Page 1 of Dirt cheap laptops any good?

Looking for a dirt cheap laptop, for very light home use.
It`ll be used for photos, music (ripping, mostly..occasional download).
Light internet surfing/buying.
CD-ROM games for my daughter.
You get the jist, really basic use.
These Dell things being advertised for £319(ish), any good??
I also saw some Acer thing for similar money?
Wireless isn`t essential, BTW.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 29th January 2008, 15:56

i have an acer. seems fine. and the bird has dell.. also seems fine.
have you heard of these http://eeepc.asus.com/global/

might appeal to the young uns....

I would say, and i know nothing buy jack really about paptops, just watch the memory capacity - i keep filling mine up. nothing that an external drive wont solve though..

as for wireless.. adapters are pretty cheap these days anyway. so like you say, not an essential.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 29th January 2008, 16:01

Quote:
These Dell things being advertised for £319(ish), any good??

Yeah, they do the job no problems.

You might want to revert to windows XP when you are speccing it up, though.

Dell are fine, check over at HUKD for current best buy.

Agree with NTG specify XP not Vista.

Fujitsu Siemens from Staples before Xmas for a penny short of 300.
Does everything my daughter wants and can`t fault it.

Snaps

Cheers for all the advice
Is Vista really that bad? :/
Whoot, is that Asus thing the one that uses a flash memory instead of a HD?
I saw a review in a magazine predicting it would be popular.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 30th January 2008, 13:52

I think so...as do quite a lot of people.
But there are others who think its absolutely fine.

My mate has it and says its growing on him. I`m not convinced.

I`d imagine the impending SP1 will correct a fair few of the issues that cause people to dislike it, but who knows.

Depends on what programs you want to run. I know someone who got Vista, none of their old programs are compatible, so they need to buy them all again in the latest versions, many of which aren`t as good as the older versions.

Just got myself a mid priced Vista Laptop from Dell and am very happy with it (apart from one small red pixel that i didnt notice until my daughter told me about it).

I`ve been running XP on my other two Desktop PCs and that as an OS has been very stable. Vista has had a few errors pop up resultingh in a re-boot which all seem to be due to the free AV software trial from McAfee or so it reports back when you ask it to look into why the error happened and suggest fixes.

Vista is exactly a year old now and many of the early adoptors that did admittedly suffer from effectively being paying Beta Testers will no doubt feel justified in saying to revert to XP but times are changing and now is a good a time as any to adopt in my opinion, sounds like you will only want to use basic applications which i`d have thought are all now Vista compatible.

You`ve got to ask yourself if you are buying a system to last you 4 - 5 years what do you want....same old mr reliable or the new kid on the block with a few teething problems (many of which are now sorted or will hopefully be with SP1) but plenty of potential....it`s your call? Vista`s sold 88million copies now so M$ will be bending over backwards to get issues put right i`d imagine...

I wanted to try Vista out of curiousity and wanted my kids to get to learn to use it too as it will be a big part of their near future and i didn`t want to disadvantage them in any school projects or work placements that required a knowledge of Vista OS.

I`m really no expert, just a basic user (internet, M$ Office, downloads) but i think it`s an easy to use and aesthetically pleasing OS.

M.

The thing is, whereas 98 brought in USB support and XP brought in far more robust networking Vista doesnt really bring much to the table apart from a prettier interface and more annoying user controls.

I would personally get XP because its easier to use and your apps are guaranteed to work. Until they stop supporting XP, i`ll continue buying it.

This is personally speaking, of course. At work every time ive tried Vista there has been some problem with it and ive ended up downgrading to XP.