 500gb disk for 319 iirc. Pentium B960 iirc. Are they experienced with PCs? If so I'd avoid win 8 as its unnecessary confusion, if not then win 8 + touch might actually be easier to use.

[Dooms]

Thanks for that. More than 50% more expensive than your refurb, though £380 compared to £250).

Yeah ofc. Mine was a chunk cheaper as it an older model and was listed as cosmetic damage / dent in lid which turned out not to be true

The outlet stuff does seem to be hit / miss so you have to keep checking the site as the cheap ones don't last long.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Look for something with decent build quality and a good warranty.

Remember,if anything goes wrong the OP will probably be expected to sort things out.

[george1979]

Just a thought but another Hexus member is selling one for £165 in the classifieds which would probably be fine for them. I considered it myself but I don't really think I'd get the use of it. Linky:

http://forums.hexus.net/classifieds/...d-11f-new.html

Mods - I hope I'm not contravening any rules by mentioning this here, just trying to be helpful but if I am feel free to remove this post

[Saracen]

....

Mods - I hope I'm not contravening any rules by mentioning this here, just trying to be helpful but if I am feel free to remove this post

I don't normally do much in Classified, but unless there's some rule I've missed, I can't see any conceivable problem with that. It's just one member helping another, which is kinda the point.

[george1979]

I don't normally do much in Classified, but unless there's some rule I've missed, I can't see any conceivable problem with that. It's just one member helping another, which is kinda the point.

Cool, thanks I thought it'd be ok but just wasn't 100% sure

Just noticed the OP wanted two lappys but the classifieds one could do one of them and it leaves more budget for the other. Unless it has to be the same for both - you know what sisters are like