Used Laptop for under £300? Is it possible

[Extra 300 Driver]

I am looking for a laptop. I don’t need the latest and greatest but I would like it to be able to run usual Windows stuff, Dreamweaver and play DVDs. I have been looking at ebay, as I don’t mind used stuff, but it’s a complete minefield!

My budget is £300 tops

Any assistance would be great

[rsv gone!]

I've seen a few new laptops for that money

[malman]

Thing with used laptops is you never know what the battery condition is like. Its not so bad these days with lithium ions but a replacement is still going to add £30 - £80 depending on model and whether you will use it on battery.

For £300 you can get entry level new machines from Dell, Tosh and HP. Watch the TV for the comet/currys special laptop offers as thes normally come in under 300.

www.wstore.co.uk sometimes have some decent prices

[joewilliams]

malman said:

www.wstore.co.uk sometimes have some decent prices

Wstore, or www.misco.co.uk are where I normally point people.

Get an entry level machine, go to www.crucial.com/uk and load it up with RAM, and the majority of users will be perfectly happy.

[Denis O]

Just bought a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo 5535 as a Christmas pressy which has 80G hard drive, 1G Ram, 1.73Ghz processor, DVD RW, 15.4" Screen, Vista Home Basic, wireless ready for £299 from Laptops Direct. It's not a games machine by any stretch of the imagination but for that money it is very competent and pretty fast with good wireless connectivity.

It seems pretty well built and solid. The only downside is the battery life which is quoted at 1hr 20 mins.

I also have a Samsung Q70 which I bought a couple of months ago and the Esprimo is comparable when performing simple tasks of surfing and office applications. Bear in mind the Samsung is almost £500 more and you'll realise what a great little machine the Fujitsu is.

Seems little point in buying 2nd hand when there are machines like this around.

Edited by Denis O on Tuesday 11th December 17:19

[MrTom]

There are loads of IBM/loveno t42's/t43s for that price on flea bay. These are lovely laptops, very light and strong with lovely keyboards. The battery's are always good even after a few years.

or

Get a cheap core duo dell e.g. a d620/d420 usually end at around £300-£350 on fleabay.

[mcflurry]

Both Staples and Toysrus have a entry level laptop for £299 at the moment

[K50 DEL]

Just bought a brand new HP 6715s from ebuyer - running XP not Vista (be quick, not many left) for £350 - bonus!!

[m3jappa]

yhm

[Scraggles]

google is your friend here, went onto pcworld, not known for being very cheap and had 3 laptops for under £300

[clonmult]

Scraggles said:

google is your friend here, went onto pcworld, not known for being very cheap and had 3 laptops for under £300

Caveat emptor ... (?)

The cheapest laptop at PCWorld (E System, £280) is useless. Its running XP with 256meg of RAM. It will crawl at even the most basic tasks - both my housemate and girlfriend have PCs running XP at roughly that configuration, and they're unusable.

So if you find an XP laptop, make sure it has at least 512meg, and if Vista, 1gig.

[K50 DEL]

clonmult said:

Scraggles said:

google is your friend here, went onto pcworld, not known for being very cheap and had 3 laptops for under £300

Caveat emptor ... (?)

The cheapest laptop at PCWorld (E System, £280) is useless. Its running XP with 256meg of RAM. It will crawl at even the most basic tasks - both my housemate and girlfriend have PCs running XP at roughly that configuration, and they're unusable.

So if you find an XP laptop, make sure it has at least 512meg, and if Vista, 1gig.

Definately

The HP I bought is running XP Pro with 1gb Ram and it's a flyer.

[andy_quantum]

I got a Tosh running XP from PC World to use for running diag on the car, £300 with 256 meg of memory, stuck a 512 card in the spare slot and it's plenty quick enough once I unloaded all the factory shipped shite that it came with

[Ledaig]

E-bay can be good if you know what you are looking for, I've just picked up a Compaq Evo 620C with 40Gb HD and 768Mb Ram for £109. Being a business orientated laptop it's a fast runner with and can still manage 3 hours on the battery despite being a few years old.
Runs CS2 with no problem, I will be throwing a couple of Nikon raw files at it later to see how it copes with them.

The upshot is that if you can bide your time a good deal will come along, but it may mean waiting and watching.

For £300 on e-bay you should be able to get a better, faster second hand laptop than the cheap PC world deals. I did have an 'E' series from them (PC World) about three years ago, in about two years the cable to the screen started breaking down, the DVD drive packed up and then the HD failed - hence the reason for going for a better quality but used laptop this time.

[Plotloss]

I thought this was possible, so bought a laptop at £299

Its shit.

Here endeth the lesson.