Buying a new laptop

[Kraka's Dad]

In the near future I will be looking to buy a laptop in UK and am looking for advice. We will be using MS Office and surfing the net etc. Won't be gaming. What should I look for and what don't we need? Hope you're able to help as choice is wide and options baffling.
Thanks

[theprice01]

l'll only buy Hewlett Packard products, they've never let me down.
Just make sure the operating platform is 'Windows'

[Gregjam]

You really need to talk to an impartial person knowledgable in the current market as you would have to give a lot more information before even starting to make a shortlist. Start thinking battery life, connectivity, screen size, weight and a whole lot more. I fear you will get a lot of well intentioned conflicting advice here.

[pdm3547]

Buy something in the £500 price range; HP, Dell or Samsung. Get someone who knows a little bit to take the "bloatware" off. These are the programmes that come pre-installed and just take u room whilst adding nothing.

If you're not gaming, £500 will buy you something top end for what you need.

[Kraka's Dad]

Thanks
What would you classify as bloatware?

[adammike]

buy a sony then byou will know what bloatware is.

[PeteC]

I've always liked Fujitsu. Never let me down. High quality machines.

http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/products/comp ... notebooks/

[Dannie Boy]

As Gregjam warned "I fear you will get a lot of well intentioned conflicting advice here", as you've already had recommendations for HP, Dell, Samsung, Fujitsu and I'll throw in Toshiba.

I'm no expert but when I bought my laptop some 3.1/2 years ago, I bought the best spec/price combination that was around within my budget, at least that way you future proof it as much as possible.

[Gregjam]

Bloatware is the unwanted programmes a phone or computer come with that you do not need or want. If you are going to be using the laptop for both Thai and English typing it might be worth comparing costs between here and abroad. One question to ask is will you be using the laptop in Thailand as local support and a keyboard with Thai characters already on it might be a useful thing to have.

[buksida]

Brand names are pretty irrelevant, you need to look what is under the hood and decide what you want it for. For just the basics I'd suggest an Intel Core i3 with 4Gb of RAM and a Terrabyte of hard drive (you wont need a fancy graphics card unless gaming or video editing).

You may be stuck with Windows 8 as Microshite paid the manufacturers a lot of money not to produce any drivers for Windows 7 for new laptops.

Agreed with the above, you'll get a 30% boost in startup time and performance by removing all the crap that is pre-installed on them.

[GLCQuantum]

My friend had a top of the range HP laptop - about 70,000 baht. Kept breaking down - I won't use HP.

I had a Toshiba - 'Twas pretty crap from the very beginning. Died after 3 years of schoolwork. Toshiba TV also crap, also dead after less than 2 years - I will no longer use Toshiba.

So at the end of the month, I'm gonna give Dell a whirl.

[Dannie Boy]

This might point you in the right direction http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/379540/ ... -right-now

[STEVE G]

I only use a computer for communicating on the internet and handling documents so the internal specifications have become meaningless to me now, any laptop will do the actual computing, I never filled a hard drive when they were a couple of gigabytes let alone a terabyte!
I tend to look more for the quality of the screen and keyboard and the construction of the case and hinges and reliability reviews, I don't even care about battery life as I tend to use them either at home or in a hotel room plugged into a socket.
I've got two Acers, a laptop and a netbook, the first is still going after 11 years and the second over five so I'm happy with that.

[barrys]

After having some bad experiences with Acer machines, I recently bought a Lenovo (G410) with a Core i5 processor and pre-installed licensed Windows 8.1 for just over 16k baht on the top floor of the old HH shopping mall.

Have been very happy with it so far!!

[Gregjam]

Steve G raises a good point in regard to the laptops use. Will it be a portable desktop (as most laptops are these days) or used for computing on the move where battery life and connectivity as well as size and weight are concerned. Buying any computer is not a simple job these days. There will always be compromises where costs come into it. I do hope that Kraka's dad lets us know what was purchased in the end and how satisfactory it turned out.