Daughters want laptops (1 Viewer)

[John o'Sullivan]

Am thinking of buying two laptops for Christmas for my daughters. They use the computer for MSN. downloading music, photos, interneting and very ocasionally schoolwork. One of them likes playing games as well but not latest top spec type games. I get the impression that they don't need too high spec a computer. I've done a trawl of the shops and have a few options.

A Fujitsu Amilo L73 20GW £349 Staples Intel Celon M380 up to 1.6ghz, 256 mb memory, 40 GB Hd, XP home,

A Fujitsu Amilo Pro V2055 £399 PC World 1.63 GHZ, XP Home, 512 memory,

also there

a Compaq C300EA 80 Gb hard drive. Media centre, DVD multidrive rewriter, 1.6 GHZ processor £399

At Comet an Acer A53692 WCMi
1.6GhZ, Media Centre, 60 GB HDrive, 1024 MB ram £399

All coments gratefully recieved. If the Staples Fujitsu would meet their needs then I'd buy those on price but I'M also interested in reliability, aftersales etc.

I'd be grateful for a response ASAP
Thanks John O'

 

[Tranquility Base]

Blimey! You don't want to adopt a 56 year-old son, do you!?
In my day, we got a tangerine, some pencils (etc etc etc!) LOL!

 

[alan_rymer]

Am thinking of buying two laptops for Christmas for my daughters. They use the computer for MSN. downloading music, photos, interneting and very ocasionally schoolwork. One of them likes playing games as well but not latest top spec type games. I get the impression that they don't need too high spec a computer. I've done a trawl of the shops and have a few options.

A Fujitsu Amilo L73 20GW £349 Staples Intel Celon M380 up to 1.6ghz, 256 mb memory, 40 GB Hd, XP home,

A Fujitsu Amilo Pro V2055 £399 PC World 1.63 GHZ, XP Home, 512 memory,

also there

a Compaq C300EA 80 Gb hard drive. Media centre, DVD multidrive rewriter, 1.6 GHZ processor £399

At Comet an Acer A53692 WCMi
1.6GhZ, Media Centre, 60 GB HDrive, 1024 MB ram £399

All coments gratefully recieved. If the Staples Fujitsu would meet their needs then I'd buy those on price but I'M also interested in reliability, aftersales etc.

I'd be grateful for a response ASAP
Thanks John O'

Not a reccomendation, just a question.
Whats the manufacturers warranty on each one?.

 

[John o'Sullivan]

Not a reccomendation, just a question.
Whats the manufacturers warranty on each one?.

simple answer I'm afraid. don't know

 

[Duke Leto]

Good point, my mother and father in law did the same recently and eventually choose a laptop that had a 3 yr on site warranty from Dell. specs all the same but they or I would be unable to effect a repair on a laptop after the 1st year. They seem pleased with the purchase.
Saying that I did get my daughter a Fujitsu Amilo a couple of years ago and touch wood its never had a problem as with my wifes 3 yr old Toshiba.
Suppose there some law that determines who has problems and who doesn't.
One big tip is make sure you have an iron clad security system on both, I use Norton Security and depending on the ages you may want to activate parental controls.
Yahoo Messenger, MSN, IM and all other communication or P2P services are ripe with nasties. Again touch wood Norton has never let me down
Regards
Steve

 

[baillieswells]

If you want the best, but actually cost little different from a similar spec PC, the latest Apple Macs with Intel processors take some beating.

 

[RayE]

Blimey! You don't want to adopt a 56 year-old son, do you!?
In my day, we got a tangerine, some pencils (etc etc etc!) LOL!

Don't forget the 2nd hand jigsaws. Can I be your son aswell please. LOL

 

[Perry Grin]

Recently bought a new laptop myself, for similar use. Looked at Sony Vaio, Fujitsi Amilo, Compaq, Acer, HP all the high street names........ Based on cost, spec and freinds recommendation, went for a Dell Inspiron 6400. Very pleased with my purchase, not sure if they will come in much under £500 though?

 

[scampo]

Am thinking of buying two laptops for Christmas for my daughters. They use the computer for MSN. downloading music, photos, interneting and very ocasionally schoolwork. One of them likes playing games as well but not latest top spec type games. I get the impression that they don't need too high spec a computer. I've done a trawl of the shops and have a few options.

A Fujitsu Amilo L73 20GW £349 Staples Intel Celon M380 up to 1.6ghz, 256 mb memory, 40 GB Hd, XP home,

A Fujitsu Amilo Pro V2055 £399 PC World 1.63 GHZ, XP Home, 512 memory,

also there

a Compaq C300EA 80 Gb hard drive. Media centre, DVD multidrive rewriter, 1.6 GHZ processor £399

At Comet an Acer A53692 WCMi
1.6GhZ, Media Centre, 60 GB HDrive, 1024 MB ram £399

All coments gratefully recieved. If the Staples Fujitsu would meet their needs then I'd buy those on price but I'M also interested in reliability, aftersales etc.

I'd be grateful for a response ASAP
Thanks John O'

Tips from bitter and long experience...

First, forget Celeron and other "cut down" processors - they just don't cut the mustard. Go for a full Intel processor with good size "onboard cache"; go for a hard drive that spins at at 5400rpm; go for no less than 1024mb high speed ram; and finally go for a truly decent high quality sound card (maybe Creative Labs) and a decent separate (not shared) 3-D graphics card, maybe by nVidia (this will mean the machine will run at a fair old speed. Slower processors, on-board cheap graphics cards and slower hard drives with less RAM memory cause bottlenecks and frustration every time - you'll regret buying them!). A writable DVD-ROM onboard is a useful extra these days. All this can be had for a decent price these days. Good suppliers are eBuyer, Dabs, Pixmania and Amazon. My brother has bought two machines from Staples and had nothing but trouble. My nephew bought his (an Acer) from eBuyer and when it went wring it was replaced and sorted within four days.

Acer and Fujitsu are both good value. Both have excellent after-sales service whereby they send a courier to collect the machine and turn around delivery within 48 hours.

I use a Fujitsu Amilo Pro - it's excellent. Rock solid and fast.

Aldi currently sell a 2Gb memory stick for ~£20-00, that would make a great extra fro whichever machine you buy; also useful is a decent laptop mouse as the mouse pad type thingummys are a pain to use - a good one is the Logitech wireless MX200.

 

[Mickymouse]

Think yourself lucky John, I have got three boys who all want laptops for crimbo and I shall wind up buying them if only to keep the little beggars off my PC.

Mick

 

[John o'Sullivan]

Thanks for your replies people.

 

[Colin Key]

Is it necessary that they have one each? If you could come to some amicable agreement about "time sharing" you could go for something much better.

I'm using a fairly top of the range (well, it was when I bought it three years ago) Sony Vaio but will almost certainly go for MacBook Pro next time.

 

[John o'Sullivan]

O.k. update time. We originally bought two fujitsu amirilo pros. One of these is working fine the other was returned boxing day having gone phut when DVD software loaded.
(replaced immediately by PC world when I showed them details of error message). No fujitsus in stock so a packard bell bought. This working great and both daughters now happy.

 

[Big Phil]

If you want the best, but actually cost little different from a similar spec PC, the latest Apple Macs with Intel processors take some beating.

I'll second that....I just bought a Core 2 Duo Macbook, very nice it is. Hefty educational discount available too.....

 

[Neil]

I just bought a Macbook (Intel Core 2 Duo ) as well and it's a great little laptop. Neil.