Laptop advice please.

[Slime]

My current lappy is dying, and dying fast!
It's an eight year old Acer Aspire and has done really well, as it's been used heavily, but now has loads of bad clusters on it's hard drive.
I won't replace the hard drive as Vista will soon lose MS support.
Therefore, in about a month's time, I'll be after another for around £400 to £500 pounds.
Any recommendations please ................... but nothing Apple!
Thanks all.

 

[fundy]

recently bought a Lenovo 510 laptop for £300ish from Currys, increased the memory to 8GB and switched the hard drive for a SSD hard drive and its been faultless since

Fraggers your man to ask!

 

[PhilTheFragger]

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compu...eapad-510-15-6-laptop-black-10146128-pdt.html

Buy this and a 32Gb usb stick

Buy this too http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compu...evo-2-5-internal-ssd-500-gb-10152713-pdt.html

You will need to add more ram later , cost about £25


Set up the PC from the box, use the create USB recovery app, to create a set of recovery files on the USB stick.

Once that is done, open the back cover, swap the hard drives around and put the cover back

Plug in the usb stick and switch on

choose the advanced options, recover from a drive and off you go

PM if you get stuck and once the lappy is set up we can talk through how to upgrade the RAM

Where do I send my bill?

 

[Slime]

recently bought a Lenovo 510 laptop for £300ish from Currys, increased the memory to 8GB and switched the hard drive for a SSD hard drive and its been faultless since

Fraggers your man to ask!

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compu...eapad-510-15-6-laptop-black-10146128-pdt.html

Buy this and a 32Gb usb stick

Buy this too http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compu...evo-2-5-internal-ssd-500-gb-10152713-pdt.html

You will need to add more ram later , cost about £25


Set up the PC from the box, use the create USB recovery app, to create a set of recovery files on the USB stick.

Once that is done, open the back cover, swap the hard drives around and put the cover back

Plug in the usb stick and switch on

choose the advanced options, recover from a drive and off you go

PM if you get stuck and once the lappy is set up we can talk through how to upgrade the RAM

Where do I send my bill?

Thanks for the fast responses guys.
I forgot to say that I'd need a large screen and a num pad, this would appear to tick both of those boxes.
Phil, if I took your advice, I presume I'd end up with a spare HDD, or did I read it wrong.
Also, could I not put some extra RAM in it from the start?

Thanks again, guys.

 

[fundy]

Thanks for the fast responses guys.
I forgot to say that I'd need a large screen and a num pad, this would appear to tick both of those boxes.
Phil, if I took your advice, I presume I'd end up with a spare HDD, or did I read it wrong.
Also, could I not put some extra RAM in it from the start?

Thanks again, guys.

yes you do end up with an extra hdd (still got mine somewhere) and yes you can add the ram at the same time

the process is a lot easier than i expected, physically changing the drive and adding memory took a couple of minutes tops

 

[Slime]

yes you do end up with an extra hdd (still got mine somewhere) and yes you can add the ram at the same time

the process is a lot easier than i expected, physically changing the drive and adding memory took a couple of minutes tops

It comes with 4GB of Ram, with room for 12GB. How much extra did you install and did you see a noticeable increase in processing speed?

Oh, and do the upgrades invalidate the warranty?

 

[fundy]

It comes with 4GB of Ram, with room for 12GB. How much extra did you install and did you see a noticeable increase in processing speed?

i added an extra 8gb so has 12gb in total, didnt run it before so cant tell how much difference it made

 

[PhilTheFragger]

For the ram go to www.crucial.com/uk

You can either use the drop down menu to get to the right make/ model

Or if you wait till the machine is set up, you can use the crucial scanner to locate the correct RAM for you.

As to whether you need 8 or 12gb it's up to you. As long as you have 8 you'll be fine

 

[Oxfordcomma]

Fragger, I'm interested in why you would automatically swap to a smaller but faster hard drive? Assuming that there is no heavy duty usage required, for the same price I think I'd just buy an off the shelf laptop that already has the additional memory?

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Fragger, I'm interested in why you would automatically swap to a smaller but faster hard drive? Assuming that there is no heavy duty usage required, for the same price I think I'd just buy an off the shelf laptop that already has the additional memory?

Simply the SSD drive is about 40 times faster than a normal hard drive, the performance is phenomenal,
A normal cheap laptop will last you about 4-5 years, but will slow down well before that, with an SSD you are potentially looking at 6-7 years of good performance.

When 500Gb hard drives fall below £100 they will be in all laptops.
For an extra £ 140 you are getting a huge boost for your money.
Also increased battery life as no moving parts and less heat.

I've been installing SSD drives into laptops and desktops for 4 years now, it is a no brainer.

If I had to choose between upgrading ram from 4-8 Gb or putting in an SSD then the SSD wins every time

Obviously the capacity of the hard drive needs to be appropriate and a larger 1tb drive is quite expensive, 500gb is enough for most people

 

[stokie_93]

My current lappy is dying, and dying fast!
It's an eight year old Acer Aspire and has done really well, as it's been used heavily, but now has loads of bad clusters on it's hard drive.
I won't replace the hard drive as Vista will soon lose MS support.
Therefore, in about a month's time, I'll be after another for around £400 to £500 pounds.
Any recommendations please ................... but nothing Apple!
Thanks all.

my missus is selling a laptop mate. It's brand new and I know it's a decent bit of kit.

I know it's about £400 ish but i'll find out what it is!

 

[Slime]

my missus is selling a laptop mate. It's brand new and I know it's a decent bit of kit.

I know it's about £400 ish but i'll find out what it is!

Thanks mate, PM me when you have all the details.
How come she's selling a brand new lappy & has she used it at all?

 

[stokie_93]

Thanks mate, PM me when you have all the details.
How come she's selling a brand new lappy & has she used it at all?

She got it on some Uni scheme she has but she already bought herself one that she likes.

Still in the box sealed matey.

 

[Slime]

PM me when you've got all the details.
Thanks stokie_93.

 

[soren]

What kind of work do you do on your laptop?

 

[Slime]

What kind of work do you do on your laptop?

General browsing and some gaming. Have bought a lappy now.