laptop advise please

[deano1]

hi since i know nothing about laptops i thought id ask for some advise
my mate has offerd me his asus x53sr laptop 250 gb hd and 3gb memory hes asking £300 is this a good price and are they any good ?????

thxs dean

[BigLad]

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,...9295960,00.htm


Review here, it was £550 in March so its up to you.

[G.O'Rilla]

Why is it being sold cheap is my question that I would ask. Perhaps there is a hidden intermittent fault. I hope not as mates shouldn't do this sort of thing, but life has taught me otherwise

[JuzzyD]

For £300 I would look at buying new with a warranty etc.

Some good deals about at the moment so take a look around first.

[brifen]

Not a bad price for the spec.

As with all these things it depends how big a budget you have. If you can afford a little extra then PCWorld have got a few Ex Demo machines under the category of 'Refurbished' search 'DV6920' on the PCW website and will bring up the HP DV6920 laptops they have for sale. The normal retail is knocked down from £599 to £549 but the refurbished ones are £439 still with 12Mth Warranty. Thats allot of laptop for your money as you are getting a Blu-Ray player too!! (Next Gen High Def DvD for those who are still in the dark ages). VHS doesn't cut it these days.

Bri.

If nothing else stay away from Advent/Packard Bell/Dell (Unless Alien Brand) and especially Advent ((DSG Retail (Currys/Dixons/PCWorld) own rebranded make from a South African Co)). My work has just bought 4 Advent machines and every one of them has dead pixels but of course unless the screen has so many dead pixels in a certain size area then DSG Retail will not accept them back. 100% failure!! Never had a problem with more reputable makers.

I personally reccoment Sony Vaio / HP (Compaq too) / ASUS / IBM (Lenovo).

RAM is dirt cheap now so the main points to look for on a laptop these days are dedicated graphics card and not onboard and processor . Budget always makes the decision in the end but a RAM upgrade is usualy possible and very in-expensive but quality counts (OCZ/Corsair).