Laptop £350

tntcoder · 16 Jan 2009 at 07:43

Hi,

This is possibly a no go, but can I get a normal form sized laptop for £350 thats any good? I need something that can run an XP guest OS in Vmware at a respectable speed and can run a Linux host OS, a nice bit of ram would be good as well.

Any options?

Thanks

Moeks · 16 Jan 2009 at 07:58

You could probably just about find a C2D based machine for that new and certainly a celeron based one, but it won't have more than 2GB of ram and will probably come with a fairly stingy and slow hd and a basic 1280x800 res 15.4" screen etc. But yea I think you would find a machine to do what you want at that price. Take a look at HP's cheap business line (the ones with 1 year warranty) and Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo models etc.

tntcoder · 16 Jan 2009 at 08:18

Thanks a lot, after some searching I found the C2D Lenovo 3000 N500 for £349 which looks pretty similar to what you suggested

-Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 2Ghz
-2GB DDR2 RAM
-250GB SATA
-15.4" TFT 1280 x 800 (WXGA)
-Intel GMA 4500MHD Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0

Are Lenovo a decent make? Those specs should be ok for vmware/XP shouldn't they?

Thanks

Jack

Moeks · 16 Jan 2009 at 08:50

Lenovo make some of the best laptops going, their Thinkpad T series is the definitive business notebook as it happens. However, the one you selected is from their budget range of course, has to be at this price, but I suspect it will be just fine, Lenovo know how to screw stuff together and their after sales support has a very good reputation also.

The specs will do what you ask just fine yea, you pretty much found exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, no frills, low price, decent specs, no fancy graphics work machine. I really don't think you can do any better than that at this price point. Infact, that machine has a rather larger hard drive than I expected at this price point, so that's a bonus