No OS, so probably bad.
Acers are fine I suppose. I'd avoid Advent and things like that. For the price, you have a lot of options. I suppose the main decider would be the size and weight, and if how much battery life would be ideal.
There are a few different categories of laptops (in general).
- Netbooks (slow, small and light, low resolution, all day battery life, no optical drives, < £300).
- Thin and light notebooks (faster than netbooks, 5-6 hours battery life, standard resolution, with and without optical drive < £500).
- Budget home laptops (i3-i5 processor, 15'' screen, 2-4 hours battery life, a bit cumbersome < £500).
- Entertainment laptops (i3-i5 processors, medium dedicated graphics, 15'' or 17'' screens, £1000-£500, 2-3 hours battery life).
- Gaming laptops (i5-i7 procs, high quality graphics, 15'' or 17'', 2-3 hours battery life, £1500-£1000).
And among those a multitude of variation and prices. From your specs, I would say a 15'' i3 processor, 3-4 gigs of RAM, maybe a dedicated graphics card for a bit of gaming (nothing fancy, mind). Can go i5 if you can spare the dough, but i3 is more than fine for the standard laptop usage.
Dell XPS, Sony Vaio E, Samsung R530 / R580, Some Acers are worth a look, Asus has some decent models, as well as the HP dv6, Lenovo G560... Loads!
. Just looking for best bang for buck laptop; nothing fancy, just something that is reliable and then can go from there.
