My GF and her sister want to buy their other sister a new laptop for her 30th at the end of Jan.

She doesn't do anything specific with her current one, but it is really slow. She just needs it for surfing the web, Skype, music, watching movies etc.

They want to spend around £400 but can go up to £500 if it will make any difference.

They want it to 'look nice' too 

Can you recommend anything guys? Any offers, or specs to look at?



Cheers

I'm looking at laptops at the moment and probably ending up going for a Dell Inspiron 17 SE, but looking around the main thing I've noticed is that everything now has windows 8 which appears to be sh*t on non touch screen devices, so I expect the first thing I'll be doing is dropping in an SSD with windows 7 on it. Just something to consider.

Might be worth checking out Dell's deals in that range they have the Jan sales on, other than that HP, Lenovo and maybe Asus (Although no experience with the Asus machines)

In terms of CPU at a minimum you'll want to get an i3, otherwise you'll just be buying out of date tech, they are supposed to be slightly faster than a C2Duo, although from my experience I didn't see much difference, so an i5 may be a good idea.

For Dell deals I use www.dmxdimenson.com also take not of the discount codes at the top of each page.

Another option, what about something like the Asus transformer? mix of tablet and netbook/laptop? If she doesn't need a beefy laptop maybe that would be a more versatile option?

Sent from my phone.

I'll check out the Asus transformer, not heard of it before

I don't think she'll mind Windows 8 once she gets use to it. It seems quite simple.....so should suit her 

I'll check out your recommendations XEntity, thanks.

Are Samsung any good? As they seem to look nice, which the GF kept pointing out (didn't have a clue about spec).



Cheers

To be honest for consumer grade laptops even some of the cheap brands make good laptops, the main difference being the quality of the materials and can vary from model to model, let alone brand to brand, my current laptop was cheap and just wont die and it's probably about 5 years old!

You're best off going from reviews on the specific model, rather than looking by brand, all brands have good ones and bad ones

Some of the Samsungs on Amazon have good reviews some less so

Are Lenovo laptops good? My GF has been reading up on laptops, and these seem to do well....but I've never heard of them?

Lenovo, afaik, bought IBM's Thinkpad division out and they are on course to be the biggest PC manufacturer in the world, again afaik.

They are pushing to become a bit more aesthetically pleasing rather than just going for function but they are decent enough I think. As good as most brands out there.

She seems to think for the price, they are better spec'd than Samsungs, HP etc?

Quote from: chrisdicko on January 10, 2013, 21:17:43 PM
Are Lenovo laptops good? My GF has been reading up on laptops, and these seem to do well....but I've never heard of them?

Generally still look quite industrial in design, since taking IBM's division, but they are well specced and well priced.

Cheers guys.

I think as it's for the GF's sister, she would like something more pretty looking.....