Laptop advice...£400 maximum

Arcane · 3 Sep 2007 at 11:50

Hi,

A work collegue's asked me to find a laptop for his daughter, she's about to start uni and needs something to access the web, use Microsoft Office and other fairly straight forward stuff. The upper budget is £400. I've looked around and seen this:

Acer Extensa 5212ZWLMi.
Spec is Intel Core Duo, 1.6GHz CPU, 1024MB RAM (1GB), 80GB Hard Disk Drive, 15.4 inch TFT display, DVD Supermulti, Windows Vista Business, Wireless LAN 802.11abg upto 54Mbps

What do you all reckon? Is this pretty good or do you know of anything better?

Thanks in advance.

kvfb97 · 3 Sep 2007 at 12:52

If you look at 'hells range there's some pretty good value for money laptops.

Alex UK · 3 Sep 2007 at 13:00

Take a look at the Dell Inspiron 6400, can be had for £379 at the moment.

Arcane · 3 Sep 2007 at 13:17

Really? Lowest I could see was £479, is the Acer no good then?

spib · 3 Sep 2007 at 14:50

I've got an acer 5051AWXMI which cost less than £400 and I love it. Nice styling and a great screen but I put 2GB RAM in it to speed it up a bit

Arcane · 3 Sep 2007 at 15:26

Thanks for the replies...are you running Vista on the 5051AWXMI?

spib · 3 Sep 2007 at 16:32

Yeah it's running vista, but I don't really put it under any heavy load. I tend to use it to remote desktop from my living room into my desktop upstairs which is a lot more powerful

Energize · 3 Sep 2007 at 17:09

Zoostorm 1-4610

Core Duo T2350 1.86Ghz
1GB DDR2
VIA VN896 128MB
120GB Sata 5.4k
15.4 inch WXGA TFT
802.11b/g
8x DVD-RW
Vista Home Basic
35.6cmx26.6cmx3.6 cm
3.00Kg
£421.94

Arcane · 3 Sep 2007 at 17:10

Sounds perfect tbh, think i'll google a few reviews before I recommend though.

mysticsniper · 3 Sep 2007 at 18:02

For an extra £99, you can have this one, which looks really good.

Acer Aspire 5613AWLMi 15.4" Laptop

Intel Core Duo T2350 1.66 GHz 667MHz processor 2MB L2
It has 160GB hard drive
2x1024MB of memory
Windows Vista™ Home Premium Edition
DVD Rewriter.
GeForce Go 7300
Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG network connection

£499.97

Arcane · 3 Sep 2007 at 22:34

It does seem that £500 buys you a much better laptop, the others all skimp on ram, HD size or Vista version, think i'll see if I can persuade him to up the budget a bit.