Cheap laptop?
 

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[Closed] Cheap laptop?

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Daughters 13th birthday coming up. Wants a laptop. What's worth looking at. Needs to be windows not a chromebook. What's worth looking at and what's the minimum I need to spend to get something that's not shite?


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 7:03 am
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This is a really nice little machine for the money, keyboard and touch pad have a real quality feel as well.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F332506990902

At one point it was £350 on the Argos website but was OOS last time I checked


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 7:15 am
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Does it need to be new?

If secondhand is an option then Tier1 have some very good deals on refurbished business laptops.

This for example...

https://www.tier1online.com/1-vb841av/hp-elitebook-2540p-i7-640lm-12-5-dvd-webcam-grade-a


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 8:52 pm
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I just got myself a pretty nice Dell from the amazon warehouse, the box was bashed but the laptop itself was brand new. Always worth a look there I think, it was £250 and I couldn't have matched the spec for under £400 elsewhere


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 9:09 pm
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Wants a laptop.

To do what?  "Browsing the web" and "playing Fortnite" are going to be two very different system requirements.

Why a laptop rather than a desktop?  Where's a 13yo going to be taking a computer?


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 9:20 pm
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refurbished hp elitebook 745 with ssd windows 10 - robust and all you need for a couple of years - from £110 ish


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 10:05 pm
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Why a laptop rather than a desktop? Where’s a 13yo going to be taking a computer?

Hopefully the same place as a 16, 17 year old? Get a laptop. If it really is just for general work, email, web the only technical stipulation should be to have an SSD.


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 10:40 pm
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Because of course, an SSD is critical for web browsing.

Christ, I'm a power user and a geek and when I was 13 I was loading games from cassette.


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 11:16 pm
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I like SSDs, but when I was buying my laptop I was more interested in porn capacity so I went HDD. I might rip it out and fit a hybrid but standalone SSDs are either too small or too expensive for me. (I have one in the desktop and I wouldn't be without it but in a laptop it's a compromise)

Did I say porn? I meant, music capacity.


 
Posted : 08/10/2018 11:35 pm
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Itzoo are worth a look fully refurbed with Windows n a guarantee

My last one came from there


 
Posted : 09/10/2018 10:00 pm
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"Because of course, an SSD is critical for web browsing"

Nah but it helps a general purpose computing device run fast and stable. As a geek you'd know that having a dependency on a spinny magnetic thing in something as power hungry, portable and high speed as a modern laptop is a shit idea. You'll tell me next you still have a first gen Archos MP3 player because SSD is a power user thing...

As for the cassette tape, I'll bet when you got your first 5.25 disk your mind was truly blown with such capacity, convenience and resilience. Progress man, progress.


 
Posted : 09/10/2018 11:12 pm
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As a geek you’d know that

Yes, but, it's not for a geek, it's for a 13 year old.


 
Posted : 10/10/2018 8:45 am
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Northwind
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I like SSDs, but when I was buying my laptop I was more interested in porn capacity so I went HDD. I might rip it out and fit a hybrid but standalone SSDs are either too small or too expensive for me. (I have one in the desktop and I wouldn’t be without it but in a laptop it’s a compromise)

Did I say porn? I meant, music capacity.

Nobody downloads these any more grandad 😉

PornHub and Spotify.

That Lenovo looks a good machine.  I wouldn't even consider a machine without an SSD now. Just too slow to apply updates etc. Especially on a laptop with a 5400 RPM drive.


 
Posted : 10/10/2018 9:25 am
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Some great Big-Hitting here (as expected on an IT thread).

Keep it up.


 
Posted : 10/10/2018 12:07 pm
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Thanks for your valuable and insightful contribution to the discussion.

Keep it up.


 
Posted : 10/10/2018 12:09 pm

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