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i am going to buy a new laptop, could you recomend any? my buget is between £400 and £600, and i need it to be fast, good on the internet, good for simple office programs (for secondary school homework) and ok at running games. thank you
harry7567

Acer - have a look at http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/home/index.html for what they have on offer.
They also have a nice Tosh for about £350
No - I don't workl for either of them!
Cheers

yeah i would say acer is a good buy for the money. I just dont know how reliable they are because i have never owned one. I have a dell i6000 and its been working flawlessly for 2 years now so i always recommend dell. Plus u can go to their website and pick out the stuff you want. They let you customize whatever laptop you want. try going to their website and playing around with some models. im sure you can find something nice in your price range

I have only known 2 dead Acers in about 10 years of dealing with laptop repairs - one was a deliberate attempt to wreck one for a warranty replacement (stupid woman suffed paper into the cooling fan) and the other was caused by a faulty charger unit which overloaded the power management board. Not a bad record given the hundreds that have been through here with software problems!
5 years ago I would have said Dell as well, but over the last couple of years they seem to have lost the plot as far as component quality and customer support is concerned. And you only have to look at the problems that subscribers to this forum have with Dell equipment.

I'm not keen on acer laptops personally, having had 3 for work and 1 for home, they've all been slow and troubleseome. So i only buy Fujitsu Siemens or Toshiba's for work now.
I've just bought a FS V3505 with core2duo for £350 (after £100 cashback)
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Fujit...GB/version.asp

...it arrives today.
By the way, until i saw this offer i was regularly buying V3505's for £500 from another disty.

I paid £620 for the laptop, office basic and a carry case and mouse. Not bad i thought.

Not bad at all - ebuyer was £400 for the same model. Must remember that when I next look at laptop prices! Odd thought, their prices for Acer Ferrari are not so hot as Ebuyer or even Insight.

I see a lot of problem ACER / OPTIMA laptops in my line of work, DELL are a little to flimsy but u can't go wrong with either an ASUS, LENOVO (IBM) or the new TOSHIBA Tecra A9's (ensuring they all have the new wireless N protocol)

The thing I love about Toshiba is that their warranty can be extended to 3 yrs pickup and return leaving you not to worry so much about getting any pbms fixed.

I don't work for Toshiba but I do love the quality. They use new parts for repair when a pbm arises unlike some brands who circulate 2nd hand parts through their repair channels.

Just my 2 cents worth, but I do repair most brands on a daily basis.

Just bought a lenovo 3000 for work. Troublesome bugger. But then i think it was down to the unlimited amount of crappy free and trial software that sponsors stick on them. Took me ages to uninstall em all so i could have a nice clean lappy for the user to break
I must say though, you can tell its IBM. Not pretty but very sturdy. Keyboard is possibly the best i've used on a laptop. FWIW.

Yep, they are sturdy buggers those Lenovo, my pref is still Toshiba first, then Lenovo. Dell, ACER and OPTIMA can go hide in the dirt.

Oh, did I capitalize the really crappy ones ?? Bugger I did. Oh well.

U know the best thing to do when buying one that has an excessive mount of trial stuff on them ? Set it up the way u want it with everything installed that u need, run the recovery pgms and keep the disks in the bin. Then GHOST the system. That way if you do need to reimage or whatever the GHOST image loads everything in one hit.

This is also my 2cents worth. Toshiba then Lenovo I have had both and as dumb as it sounds have dropped them and not any real issues. Sony is the worst Dell is what my work uses for all machines. I'm not a Dell fan at all desktops or laptops.

Wayne

Unfortunately, DELL because of the price appeals to most businesses as does ACER. It's the after sales care that kills both brands. U are spot on the money Wayne. OPTIMA laptops are both hard to work on and unreliable to. Their after sales support is not something worth bragging about, so the opinion would be Toshi or Lenovo. But go with the new Wireless N. I'm buying a Toshi Tecra A9 if that counts for anything later this year.

Well the only new Laptops I have bought have been Toshiba's, I just had 2 older IBM think pads given to me. One of the IBM's was sitting on my stack of PC's when I triped over the power cord. The case is trashed kinda bad but the machine still works fine.

Well here are my .02 cents worth. I would go with ASUS or Lenovo. I just bought a higher end Gateway that I am very happy with. Main reason for it was because of the 17" screen and full keyboard. I will never buy another Toshiba though. Have had nothing but problems with the ones I have had. So ASUS, Lenovo or even HP would be good choices. Espeically the HP dv9000. Kinda wished I'd gotten it instead of the Gateway now.

Stick with the 15.4" screen models as 17" is far to unwieldy for a laptop.

hi, i have been lookin at the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pro V3505, everything looks fantastic (especialy the price!!!) but i have noticed it only runs xp pro, is that a reason not 2 buy?

I've got a HP dv9000 and love it! But, with the 17" screen it is carry friendly. If you are going mainly for productivity then Dell would be a good bet. Here in the US Dell's Vostro line of laptops is very nice and pretty beefy for the price.

Harry7567 - running XPP is a good reason to buy - will it not upgrade to Vista when thats ready?

as Albert said, the fact that it HAS Xp Pro is the best reason to buy. I buy these for our company, as there's no way i'm implementing vista into the network.....not for another year!
But most buyers are home users and want vista, hence the cheaper price for xp pro lappies. They're clearing out old stock.
Don't worry though, the V3505 is good enough to take vista easily.