Be Excellent To Each Other

I have a friend who's just moved into his own flat and needs his own computer. I'd say getting a laptop would be his best bet, as he just requires it to be able to surf the net and play the occasional game of Football Manager. He wants to spend as little as possible, but requires Windows with a screen of at least 12".

So, what are his options?

Well a netbook is out, they only have 10" screens.

Normal laptops, especially second hand are extremely cheap and I wouldn't consider a PC tower for home use any more, personally. I got my mother a Toshiba one last year, it only cost £150 and it's pretty reliable with XP SP2 on it. (have a look at ebay item 330303730041 for the kind of thing)

Ah right, sorry. I thought netbook=laptop. I'm thinking of notebook. A 10" screen is fine.

Well they have those Acer Aspire One netbooks in Asda for £150 new. Remember these don't have a CD or DVD drive. Unless being ultra-portable is important, a second hand normal size laptop will be more use overall for the same price. In fact you can probably get a new (but low end) normal size laptop for not much more!

Nope, I doubt it'll be taken out of the flat. Where to buy second-hand, though? Don't mention eBay.

Ah. I always get them from a popular auction site. Oh well

Got any trusted sellers? I'm not sure if he'd be keen or not.

Also, aren't the Aspire Ones Linux for £150?

I've got one of those Acers. Added an extra 1gb of ram to make it up to 1.5gb (£20 for pc world, but half that if you buy online) and installed xp pro on it no problem.

to install xp, you need to use a memory stick. to install other stuff you can share a cd drive from another pc over the wireless network (although not much use if you dont have another pc.)

I only got it for browsing, but I'm very impressed with the speed, and plan to install some more stuff on it to really test it.

I think that's too much of a faff for him. Plus he lives miles away so I couldn't easily go round and do it for him. I need the best deal on a Windows netbook/laptop. The cheapest I can seem to find is in the £300-350 range.

Try these guys? http://www.laptop-seller.com/bargain-la ... -x300.html

No idea if they're honest or not.

A netbook is not a good fit particularly for "will never leave flat" - they're supposed to have major battery life and portability at the expense of size and processing power. A half decent laptop from Dell shouldn't be too expensive and will be much nicer to work on. Netbooks are definitely more for people who want a little terminal to carry around.

FTFM.

Been there, done that, got the tiny laptop with the apple sticker on it

PS the battery life isn't particularly long once you've done this.

Indeed, I'm planning on buying an NC10 within the next few weeks

I see the NC20 is kind of announced for early Feb, hoping that'll push the NC10's price down a little more...

I have, and I can't play with it 'cos it's in Borehamwood until I go and demand it off DHL at the weekend.

I got a refurbished Dell desktop from these guys. They had laptops as well when I last looked:
http://www.blackbarncomputers.com/

The desktop came with a short warranty with a clean install and copy of AVG. No extra crap, nice to get a Dell out of the box without a load of shit installed!

A current Netbook would be rudimentary at best on Football Manager these days. I'd say £350's worth of something dell or acer should run it smoothly enough - not to forget the 3-D match engine which is going to want a modest gpu at least.

3D match engine, yesterday.*


* New Football Manager should be called New Football Manager. This saves confusion for me as saying Football Manager conjures up images of Kevin Toms' beard.

MrsA and I want a laptop as well. ich cheapness, all it needs to do is be able to run Office and Firefox. Linux is not acceptable, MacBooks are, much cheapness preferred.

You know, there's not that much difference if you squint.