Laptop recommendations please

Yes I did look at that. However, I already have MS office.

In the end I went and ordered the Acer 5620Z from ebuyer

This one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141514

You are right, Vista will struggle with 1Gb of memory. I will see what the performance is like and either change the OS to XP Prof or upgrade the memory. Thankfully, 1GBof memory is only £15 delivered.

Sadly although it comes with 1GB, this is split into two chips of 512MB each. Since there are only two memory slots, to upgrade I would have to buy two 1GB chips and discard the 512MB (or one 2GB chip but since the max it support is 2GB, the 512MB chips will need to be discarded anyway).

But its the cheapest I could find after some cursory surfing so I went for it anyway. Will let you know how good or otherwise they are.

 

I just noticed this is the one you linked to earlier in the thread.

Only downside is the memory issue I mention above and no bluetooth (but you can get a USB bluetooth dongle for next to nothing these days)

 

The cheapest Dell I found is £469 including MS Office 2007 (which she says she prefers). It has 2GB RAM but smaller HDD, which shouldn't really be an issue for her.

 

Wow so are you subsidising the purchase then?

for that kind of money shouldn't you be able to get an IBM/Lenovo or Sony Vaio or Toshiba? Those are the brands I'd go for if I had a bigger budget.

looks like the dell comes with a 160GB HDD which sounds respectable to me. The Acer only has 120GB

 

The Dell laptop is £399, the MS Office is £70. Yes I may need to lend her money, but she is adamant that she wants to buy it without any help.

 

I got a free laptop for staying with BT for my broadband.

Wasn't really an issue, as I had no wish to leave them anyway- not the cheapest (BT), but I've tried others before and been well pissed off with the customer service.

Just thought I'd mention

 

Not an option for me Chris as my BB is paid for by my employer.

 

Received the Acer laptops ( Extensa 5620Z) from ebuyer yesterday. Not bad for £290 although Vista runs slow (due I think to there being only 1Gb of RAM). Am expecting more RAM in the next day or two (to upgrade to 2GB) so will update then.
otherwise nice bright screen , no dead pixels, Seagate 120Gb drive. Not really a "portable" computer though - size and weight (about 3Kg) would make it prohibitive to carry around.

Acer have partitioned the hard disk into two equal parts, one for OS and applications and other for data. On the whole I'd say very good value. Incidently ebuyer seems to have sold out on these as the ones now advertised only have an 80Gb HDD.

 

My daughter decided to go for this Dell in the end. It should be delivered today. With her 10% staff discount she got it for £405. That means she'll go without MS Office for a while. Of course there is always the possibility that she'll stay with OOO.

 

Looks good Dev - thats quite high spec for the price. The processor especially is quite a leap forward compared to the Acer.