Being a moderately lazy type, I’m asking you lads a question in the hope that somebody will save me a whole lot of time researching this.
I’m going to buy a laptop
I need a decent Windows package, word, excel, powerpoint and equation editor for the missus
I’d like good memory ( storage??) to hold music, movies etc (I’ve been introduced to Pirate Bay over the Christmas and think there’s lots of stuff that I should get my hands on) Also want a DVD writer in order to be able to write stuff from the hard drive to disc.
Would like a laptop that is sturdy, not too big or heavy. I have a HP from work that I’m giving back on Friday. Its a great machine, screens folds 360, has a pen that you can write on the screen with.
I’m going up North on Wed and will probably purchase up there. There is a Dixons in Newry that I’m hoping to buy in. They have laptops up there for around 399 stg, but I’d pay up to 500.
Any advice on what to buy, how much to pay or any place that I could buy it in?
Bit predictable, but I’ve had few or no problems with my Dell Inspiron. Wouldn’t be too pushed on a massive hard drive, see the other thread for details on just how inexpensive external hard drives are these days.
The brands that Dixons tend to stock aren’t great really from what I hear. Toshiba are OK I suppose but I certainly wouldn’t go near Packard Bell. What else do Dixons stock?
[quote=“Sledgehammer”]Bit predictable, but I’ve had few or no problems with my Dell Inspiron. Wouldn’t be too pushed on a massive hard drive, see the other thread for details on just how inexpensive external hard drives are these days.
The brands that Dixons tend to stock aren’t great really from what I hear. Toshiba are OK I suppose but I certainly wouldn’t go near Packard Bell. What else do Dixons stock?[/quote]
They’ve got a Dell Inspiron on sale for 399 stg that looks alright. I have an old Dell that has given up the ghost, to be honest though I never really liked it. Thought it and most Dells were always a bit cheap and boring.
current and last machine were both hp … buyin microsoft office is could be up to 300 more… but you could possibly acquire it on piratebay for nothing… the type of laptop with pen is known as a tablet laptop and again will be more expensive than regular machine… ill have a look at dixons site later and see what i can find but id go for a dual core machine amd or intel with 2gb ram and prob bout 250 hdd you can always buy portables after that
Bought a laptop in Currys in Newry (Currys = Dixons, just rebranded) the other day.
Certainly far cheaper than anything down here at the moment. They’d Dell, HP, Sony, Compaq (HP rebranded), Packard Bell from memory.
I liked the HP ones best from what I saw in terms of value for money and ease of use and I ended up buying one for 349 that I saw in PC World in Fingal yesterday for over 600.
Two things to consider:
Depsite originally swearing that they wouldn’t do any discounts, Currys did throw in a free laptop bag.
Don’t pay in Euro cash because their in-store exchange rate was shite compared to the bank rate that you get on your credit card. So pay by credit card or pay in Sterling.
Also got a couple of TVs in Newry. Got a Sony LCD for 330 in Sainsburys that’s 600+ down here. And got a load of furniture stuff for the gaff I’m moving into in a few weeks. Wouldn’t be the type that would drive to Newry for cheap booze etc but if you’re buying something big and pricey it’s well worth it.
One other thing about Newry is the traffic is terribe because of roadworks on the A1. Currys is handy enough though as it’s on the far side of the town so you just go around on the bypass and you come to a B&Q at a roundabout and there it is. Then if you need to go back to Newry the traffic from the Belfast side is harmless enough.
[quote=“W.B. Yeats”]They’ve got a Dell Inspiron on sale for 399 stg that looks alright. I have an old Dell that has given up the ghost, to be honest though I never really liked it. Thought it and most Dells were always a bit cheap and boring.
WBY[/quote]
They’re not as pretty looking as the oul Vaios I suppose, but to my mind they more than make up for it in reliability.
Ya anything with Intel Dual Core 2GHz+, at least 2Gb of RAM for Vista, go for 3GB if you can (RAM is cheap enough and easy to add yourself afterwards anyways). I wouldn’t go buying office with it, very easy pick up a copy for next too nothing, especially if you are going familiarising yourself with Piratebay.
Don’t let them try to lump in anti virus etc with it either. Any of this stuff can be gotten free (and legally) on the net.
Personally I wouldn’t stray too far from Dell or HP. Prefer Dell myself but that’s just me.
Yeah good advice on the antivirus things. Currys try and lump in Norton and I saw a couple of people buying it the fools. Horrible piece of software.
