My Mum turns 60 next week and she's decided that she really wants a laptop. She only really uses it for word processing, messing around with photos, some accountancy work and her geneology programme, but I want to make sure that's it's a decent spec so that she won't be wanting a brand new one in 5 years time.
We took her into a computer store last night just to get a feel for what she likes. So far we've managed to ascertain that she wants a 15" screen and that it needs to have reasonable battery life (at least 3-4 hrs) as she'll be taking it to the records office and using it in the caravan. However, she threw a spanner in the works when she said that she really wanted a pink one... argh!!! Choices are now severely limited. Budget is around £500.
So far I've been looking at the Dell Inspiron M501R and N5010. Both are around the £500 mark with 4GB Ram & 320-500GB hard drive. It said the battery life was around 4 hrs, but I've read very mixed reviews.
Should I be looking at anything else? Is the Dell a pretty safe bet?
We took her into a computer store last night just to get a feel for what she likes. So far we've managed to ascertain that she wants a 15" screen and that it needs to have reasonable battery life (at least 3-4 hrs) as she'll be taking it to the records office and using it in the caravan. However, she threw a spanner in the works when she said that she really wanted a pink one... argh!!! Choices are now severely limited. Budget is around £500.
So far I've been looking at the Dell Inspiron M501R and N5010. Both are around the £500 mark with 4GB Ram & 320-500GB hard drive. It said the battery life was around 4 hrs, but I've read very mixed reviews.
Should I be looking at anything else? Is the Dell a pretty safe bet?
