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Mods please move this if you think its in the wrong place, did look for them in hexus trust.
Background.
Wife’s laptop died after giving 5 years of sterling service. The old Acer travelmate was from the cheap end of the market, and had started to groan under the weight of modern applications. She works at home at least one day a week, so needs a reliable laptop, with good keyboard, 14" or more screen, and enough power to cope with the modern internet (iplayer). Budget is limited to £200-£300
The Contenders.
A visit to the local PC World reinforced my opinion that cheap laptops are cheap laptops, they are all reasonably similar, the same as when the acer travelmate (RIP) was purchased. The usual contenders of Dell, Toshiba, Acer, etc all had models in the price range. But what about buying ex corp stock??
Having been impressed with the business class laptops that are all the rage at work (thinkpad T60, etc), they seem to meet the requirement of good keyboard, size was spot on, but budget for new was clearly way out of range, so started looking for used. Having seen Student Computers advertising on Hexus, I decided to see what ex corporate stuff they had.
On weekly special offer was a HP 6910p, with 2 gigs of RAM, vista business (or xp), dvd,etc. price was slap bang in the middle of my budget at £250 with 1 years warranty.
The Buying Experience.
In short, very good. Lots of updates on shipping date, delivered next day with a 1 hour time slot. Also had an email request to fill in an online questionnaire on the service they provided.
The Laptop
Wife is over the moon with the laptop. noticeably quicker than the Acer (as it should be), great keyboard, a few extras like fingerprint reading for security which she really likes.
The laptop is in extremely good condition, battery is good, has been well cleaned, fans appear to have been blown out, only signs of use are a couple of worn keys, but the keyboard has been cleaned and the letters all look as good as new (Hp has some kind of coating they use on business models).
Software install appears to have been well executed, only stuff over a base install of vista appears to be the HP security software for the finger print reader, and a copy of VLC which should allow DVD playback (Vista business is reported as lacking dvd codec’s by default).
Conclusion.
Great service, very good communications, good delivery chain (designated delivery slots are an excellent idea), laptop has been cleaned, is well described, and has a good OS install. No negatives really spring to mind, I would be happy to recommend Student Computers, and refurbished laptops to friends and family.
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