Just take it as clean as you can get and get software yourself. I use Openoffice - just as good as Office for home use and it’s free but obviously Microsoft’s version can be obtained elsewhere.
Bought a Dell Inspiron 1545 for €409 on Pixmania last week. Excellent job, mimimal set-up, arrived within 48 hours and don’t think that price can be matched even in NI.
If you know someone who works in IT they should be able to get you a disc of MS Office surely? A lad I know gave me a CD Rom with Office on it, and a text file with the code to type in
2.2Ghz Intel Dual Core
3GB of RAM
256MB ATI Raedon Video Card
260GB HDD.
It’s a nice looking laptop but I have found it buggy enough since I got it but it pre ordered so was one of the first batch of them to be made so expected there to be a few issues with it. Seems to be plugging away grand now. I’m half thing of either upgrading the OS to Vista Ultimate or “downgrading” it to XP Pro. There’s a couple of things I want to run on it that require either of those OS’s but not sure if I want the hassle, especially downgrading.
[quote=“therock67”]Bought a laptop in Currys in Newry (Currys = Dixons, just rebranded) the other day.
Certainly far cheaper than anything down here at the moment. They’d Dell, HP, Sony, Compaq (HP rebranded), Packard Bell from memory.
I liked the HP ones best from what I saw in terms of value for money and ease of use and I ended up buying one for 349 that I saw in PC World in Fingal yesterday for over 600.
Two things to consider:
Depsite originally swearing that they wouldn’t do any discounts, Currys did throw in a free laptop bag.
Don’t pay in Euro cash because their in-store exchange rate was shite compared to the bank rate that you get on your credit card. So pay by credit card or pay in Sterling.
Also got a couple of TVs in Newry. Got a Sony LCD for 330 in Sainsburys that’s 600+ down here. And got a load of furniture stuff for the gaff I’m moving into in a few weeks. Wouldn’t be the type that would drive to Newry for cheap booze etc but if you’re buying something big and pricey it’s well worth it.
One other thing about Newry is the traffic is terribe because of roadworks on the A1. Currys is handy enough though as it’s on the far side of the town so you just go around on the bypass and you come to a B&Q at a roundabout and there it is. Then if you need to go back to Newry the traffic from the Belfast side is harmless enough.[/quote]
Rocko
Was up in Currys in the Square earlier
Priced a HP G 60-100 EM. 1.9GHZ AMD, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HD, NVIDIA graphics card. Was 500
Also saw a Toshiba L300-135. 2 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, ATI graphics card. Was 549.
These were the two standard machines they were pushing.
Sony Shop was pushing a Sony Vaio 3GB RAM and 250GB HD for 799. Seemed to be the most comparable to Currys but massive price difference. WOuld it really be worth 300 for the extra GB Ram and 100GB HD?
Dell Inspirons are coming in around 500 as well.
500 seems the benchmark unless I am missing something major. Would you agree?
Did a good bit of purchasing yesterday in Newry- A HP with BluRay, good graphics card, dual core, good ram.
AS advised I didn’t buy Norton antivirus
Was just googling there to see what free software to download.
AVG seems to come up a lot- is this a safe bet?
WBY[/quote]
Yip, very safe bet. Install that and also download Adaware from Lavasoft and run it weekly, should be all you need really. The built in Windows Firewall should be ok but it might be no harm to install ZoneAlarm which is a pretty good free firewall/
i have recently changed from free version of avg to the free version of avast and find it better and not as memory hogging
as regards spyware i used to always run ad-aware by lavasoft and spybo search and destory on regular occasions but i see with the latest version of spybot search and destroy it doesnt like adaware on the machine…
[quote=“cailinlochgarman”]i have recently changed from free version of avg to the free version of avast and find it better and not as memory hogging
as regards spyware i used to always run ad-aware by lavasoft and spybo search and destory on regular occasions but i see with the latest version of spybot search and destroy it doesnt like adaware on the machine…[/quote]
Ya, spybot is gone a bit too all encompassing lately. It was better when it just stuck to the spyware. I have avast on one machine at home but for some reason i’m not gone on it.
[quote=“cailinlochgarman”]i have recently changed from free version of avg to the free version of avast and find it better and not as memory hogging
as regards spyware i used to always run ad-aware by lavasoft and spybo search and destory on regular occasions but i see with the latest version of spybot search and destroy it doesnt like adaware on the machine…[/quote]
Thanks for that Folks
Bloody Norton automatically installed itself on the machine for 60 days or something.
I’ll download AVG or Avast (both of which are well recommended on the Net) when the time comes
Had adaware in the past and found it decent enough