£450 Work Laptop Help needed!

Hello there, i'm helping my brother in-law pick a new home/work laptop as his current one is on it's last legs and it struggles. I've got plenty of experience with desktops but laptops, not so much so some help would be much appreciated. (which sites to actually check would be helpful too)
I have no clue whether an older i5 would be worth it over a current i3 etc nor do I know about amd's current state in laptop hardware nor which brands are more reliable than the others.

Requirements:

hard cap of £450
15" screen
Decent battery life
Reliable and a reasonable amount of longevity.

Usage will be fairly simple. With email etc but he will have to look at quite large, detailed plans for work so he doesn't feel he can lower the screen size.

I was aiming for i3, 8gb of ram and either an ssd or 1tb hdd for the money but there's so much variety actually picking one is a pain.

Many thanks!

I normally despise curry's but this doesn't seem too bad http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computi...56935-pdt.html
Also had a squint at refurbished and basically the same laptop http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refur...ea/version.asp seems ok too

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/14-l...o-12-month-war
and an SSD

While I wouldn't normally buy a laptop second hand, the Lenovo T-series are made like tanks...

We use Dell for our corporate machines and they aren't too bad. At that price point you'll be looking at Vostros, which I haven't any experience of personally

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/vo...15-5568-laptop £449

Vostro was certainly worth a look at, thanks for the recommendation!

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/vo...15-3568-laptop including the VAT I think that'd come to around £430 with an option to upgrade the ram down the line for around another £30

I'd be camping out the Dell Outlet store personally. The business version seemed to have lots more, around that price - I assume your budget is inc. VAT (whereas the store prices shown are exc.).

I'd recommend Dell Business Outlet too, I reckon you could snag a decent Latitude with a nice spec and a 3 year on-site warranty with that budget. Keep your eye out for good deals, they don't last for long, some on the order of minutes.

The outlet was a great shout, i'll be keeping an eye out there too.

Currently up on the outlet is http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/S...Nj%2buV6ebg%3d

Which seems like pretty good value for money and it includes VAT

Finally, someone asking this question with reasonable expectations :mrgreen:
Usually when I get this question from friends & family it has to be thin and light, have excellent battery life and be able to play Crysis 10 on max settings for £150.

Buying new the 15"/8gb <£500 market is firmly in commodity territory. There's a lot of junk, but if you aren't fussy on the screen (avoiding 1280x720 pixel junk TFT panels was nearly impossible until recently), you should be able to find something suitable. The above suggestions look really good.

I have a fair amount of experience with Dell machines, although I can't speak for the Vostro line specifically. If you can find a recent-model Latitude refurb I highly recommend them - they are solid and highly repairable, albeit not quite as well made as a T-series Thinkpad.

Refurb or not though a second-hand Latitude can be a really good option as they are highly upgradeable and repairable, plentiful on the 2nd hand market thanks to corporate upgrade cycles, and Dell provides full disassembly manuals. E6530 and E6540 models may not be much to look at, but they're robust, cheap 2nd hand, and sometimes come with highly respectable quad-core CPUs and/or discreet GPUs. On the down-side the battery life could be a problem for you (older laptops don't do so well on this front), and the screens of the era were often poor.

Have a look at SCCtrade or NRG IT if Refurb is an option.
I picked up a refurb M6600 for 200 recently for graphic design work, spent another 55 odd on 8gb of ram and an ssd and its golden.