~£250 laptop

Dist · 6 Dec 2007 at 22:21

Today, i recieved a nice litter letter from the open university, saying that along with the finanical support that pays my course fees, i can request a PC grant of £250 to cover the cost of buying a pc/laptop, so my question is, is there any laptops for this price that is worthwhile?

Only laptop that OcUK sell that is in this price range is the Eee PC, but im sure other places sell cheap laptops as well. Its been a long time since i used a laptop, and i dont realy follow the tech, so i have no idea how far they have come.

Last time i used a laptop it was slow, took 30 seconds to load a text file with only 2 lines in it, took several min to load anything more intensive, like a PDF, and had tons of issues running windows 95 without crashing/errors. So would a Eee PC work well without causing me tons of frustration and make me end up throwing it out a window?

Bearing in mind, i only intend to use the laptop for coursework (so needs to be able to run office 2k or open office) and maybe stream videos accross wifi so i can relax a bit. No gaming will be done on it so thats not an issue.

Defcon5 · 6 Dec 2007 at 22:30

Does it have to be new?

Dist · 6 Dec 2007 at 22:35

Defcon5 said:
Does it have to be new?

yes, part of the conditions of the grant is that it can only be spent on a new pc/laptop and needed peripherals like printer etc.. and needs to have a receipt so i can show proof of purchase.

Not need a printer, or anything like that, it would be best if i put all the money towards the laptop, (doesnt matter if i go a bit over £250, as i will make that up with my own money).

TheVoice · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:24

Probably nothing remotely good for £250 (if at all), but plenty around the £300 mark. The Dell Vostro 1000 is £293 with 1GB of RAM (very cheap to upgrade to 2GB these days), a Sempron 3600+ and Vista Basic.

kieranv · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:31

how come they never gave me any money for laptops

i'd say up the budget to £300, chuck in £50 of your own money (if you can afford it of course) and get the vostro 1000, i've been looking at cheaper lower end laptops aswel and the vostro seems a pretty good choice.

Rroff · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:38

The asus Eee comes with open office pre-installed, you can play/stream almost any media format on the default installation too - tho I found the built in version of mplayer wasn't upto playing higher quality videos smoothly - I ended up installing windows XP on it for that - tho vlc or similiar would work...

Bare in mind the Eee has no optical drive and installing XP can be a little more work than other PCs - that aside its a great little machine.

TheVoice · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:41

Also just found the Acer AS5315 Gemstone - similar spec level to the Dell, but looks 'nicer', has a Celeron 530 1.73GHz instead of the Sempron, and a DVD writer. That's £300 (+ delivery), so it probably works out as a better machine than the Dell.

Dist · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:57

I think ill decide against the Eee pc, it seems a bit limited to what i can get for just a bit extra of my own money.

Ive just checking out the vostro 1000 NB(n1210007) on the dell site where you can customize the order, and currently it shows as £244 for everything standard except for ram, which is 2gb. Which isnt bad tbh, things like hdd and dvd/rw im not too interested in, as i can steam stuff to/from my pc that needs burning, or takes up tons of space.

with the AMD® Athlon 64 X2 Mobile Technology TK55 [add £30.00] and 9 cell Lithium-Ion Battery (85 Whr) [add £20.00] that would bring it up to £294, which works out quite damn well.

TheVoice · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:58

Bear in mind that price is probably ex. VAT though.

Edit: And don't bother getting the 2GB through Dell; 1GB Dimms can be had for £13 (for Kingston stuff) these days, so two of those and you're sorted. Could even sell the 512MB ones the notebook would come with, recoup some of the cost back.

skankmaster · 7 Dec 2007 at 00:00

I wouldnt necessarily pick a laptop based purely on price - This is one of your tools used to help you gain your qualification - not knowing if your course is engineering, software developement, etc. Will you be required to use any tools on the laptop as part of your course? If so, make sure the laptop has enough grunt to do the job.

Dist · 7 Dec 2007 at 00:10

skankmaster said:
I wouldnt necessarily pick a laptop based purely on price - This is one of your tools used to help you gain your qualification - not knowing if your course is engineering, software developement, etc. Will you be required to use any tools on the laptop as part of your course? If so, make sure the laptop has enough grunt to do the job.

The laptop wont need to have much grunt to it, all i will need to use it for is taking notes, word processing, graphs, spreadsheets. I have access to a PC that has the grunt required should i ever need to do anything more complex, the reason for the laptop is more for mobility and freedom, so i dont have to sit at my desk all day to write an essay, i can transfer the files accross to the laptop via wifi, and go out and do a bit of work while having a nice coffee and muffin or whatever i feel like at the time.

TheVoice said:
Edit: And don't bother getting the 2GB through Dell; 1GB Dimms can be had for £13 (for Kingston stuff) these days, so two of those and you're sorted. Could even sell the 512MB ones the notebook would come with, recoup some of the cost back.

Thanks, like i said its been a long time since ive had my hand on a laptop, i wasnt sure if parts could easily be upgraded without special tools, or if PC parts were even compatible with laptops.

Skree · 7 Dec 2007 at 11:44

The asus EEE comes heartily recommended, add a decent pen drive or flash card to it and it is the best mobile option at your price range. It's also a lot easier for your coffee/bun option as you can just whack it in a decently large pocket or backpack. It is without question the most mobile, most general purpose computer on the market, particularly in your price range. Also in this case it is less at risk from theft, and damage due to knocks. I would advise you not to discount it so fast, especially if you have a half decent proper pc to do other things on.

It just depends how much "mobility and freedom" you really want - ever tried carrying a normal size laptop about all day? I have and it is a major pain in the rearend.

Having said that, if you're prepared to lug a bulky laptop bag and various stuff around all day, you can't go far wrong with the vostro previously mentioned. At that end of the price range they're all going to be pretty similarly specced anyway.