Wall of Mouths

That budget seems pretty good to me, you may stretch to a MAC but it will either be second hand or reconditioned/refurbished. A good site to check, although there’s nothing in your price range at present:

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

If you find good deals I can give you a heads up on whether they’re any good or not - all I’ll say is though whatever you buy make sure you purchase it on a credit card so your transaction is insured. So many companies are going under at the moment it’s untrue.

We use Dell computers where I work, the Inspiron range they do (for home/personal use) are very sturdy and well spec’d for the money. It’d check the Dell site if you can’t find a MAC, they come with a flavour of Unix now (which is free) if you want away from Microsoft

Think a Mac is a little hopeful, to be honest.
Cheers for the links lads, my school also has a special account with PC World, where they get things slightly cheaper, might ask if they can slip a wee laptop in with their next order if I pay for my bit.

CS wrote:

Think a Mac is a little hopeful, to be honest.
Cheers for the links lads, my school also has a special account with PC World, where they get things slightly cheaper, might ask if they can slip a wee laptop in with their next order if I pay for my bit.

I’d fuck PC World off for a start - thats the best bit of advice you could follow ;)

PCWORLD, they charge you like 30 quid to install ram or a new hard drive which is not a difficult process at all, its pretty much as simple as opening up your pcs case and clipping the ram in, or plugging 2 leads into your new hard drive and maybe moving the jumper.

To be honest I’ve never heard of MSI. I’d recommend the Compaq one, but it’s a wee bit dearer and the hard drive is only half the size of the other one. I’ve got a Compaq laptop though and it’s been very reliable. I did get the blue screen of death a lot when it was quite new but it took me a while to realise that this was because I had it sitting on my bed all day when it was switched on, and it was overheating. Oops!
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/8867040/Compaq-Mini-702EA-Intel-Ato … oduct.html
That’s the Compaq one, and there’s a favourable review of it if you scroll down a bit.

Credit or debit guys?
I don’t intend on getting a credit card, don’t want debt thanks!

very wise indeed! americans have been living on credit cards and we know what that brought us.

?

For reliability you can’t beat a Toshiba. Good one is a Toshiba L300 - 250gb HD, 4gb memory, dual core, and all the usual wireless guff. Value for money would probably be Acer T3400. Think its about £400.

The best thing I could recomend is removing vista in favour of a 64bit version of XP.

my laptops a toshiba satellite and its great

Not sure about up your end but in the republic Pc world are doing acer aspire 7730 for €550. 4gig ram and 160gig hard drive with vista home. Its grand for web and college stuff etc.

CS wrote:

Credit or debit guys?
I don’t intend on getting a credit card, don’t want debt thanks!

No you’ve completely misunderstood me Colin, my point is any transaction above £100 purchased using a credit card is automatically insured under the ‘goods and sales’ act. This means if you bought a laptop lets say on Wednesday, and the company you bought it from went into administration (bust) on the Thuirsday beofer they ship you your laptop but they have taken your money, then you could claim the money back from the credit card company.

You have the cash so the balance could be paid off the credit card as soon as you get the laptop