New Laptop

Thinking of buying a new laptop. Any reccomendations, do's or dont's

dont buy 2nd hand

How much are you looking to spend? I picked up a HP laptop (can't remember the model unfortunately) for under £300 and it's absolutely fine for working, browsing the net, watching films, playing Football Manager and downloading videos of, erm, football matches and the like. Unless you want something high-powered for gaming, there's no need to spend silly money.

Cornish Chris wrote:

How much are you looking to spend? I picked up a HP laptop (can't remember the model unfortunately) for under £300 and it's absolutely fine for working, browsing the net, watching films, playing Football Manager and downloading videos of, erm, football matches and the like. Unless you want something high-powered for gaming, there's no need to spend silly money.

Thats around what I was thinking.

Don't buy one. Not yet anyway.

It's not the laptop that is likely to be a problem but Windows 8. It comes pre-installed as standard and is completely unlike earlier Windowses to the extent that even turning the damned thing off is difficult.

For starters there's no Start button and from there on in it gets worse. You can work around it by installing a start button, for example, and using the Desktop version as opposed to the "app" version (there are no programs anymore - everything is an app) but it is a pain and quite frankly it is hassle I assume you could probably do without.

Coming soon is Windows 10. Wait until that is the pre-installed OS - it is supposed, according to people who have beta tested it, much better than W8 (which you will also have to upgrade to W8.1 almost immediately (i.e. before you have figured out what the hell is going on)).

Otherwise just buy the lappy with as much RAM as you are prepared to pay for when you hit the shop.

Windows 8 is a little different to start with. Even I'm nearly used to it now and I've had it 18 months.

I don't have any trouble starting it or turning it off either. Now when it decided that it was going to update to Windows 8.1 after I kept saying no, that did cause me some aggro!

Now I know where the off switch is things aren't nearly so bad.

I ended up making it as much like W7 as I could and from that point it's been fine

Get one with a touch screen.

dont look at notebooks ever absolute waste of time they are.

steveinspain wrote:

Get one with a touch screen.

Mine has a touch screen and I hardly ever use it.

Getting one where the screen detaches thus effectively becoming a tablet is probably a good idea if the touch screen aspect appeals.

Windows 8 is ridiculous. The new overlay has just added an entirely superfluous level of complexity.

Windows 8 is the biggest reason my next lappy will be a Mac. Windows 10 is still going to have a lot of the user-unfriendly complexities of its predecessor.

Pretty much every other device in my house is Apple - apart from my lappy, so at least then everything will link seamlessly. In theory.

Funnily enough I went through an Apple phase, but every iPhone I owned had hardware problems within weeks, and while Macs are beautiful and reliable, I just can't see that they're worth the extra £500 if you're only going to browse the net and watch Netflix.

I have just bought a linx windows tablet, 7 inch screen (£89).

Not a bad bit of kit tbh, windows 8 installed, with some interesting apps too.

It is unlike any other tablet i have had in the past.

It was a mare gettting to grips with how it works, but i am used to it now.

It is much quicker than my windows 8.1 laptop, which is like a snail on zopiclone.

pepsipete wrote:

Thinking of buying a new laptop.  Any reccomendations, do's or dont's

How'd you get on, Pete?

Daughter went in and bought one Saturday, £269 have not seen it yet.

Is Acer Aspire E5-S11 15.6 inch screen

Oooooooooh

I have a relatively new laptop with Windows 8.1 that came pre-installed. After coming from a windows 7 machine, I absolutely hated the windows 8.1 OS - still do!

A great workaround for those that loved windows 7 or indeed Windows XP, is a small program called classic shell. Once downloaded and installed, you can, via the classic shell settings page, make your machine look and behave exactly like a windows 7 or Windows XP machine.

I am now very happy with me newish laptop.

My son old laptop as gone down with window 7 restart on a loop. Been trying to fix it over the weekend no joy so far.

Tgwu wrote:

My son old laptop as gone down with window 7 restart on a loop. Been trying to fix it over the weekend no joy so far.

Sounds bad.

Try this: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Or run check disk because the Hard Drive could be knackered.

pepsipete wrote:

Is Acer Aspire E5-S11 15.6 inch screen

Does it work well?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Tgwu wrote:

My son old laptop as gone down with window 7 restart on a loop. Been trying to fix it over the weekend no joy so far.

Sounds bad.

Try this: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Or run check disk because the Hard Drive could be knackered.

Try all of them,  the computer do not go through the set up it says it should, it seem to happen when he update window 7


You cannot run check disk because window 7 will not load, it loads then automaticly goes back to start, it is called a looping

You need to interruupt the boot up process to break the loop.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This should work on any machine.

Then run Check Disk from the C: prompt.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

No joy, shop in market say £35 to fix