NFR New or refurb Laptop advice please

[Shredhead]

My 'old' laptop has died and I'm planning on getting a new or refurb end one. any recommendations please? No Apples or Sonys please.
It's for general home use, watching Fulham streams and posting on here!
Reliability is valued over flashiness.
Thanks.

[FPT]

I'd avoid anything with Windows 8. It's confusing and useless.

[westcliff white]

I would never but a refurb'd laptop. There are a lot of good places online yo buy good branded laptops at reasonable prices.

Try saveonlaptops.co.uk

[God The Mechanic]

I've got a Lenovo Yoga - with Windows 8 - and it's pretty awesome.  And bendy.

[Nero]

suppose it depends on how much you want to spend

http://www.novatech.co.uk/clearance.html

[YankeeJim]

I'd avoid anything with Windows 8. It's confusing and useless.

Agree with this sentiment. I now have an 8 in place of my old 7 (got a bug chasing FFC streams last season). Once your in it, I don't really see the difference. Besides, my dealer tells me that Microsoft is going to service 7 for many more years. They are stopping XP service in this country next month so 7 still has a long life.If you have a touch screen, maybe. Otherwise, don't bother with it. As to refurbs, if it has a quality warranty and a good price, maybe. Remember, the reason its a refurb is because someone had problems with it.

[terryr]

Go to Dell, buy on line.
Decent price/warranty and it will get the job done. Refurbs are a waste of money. Prices are 1/3 less for something twice as powerful as this time last year.

[Logicalman]

This year we replaced our old HP Latitude laptop with an HP Envy, W8, 64 Bit, 15" , i5 2.66 GHz.

Added a cooling pad and an external DVD/CD drive, with tax, for less than 600 bucks.

HP and dell have ruled the Laptop market for so long, with HP edging the home market and Dell the corporate one (I have a dell Latitude 5430, W7 for work), and have not been let down at all.

Windows 8 is different, but for the average home user it suffices very well, for the professional, it can be a pain, but stil the underlying architecture is good. I run SQL2012 Dev, MSO 2013, VS2012 + visio on my home machine as well as my work machine, and am very satisfied. Obviously I don't do much gaming on them (I have a console for that), so I'm happy.

[BigNigeBowds]

2nd hand macbook pro

[BishopsParkFantastic]

My 'old' laptop has died and I'm planning on getting a new or refurb end one. any recommendations please? No Apples or Sonys please.
It's for general home use, watching Fulham streams and posting on here!
Reliability is valued over flashiness.
Thanks.

If the laptop is dedicated to watching Fulham streams and posting on FoF then something that is unreliable, inconsistent and underperforming - you see, it's all about synergy...... I have only owned Dell Inspiron laptops, which have been reliable and robust - the first lasted 10 years and my current Dell laptop is now three years old! My current Dell was bought new (at reduced price) from John Lewis who offer brilliant on-line computer support if anything go wrong. I believe that Lenovo represent really good value for money.

[Shredhead]

My 'old' laptop has died and I'm planning on getting a new or refurb end one. any recommendations please? No Apples or Sonys please.
It's for general home use, watching Fulham streams and posting on here!
Reliability is valued over flashiness.
Thanks.

If the laptop is dedicated to watching Fulham streams and posting on FoF then something that is unreliable, inconsistent and underperforming - you see, it's all about synergy...... I have only owned Dell Inspiron laptops, which have been reliable and robust - the first lasted 10 years and my current Dell laptop is now three years old! My current Dell was bought new (at reduced price) from John Lewis who offer brilliant on-line computer support if anything go wrong. I believe that Lenovo represent really good value for money.

Haha.Thanks everyone. You've saved me a lot of time and I won't  have to use my wife's rubbish iPad anymore. It looks like a new HP, Dell or Lenovo. Probably from John Lewis.
It's sick making that the last Sony Vaio only lasted 3.5 years (graphics chip solder melted, been mended twice - that's all that's wrong with it).

[King_Crud]

I've had a HP that's lasted me over 4 years and still going strong. Also have had success with Dell but the last time I ordered one my order went "missing" when it got to the distribution centre in Ireland. Dell's Indian customer support was poor when dealing with the issue so I cancelled it.


If you're in London then go to the computer shops on Tottenham Court Rd, you can usually drive a good bargain as they're all competing against each other. Have an idea of what you want minimum requirements in a laptop and either get a price, or do what my ex did and go into a shop and say "I have £300 to spend, what can you do for me?". She then compared the offers from the shops and did a deal with the best one. Only took a couple of hours to get it sorted.

[gmosullivan]

Make yourself a quick comparison chart to see who has best offer depending on what you want more of.
I.E. More hard drive space, memory, bigger screen etc.....
Most importantly though, the more memory you have (RAM) the faster the computer will run, make sure any new laptop you get can accomodate at least 8 Gigabytes of RAM. After that, if you don´t require a lot of hard drive space then go for a laptop with a SSD (Solid State Drive) as this will also greatly enhance performance. Good luck

[dgnffc]

Make yourself a quick comparison chart to see who has best offer depending on what you want more of.
I.E. More hard drive space, memory, bigger screen etc.....
Most importantly though, the more memory you have (RAM) the faster the computer will run, make sure any new laptop you get can accomodate at least 8 Gigabytes of RAM. After that, if you don´t require a lot of hard drive space then go for a laptop with a SSD (Solid State Drive) as this will also greatly enhance performance. Good luck

But if you're going to go for more than 4GB RAM, then you have to get a 64bit machine as 32bit can only use a maximum of 4GB. They will sell you more (as they into making money) but it would be a waste of money for you.

[Still believe]

I work and study from home using my laptop all the time.  I highly recommend a Toshiba it's been reliable - 3 yrs and still going strong.  Apparently Toshiba's have particularly good fans, so keep the machine cool &  long lasting.  I don't know the technical truth of this but I can say from experience it seems to be correct.  At the time when I bought mine, I found the cheapest place to buy one was online from tesco, not sure if that's still the case.  Anyway, that's my thoughts... Good luck and you're certainly wise to avoid the hype of apple....

[Aaron]

I'd probably recommend a Dell these days even though it goes against my better judgement..

My old E6400 is still going strong after 4 years of heavy (literally 24/7) usage.

I've had to change various parts (battery, keyboard and that) over time but there are endless suppliers of spares for them out there due to the volume which are produced.  You can also pick up docking stations for next to nowt if you have somewhere specific you normally use them.

[Fulham Tup North]

I'd avoid anything with Windows 8. It's confusing and useless.

where were you two weeks ago?  I have just got a new Toshiba and it has Windows 8. Shocking. And streams keep freezing.