Spec me an office laptop

Amraam · 22 Sep 2016 at 20:19

Girlfriend's sister is after a new laptop and wants to spend £300-350 tops.

She's a teacher and will just be using it for MS Office, YouTube, browsing etc. She already has a 120GB SSD in her current laptop which I plan to reuse so don't particularly need one with an SSD.

Other than 8GB RAM and an i3, what else should I be looking at? Don't work with laptops much and am not up to date so not sure what current CPUs etc I should be focusing on.

Cheers!

AdamScott85 · 22 Sep 2016 at 20:37

Buy a refurbished one from either off the bay or elsewhere, you will get better for the money. There's a few sites in the UK that sell refurbished laptops.

MiSJAH · 22 Sep 2016 at 21:31

£350 will get you an 5th gen i5 and 8gb ram. I got the Mrs one a couple of months ago.

Amraam · 23 Sep 2016 at 17:31

MiSJAH said:
£350 will get you an 5th gen i5 and 8gb ram. I got the Mrs one a couple of months ago.

Yeah that's what I'm looking at currently. The HP G4 250s look good, but only 4GB. Easily upgraded mind...

MiSJAH · 23 Sep 2016 at 18:10

I got this for the Mrs, 6 months ago for £349:

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 5200U @ 2.20GHz 41 °C
Broadwell-U 14nm Technology
RAM
6.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. TP300LAB (SOCKET 0)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 5500 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
Storage
223GB Crucial CT240BX200SSD1 (SSD) 23 °C
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

I added the SSD (£42 lightning sale).

Just had a quick search to see if I could find you one online but the refurbs are going for £350 now!!!

The model is ASUS Transformer Book Flip TP300LAB, good luck, it's a cracking little machine, shame about the resolution.

Amraam · 23 Sep 2016 at 18:24

MiSJAH said:
I got this for the Mrs, 6 months ago for £349:

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 5200U @ 2.20GHz 41 °C
Broadwell-U 14nm Technology
RAM
6.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. TP300LAB (SOCKET 0)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 5500 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
Storage
223GB Crucial CT240BX200SSD1 (SSD) 23 °C
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

I added the SSD (£42 lightning sale).

Just had a quick search to see if I could find you one online but the refurbs are going for £350 now!!!

The model is ASUS Transformer Book Flip TP300LAB, good luck, it's a cracking little machine, shame about the resolution.

Thanks. I pointed that one out to her the other day and she's not keen on the tablet/laptop hybrid thing...

MiSJAH · 23 Sep 2016 at 18:32

OK, try either of these:

Lenovo B50 15.6" Intel Core i5 Windows 10 4GB RAM 128GB Storage Laptop Black

£349.95 (Google - 147-5096 laptop)

or

Medion Akoya E6421 15.6 Inch Intel Core i5 8GB 1TB Laptop

£384.99 (Google - 598/3603 laptop)

Amraam · 25 Sep 2016 at 10:14

I'm about to give up ha. She won't buy online and it must come from pc world as "she has a voucher" . She also won't let me put a SSD in it no matter how I explain the benefits, as she thinks a new laptop will be faster without an "old part" (a 6 month old, barely used SSD) being put in...

I've even said I'll buy the voucher but she's still refusing to buy online,as she's never done it. Telling her I've spent probably £15k online over the last decade spent change her mind either..