My oldest lad is thinking about getting himself a laptop. The local Tesco has 4 different ones in at the moment, ranging in price from around 250 to 550. Apart from looking better, is there really much point in paying the higher price? They all seem to have much the same spec. Not that I know much about it like.

Any advice from Bunkerites!

It all depends on what he is going to use it for. If he is going to be using memory intensive applications like gaming and multimedia you will need more memory (at least 1Gb I would say). Also, if you want it for graphical applications you may also want to look at a better graphics card and a bigger screen.

Also if you are going to be storing a lot of data (a lot of graphics such as pictures, fillums, etc) then you might need more diskspace. You need to tailor it to fit your needs as well as your pocket basically - hope this helps.

Go for the one that feels the toughest. They break sooooo easily.
Press a key down firmly and if the whole keyboard sinks down, it ain't tuffeenuff!

Latest games use well over 1gb its advisable in a laptop to go for 2GB RAM or more.

As a keen gamer myself i use both PC & Laptop when i set some time to play and my PC itself has 4GB of memory now and 1 of the latest specs about.

if its general music downloads casual game (not latest) the cheap end will be fine.

I bought a dell inspiron 1525 from tesco a couple of months back for just over £400 online if memory serves me right.

It has a similar spec (or better) to a laptop I paid £1200 for a few years back, Dual core, 2Gb RAM etc, 120Gb storage and a good bright screen.

So far so good, no complaints.

BTW this is the third Dell I have had in 6 to 8 years, largely trouble free.

That is also the laptop I am currently using and it's been very good so far. 369 quid from tesco but just checked and they're currently out of stock. Would recommend.

His main reason for getting one is to avoid the 5 way share we have of our 1 internet connected PC. We've never managed to link up the old PC in his bedroom via the router we now have. The younger lads Xbox works through it OK. He's not really into gaming or fillum downloads, it would mainly be for internet browsing and e:mails, and loading his articles onto the Northern Echo site.

Is that what he told you?!

That's covered by internet browsing.

I got mine from Tesco a couple of months back, all I really use it for is to browse the internet and store photos and stuff on it and the odd download now and then, it suits me right down to the ground

I think it could be this one http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.203-0232.aspx

If it will be running vista which if it's new it probably will be then you should be looking for at least 2gb of ram. Vista takes a lot of ram. Go for a core duo 2 processor not a 2 core processor. The latter is the older vrsion. There is the AMD version which I think is the 64x 2 dualcore either is ok. Hard drives now adays are quite large. I'd go for one that is at least 100gb but you may be able to find one that has a 160 gb or a 320 gb HD which is generally 2 x 160 gb hard drives. I'd go for a 17.1" widescreen and a multi function dvd drive as it can play and record all the discs such as dvd, cd, cdr etc. Also a 17.1 " screen will generally have a full size keyboard. At the higher end of your price quote you should be able to get one with built in webcam and HD ready. Most come with an anti virus / internet security package, again generally it's a trial and again it's generally norton. Buy the full product when the trial runs out especially if he is planning to do internet banking on it in the future as the terms and conditions have recently been changed on all the big banks to make the computer user liable for dodgy card scams if they haven't got up to date security.

I wouldn't just go to tesco's for one regardless of the price and here is how I would and do shop on the internet.

I'd open an account with greasy palms which is a cashback site.

http://www.greasypalm.co.uk/r/?l=958795 if you click on this link and join via it when you save £15 I get £7.50 for refering you. Hardly going to make me rich but I'm honest. Then via the greasy palms site do a search for what you want. I'd seriously recomend having a look at play.com but do it via the greasy palm site and you get your cash back. there you can look at laptops within your budget or specification etc. If you buy through the site you get your cash back which may be about 1.5% or so. Another way is to use a shopbot to do a search on the criteria you use, cheapest price, specification etc then check to see if they are cheaper than going through a cashback site of which there are many.

This will probably get picked apart and critisised but it's what i would do and I hope it helps.

Chimp

Thanks everybody, for that varied and interesting advice.

I'm going to take the information away, and help my son make a intelligent decision about his purchase.

Kinel... can anyone know so much in so few dense lines. This is actually frightingly unreadable and only available when someone is talking computers

Sorry.