Laptop advise

Laptops direct will have some better spec refurbished laptops that will still carry a decent warranty. 300 will get something pretty respectable.
 
PhilTheFragger said:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/compu...pire-f5-571-15-6-laptop-red-10137493-pdt.html

This is the only sub £300 laptop I could find with a half decent processor

Intel I3 5xxx as a minumum, forget Atom, Celeron or any AMD CPU's they just wont cut the mustard

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

Have to disagre with this!

While a more powerful processor is probably going to be an advantage, having a 'very powerful' one is likely to be rather wasted on the sort of applications that a laptop is likely to be used for!

The vast majority of applications can be serviced by a relatively low powered processor - like the (32 bit W7 based) one I'm using now and even possibly by my ancient backup Celeron one (though that's noticeably slow, so I'd agree there but it certainly wouldn't be in the £300 price range!!).

So find out what sort of things she is likely to use it for and target the machines that are oriented for that sort of use! If she is likely to be using lots of games etc, then the video capability is important, if listening to music, then the sound capability is etc.... But the power of the chip is actually one of the lower considerations imo. It certainly doesn't matter much for typing text into a Word document! Laptops actually have lots of compromises anyway (so many of the features are actually built onto the board, as opposed to being optimise-able by specialist cards), so getting the one that 'focuses' on the prospective use is the key to getting 'best value'!

All purely my opinion of course!

Ebuyer certainly seemed to provide good options at pretty good prices when I was last looking - which wasn't very long ago. I eventually decided to keep this machine and get a Desktop as well!
 
I
Foxholer said:
Have to disagre with this!

While a more powerful processor is probably going to be an advantage, having a 'very powerful' one is likely to be rather wasted on the sort of applications that a laptop is likely to be used for!

The vast majority of applications can be serviced by a relatively low powered processor - like the (32 bit W7 based) one I'm using now and even possibly by my ancient backup Celeron one (though that's noticeably slow, so I'd agree there but it certainly wouldn't be in the £300 price range!!).

So find out what sort of things she is likely to use it for and target the machines that are oriented for that sort of use! If she is likely to be using lots of games etc, then the video capability is important, if listening to music, then the sound capability is etc.... But the power of the chip is actually one of the lower considerations imo. It certainly doesn't matter much for typing text into a Word document! Laptops actually have lots of compromises anyway (so many of the features are actually built onto the board, as opposed to being optimise-able by specialist cards), so getting the one that 'focuses' on the prospective use is the key to getting 'best value'!

All purely my opinion of course!

Ebuyer certainly seemed to provide good options at pretty good prices when I was last looking - which wasn't very long ago. I eventually decided to keep this machine and get a Desktop as well!
Click to expand...

Disagree totally, the brief was to find the best laptop for a £300 budget, the general rule of thumb is that you buy the best processor you can afford, you can't change it later on so you MUST get one that will do the job. The Intel I3 is the absolute minimum I would consider.

I guarantee that the child's computer requirements will quickly supersede those of the parent, I see it every day, kids get bored quickly and the best way to get a kid to hate you is to buy them a s l o w computer.

If you buy one with a celeron in it, it may be reasonable speed out of the box, but 2 years down the line it is going to be as slow as a Dead Sea slug. At least an I3 will last longer before it hits the wall
 
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