Best Laptop with OS for under £300

[Hightower]

Afer having some reliability probs on my desktop, I'm thinking of replacing my Desktop PC with a laptop (after speaking to Pete 7) and stand alone hard drive.

I really don't have a clue when it comes to selecting a spec of laptop, but obviously the best spec for the money. I know that there are loads of computer experts out there, so thought I would ask you guys first what sort of spec I can expect for the money.

I don't "game" and the most power hungery program will probably be Pinnical Video editing software.

So any suggestions?

[Andy Moore]

Under £300.00! I was going to suggest an Apple Mac but I don't think I'll bother.

[codprawn]

As a rule video editing needs loads of power but it depends what you do with it of course.

£300 is not a lot so instead of getting a new laptop for that price look on Ebay type Refurbished laptops.

make sure you buy from a seller with a load of feedback and they are uk based. You should get a 3 month warrenty which will be long enough to show up any faults.

buy a big name - avoid Packard Bell - Advent - emachines etc.

MAKE SURE IT HAS XP - NOT VISTA!!!

You could try PC World's business section - say you have your own business - they can supply laptops with XP. At that sort of price you don't need Vista slowing it down and don't let them put Norton anywhere near your machine!!!

Within reason forget about the CPU - it's RAM RAM RAM that counts. 1gig minimum. As to hard disk an 80gb is quite ok for a laptop.

[Tony]

I'm no expert,but Amazon seem to have some good deals on acer laptops
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-...5055302&sr=1-1

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by codprawn

As a rule video editing needs loads of power but it depends what you do with it of course.

£300 is not a lot so instead of getting a new laptop for that price look on Ebay type Refurbished laptops.

make sure you buy from a seller with a load of feedback and they are uk based. You should get a 3 month warrenty which will be long enough to show up any faults.

buy a big name - avoid Packard Bell - Advent - emachines etc.

MAKE SURE IT HAS XP - NOT VISTA!!!

You could try PC World's business section - say you have your own business - they can supply laptops with XP. At that sort of price you don't need Vista slowing it down and don't let them put Norton anywhere near your machine!!!

Within reason forget about the CPU - it's RAM RAM RAM that counts. 1gig minimum. As to hard disk an 80gb is quite ok for a laptop.

All the way with you on that one codders Vid editing need some grunt ,.. and big storage

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by Tony

I'm no expert,but Amazon seem to have some good deals on acer laptops
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-...5055302&sr=1-1

They are OK to start with I've found .. but watch that warranty window

[Hightower]

Originally Posted by Tony

I'm no expert,but Amazon seem to have some good deals on acer laptops
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-...5055302&sr=1-1

Well I can Video edit using my existing Desktop which (when working) is 5 years old and running a Pentium 4. 2.8 chip and 1 gig of memory, so I'm confident that any laptop will have enough power for this task. As for memory I was going to buy a stand alone 500 Gig hard drive for all my important stuff like letters and photo's etc.

How about This one if a little bit over budget from Novatech then.

[Chris]

Andy, if you can hold fire until January I guarantee you will see some ridiculous bargains in January sales as all the manufacturers dump stock they over manufactured.

My company recycles Laptops and PCs for Corporates and as such we have thousands of Hi spec Dells & IBM Laptops for around £130ex however you will need to re-install XP (there will be a licence) and whatever applications you need and only a standard trade wty of 30 days as we normally sell by the pallet.

If you want a cheap one let me know.

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Hightower

Well I can Video edit using my existing Desktop which (when working) is 5 years old and running a Pentium 4. 2.8 chip and 1 gig of memory, so I'm confident that any laptop will have enough power for this task. As for memory I was going to buy a stand alone 500 Gig hard drive for all my important stuff like letters and photo's etc.

How about This one if a little bit over budget from Novatech then.

Andy, you're absolutely on target about the hardware spec stuff. I did all the RIB videos on a P4 with 512MB Ram That said, RAM is king and remember 1Gb minimum for Vista if you choose that O/S - I won't preach to you - choose whatever suits your own usage. Be aware that some laptops, particularly older designs and lots of used ones only support up to 1GB or 2GB RAM. Most new ones can support up to 4GB although this is not all addressable and the limit will always be slightly lower (usually between 3GB and 3.75GB) depending on a number of factors.

Anyway, that Novatach laptop looks OK, it's a fairly standard T2390 based system which is OK... current entry level spec and and much faster then some piece of dog-sh1t ex-lease you could buy for £130. Nobody makes any money from hardware these days - it's all done on the warranty and extras... I notice that Novatech want to sell you their two year package for a few quid and the O/S for a few quid as well.

