Laptop spec: £250~ish ....?

[Delvis]

Hi guys, I know you all get annoyed with all of the spec threads, but seeing as I'm no Guru on laptops, I thought I'd get some opinions

Right, basically, mother and boyfriend would like a laptop...For around £250, plus / minus...Mainly, it's just going to be for web browsing, and maybe some spreadsheets etc.

Now when people read the above, they'll probably just say 'hell get a cheaper second hand one', Which I could, but I still want the laptop to be responsive in some form, and not be clogged up with loads of random applications as well. (Which most come with, but I can always tinker with it if need be like I did with my bro's one)

Obviously you cant give me direct links, but if people could get me model numbers or something to look at it would be appreciated

Or do you think it would be cheaper to make it myself? Might be a possibilty I can get the parts in at work.

Thanks, Delvis

 

[nikebee]

Have they considered a netbook like the EEE PC or the Acer One?

If not, a competitor sells the following

Acer EX5220 Celeron M 1GB RAM 80GB HDD DVDRW Vista Home Basic

For £262

Another sells the
HP 6720s Laptop Intel Celeron M550 1GB 80GB DVDRW Windows Vista Basic

For £269

 

[Delvis]

yeah I've personally looked at the eepc ones, but to be hoenst, they're a tad too small, they would only moan

 

[Delvis]

Hmm, they're the same spec pretty much aren't they?

So out of them the Acer on is the more attracting one...I'll have to look around again as well, on some of the high street stores sites

Do you think that's the correct spec to be needed then? I know Celerons nowadays are a lot better than they're older counterparts...I just don't want them to buy it, then go 'hey this is slow'.

 

[nikebee]

I think that would suit them fine to be honest.

My mum uses an old Celeron M with 256mb of ram, and it's beginning to show it's age now doing simple things like watching Youtube (under XP).

For around £250 though I think you'll struggle to do better than those, if you can do better feel free to let me know!

My mum has been after a new laptop for a while and has a budget of anything under £300 preferably the closer to £250 the better, those are the best two I've found for her needs in that price range.

Decent storage, she'll be able to watch Youtube videos of our family that live in the states, should hold all of her pictures (4 or 5 times over) and it'll be faster than what she has now.

The majority of the time she'll be using Solitaire though

 

[Delvis]

Yeah, fair play

Which one out of those two do you prefer then personally? Toshiba laptops tend to be reasonably good, and the same with Acer really...Soo?

Yeah, they haven't given me a budget, they did say "what do you reckon? £500 or something for a laptop?"...I kinda laughed, as that is way overkill But then I don't want to get something that's under spec.

thankyou for the links though, out of the two I will probably do the Toshiba one, not sure though.