Spec me a cheap laptop

Messiah Khan · 18 Mar 2008 at 10:35

Ive just got hold of an old (RM VM7000) notebook from work to play with. I took it as they were throwing it out, and thought it could be usefull if im on holiday etc. However after looking at notebooks on 'tinternet im suprised to see what decent spec machines you can get for reasonable prices.

So could anyone suggest a laptop for as cheap as possible (less than £400 inc VAT). I know there are a few threads about this already, however my requirements vary a little. Im essentially after it for photography purposes (To dump shots on holiday and to review shots). So it needs to be as light as possible, and have a big a hardrive as possible. Are there any with built in CF card readers? Or can you get these for expansion bays?

DavidQ · 18 Mar 2008 at 14:41

The Dell Inspiron 1525 looks like what you're looking for, my sister bought hers on Sunday and was dispatched today for 399 she got:

1.6 Pentium dual core
2gb of ram
120gb hdd
15.4" widescreen
onboard graphics

also with the current offer that's running until the 23rd she got to pick her own colour for the lid and got a free integrated web cam, I ordered a Vostro myself which was back logged until the end of April due to the serious amount of orders so I'm considering this one myself.

Rhys · 18 Mar 2008 at 15:16

The Asus Eee machines look cool and are pretty cheap.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-155-AS

Messiah Khan · 18 Mar 2008 at 15:29

Thanks DQN i'll consider that one.

Rhys said:
The Asus Eee machines look cool and are pretty cheap.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-155-AS

It sure looks interesting, but

Storage - 4GB S.S.D. (Solid-State Disk)

isn't going to get me very far at all.

syke · 18 Mar 2008 at 15:32

I would say to consider an Eee, but you'd need to mod it to read CF, and perhaps an external HDD.

If you dont like the look of that, for a little more theres a Vye Mini V Ultra which has specs of;

1GB RAM, 7" Scren, 80GB HDD, 4.5hours battery life, and a AMD Geode LX800 Processor.

Personally id consider the Eee + External myself.

Edit: theres also Acer Extensa's that are 14.1" and just over 2kg i think.

Messiah Khan · 19 Mar 2008 at 13:20

Thanks for the suggestions. Ive decided to stick with the RM(Samsung) VM7000 for now. Ive installed a slimmed down and tweaked version of XP on it which runs perfectly fine (Specs are; 600mhz celeron, 64Mb ram, 10Gb hdd, ATI graphics etc). Ive also installed Opera, Lightroom and a few other programs which all run perfectly fine. Ive ordered a 108Mbps Wifi card for £10 and a 80Gb hdd for £23 which should make a perfectly usable system for nice and cheap. Might have to try and source a replacement battery from somewhere as well. It also looks like im going to have to use an external cardreader for now and the 2 USB ports are both USB1 so its not going to be super speedy, but for a total of £33 I can't really complain.