I have a reseller account with a big name manufacturer who will beat every price, specification and warranty (always on-site, never return-to-base) offered. When you've decided, let me know and I'll do you a quote for a cash deal (I don't offer finance!).

[codprawn]

When I say video editing takes loads of power it's all down to how you use it. If you use Premier with Boris or Holywood FX etc the rendering can take ages per frame if you are doing fancy special effects - and that's with loads of power and a hot graphics card.

Some renders can take over 4 hours for just 1,000 frames or 30 seconds of video - and that's on a meaty quad core with dual cards!!!

Most of this is prob way beyond the average home user though.............

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by codprawn

that's on a meaty quad core with dual cards!!!

Is that what Andy asked for? Could you supply that in his budget? A straight "no" would suffice as an answer!

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by Richard B

That said, RAM is king and remember 1Gb minimum for Vista if you choose that O/S -

Disagree, 2 gig minimum if its vista, and for an older or lower spec lappy, which runs several other apps that a desk top never does, like power monitors etc, its vital.

Personally having used vista, give me XP every time Vista is one power hungry motha. As I type this, my desktop is running about 33 processes using 250 meg, Vista will double that and commit around a gig minimum...

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Bigmuz7

2 gig minimum if its vista

Mate, I ain't disagreeing... I use 4 which is why I say watch out for the models which won't recognise over 1GB or 2GB.

[Tony]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Mate, I ain't disagreeing... I use 4 which is why I say watch out for the models which won't recognise over 1GB or 2GB.

I thought Vista would only recognize up to 3gb of Ram?

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Tony

I thought Vista would only recognize up to 3gb of Ram?

No, that's a very common urban legend, and Vista SP1 clarifies the matter somewhat. Have a look at the figures in the screenshots... Vista "knows" I've got 4GB installed but maps to 3581MB. Memory usage is primarily hardware dependant... the chipset controls this and the interface (video and PCI) addressing has to fit within the 32-bit address space (ie 4gigabytes) for a 32-bit o/s like Vista Home. This is all OK whilst there's less than 3GB memory in your system as the chipset just maps these devices to the upper memory space and you don't notice. But if you add that last gig, you get poor value as you can't use it all. This becomes irrelevant if you use a 64 bit o/s of course (eg Vista x64).

There's a couple of Microsoft knowledge base articles on this if you've got time on your hands... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003

[John Kennett]

Oh those long winter nights must just fly by!

John

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Anyway, that Novatach laptop looks OK, it's a fairly standard T2390 based system which is OK... current entry level spec and and much faster then some piece of dog-sh1t ex-lease you could buy for £130.

Errr thanks, hence why the "Ex Lease piece of dog-sh1T" is £200 cheaper

BTW all the kit I get in is from Banks not Leasing companies, most of them refresh yearly and the kit is high spec. However please don't think this is a sales pitch as you saw from my last post to Andy my recommendation to him was buy new as there are going to be some fantastic deals, and if I start pointing loads of one unit punters at my sales team I will never hear the end of it

[Nasher]

Originally Posted by Chris

if I start pointing loads of one unit punters at my sales team I will never hear the end of it

If its any help.

If enough people want one I can raise a PO, pay the invoice etc, then share them out.

Nasher.

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by Richard B

I have to say Richard, yours looks pretty much like mine, so you have 2GB of memory commited to 83 processes , wtf is it with vista that it has to do so much stuff in the background, I mean I only have 3 or 4 background apps running, have the same on an xp machine with only 30 odd processes going on,.. hence the boot up time of a vista machine is 4 times longer at least .. and we call that progress ....... more like we need a new lap top... ahhh .. the dripping roast ....

[Tim M]

Andy, I was in the same position as you a few weeks ago. My four year old Acer finally died on me so I had to buy a new one. All I use it for is going on facebook, ribnet and ebay, using office and playing music. I didn't want to spend much - less than £400 was the target. After some quite extensive searching I bought an HP 6720 on ebay from a decent looking ebay shop. They had a special offer where you got an extra GB of RAM which was rather good. I think I paid £319 including delivery. It's brand new so has a 1 year warrentee. I'm pretty chuffed with it; its got a nice glossy widescreen, does what I want (most of the time). The only thing that lets it down is Vista; took me a week or so to get used to it, and I personally preferred XP. Vista seems to have a habit of closing IE on a very regular basis which is a pain. My advice is to spend some time looking on ebay for a decent brand new HP. I think they've got a pretty good reputation (avoid Acer - they are crap)