What laptop for £250-ish

[PostHeads123]

Relative needs a new laptop will mainly use it for MS office and browsing the web, storing pictures etc, ideal screen size 13-14inch. Looked around seems alot avaliable any one recommend one, would like half decent performance and Windows installed.

Thanks

[Dave.]

2nd hand Dell/HP?

Would probably outlast a new £250 laptop from Pc World etc.

ETA - https://m.dell.com/h5/m/r/outlet.euro.dell.com/Onl...

Edited by Dave. on Saturday 1st June 14:48

[Derek Smith]

Dave. said:

2nd hand Dell/HP?

Would probably outlast a new £250 laptop from Pc World etc.

ETA - https://m.dell.com/h5/m/r/outlet.euro.dell.com/Onl...

Edited by Dave. on Saturday 1st June 14:48

I'll endorse that. I'm still using a Dell from 2008, a Lattitude 6400. All I've done to it, apart from take care of it, is install a 250GB SSD with Linux, currently Mint Cinnamon. The keys are still sharp, there's no deterioration noticeable in the screen and it's quite fast, certainly on boot up. I use it for writing, with Libre Office, and browsing.

For £250, I'd say second hand will be the better option.

[AJB88]

Something second hand with an i5, decent amount of ram and a SSD should suit.

[PostHeads123]

Cheers thanks for replies I will check out the dell outlet.

[Mr Pointy]

The Dell outlet isn't second hand as such as they more like refurbished returns so I'd doubt there's much for £250 - the one linked to is actually £366 (watch out for VAT on the prices).

There's plenty of good second user laptops on ebay. Just look for a reseller that offers a warranty; it shouldn't be too hard to find one that will give you 6 months & a few might offer 12. The key features for me would be an i5 processor (or i7), at least 8Gb of RAM (more is better) & an SSD of at least 500Gb (it's relatively expensive to upgrade an HDD to a decent SSD). Windows 7 wouldn't put me off too much as it can be upgraded to Windows 10. Dell & Lenovo should be easy to find.

[sgrimshaw]

I'm amazed, this thread has been running for over three hours and no-one has suggested a Chromebook .... makes a nice change!

[grumbledoak]

New laptops are £500.

A refurbished HP Elitebook from Amazon has been a hit at that sort of money.

IIRC these guys also get mentioned on PH
https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/st/pre-owned-lapto...

[TameRacingDriver]

Something like a Lenovo Thinkpad T430/T440 would be my choice. Durable machines, and easy enough to fix/upgrade. Cheap enough to buy with 8Gb RAM and SSD. The latter machine is also touch enabled.

[bloomen]

TameRacingDriver said:

Something like a Lenovo Thinkpad T430/T440 would be my choice. Durable machines, and easy enough to fix/upgrade. Cheap enough to buy with 8Gb RAM and SSD. The latter machine is also touch enabled.

Thinkpads of that era have the worst screens I've ever seen on any laptop of any description - ever.

I've no idea how they could've charged business people thousands of pounds to send them blind with the blurry, milky abominations they fitted. I'd only ever touch one with an IPS upgrade.

If it didn't have that I'd have literally any other laptop.

[dhutch]

Also in the market for a new laptop for my gf, I previously bought a used £250 HP EliteBook of eBay and very tempted to do the same again.

That was years ago but it still works great, added a second sim of ram to make 8gb.
HP 8460p 14" 500GB i5 2.50GHz 4GB Win7

Points I would look out for
- Does it look nicked, ie professional trader with other ex-industry stock and or multiple of each type.
- Is it a UK layout keyboard, some are not, this may or may not bother you.
- Does it come with ms office on it. If not this will cost you £25 from softwaregeeks.


Daniel

[Derek Smith]

dhutch said:

Also in the market for a new laptop for my gf, I previously bought a used £250 HP EliteBook of eBay and very tempted to do the same again.

That was years ago but it still works great, added a second sim of ram to make 8gb.
HP 8460p 14" 500GB i5 2.50GHz 4GB Win7

Points I would look out for
- Does it look nicked, ie professional trader with other ex-industry stock and or multiple of each type.
- Is it a UK layout keyboard, some are not, this may or may not bother you.
- Does it come with ms office on it. If not this will cost you £25 from softwaregeeks.


Daniel

A very good point about the UK layout.

Don't worry about MS Office. I write for a living. I often work for a woman who 'runs' a couple of dozen writers. She's very successful and has contracts with a few big-name companies. She uses Google Docs almost exclusively. She occasionally uses Libre Office. I write on a laptop with Linux, so MS won't work without a lot of fiddling. I use Google Docs offline, and Libre Office.

MS Office might be essential for those who use all the facilities of the various programmes, but these people are rare.

[TameRacingDriver]

bloomen said:

TameRacingDriver said:

Something like a Lenovo Thinkpad T430/T440 would be my choice. Durable machines, and easy enough to fix/upgrade. Cheap enough to buy with 8Gb RAM and SSD. The latter machine is also touch enabled.

Thinkpads of that era have the worst screens I've ever seen on any laptop of any description - ever.

I've no idea how they could've charged business people thousands of pounds to send them blind with the blurry, milky abominations they fitted. I'd only ever touch one with an IPS upgrade.

If it didn't have that I'd have literally any other laptop.

They’re not the greatest but i wouldnt go that far!

[bloomen]

TameRacingDriver said:

They’re not the greatest but i wouldnt go that far!

I would. I've had junk that was £150 brand new that was less upsetting to the eyes.

[GlenMH]

Can you stretch to 300 quid?
https://www.ebuyer.com/874549-hp-255-g7-ryzen-3-8g...

My parents have got a G5 that has been very reliable.I have just put a 17 quid SSD in it and it flies....

[dhutch]

Derek Smith said:

A very good point about the UK layout.

Don't worry about MS Office. ..

Indeed, mines not UK and it's not a huge issue to me (I actually tell it's it's UK and don't look at it) , else an replacement UK spec keyboard isn't expensive, but it would annoy some.

Take your point about ms office alternatives but as I use it day in day out at work, do work on documents where formats detail matters, I think £25 for word/excel/pptx is well worth it.

[JulianHJ]

GlenMH said:

Can you stretch to 300 quid?
https://www.ebuyer.com/874549-hp-255-g7-ryzen-3-8g...

My parents have got a G5 that has been very reliable.I have just put a 17 quid SSD in it and it flies....

I bought that HP for my dad last month - it's actually surprisingly reasonable, and I'm quite fussy about laptops. I spent quite a bit of time comparing the ~£300 options and it's surpassed my expectations.

[bloomen]

dhutch said:

Indeed, mines not UK and it's not a huge issue to me (I actually tell it's it's UK and don't look at it) , else an replacement UK spec keyboard isn't expensive, but it would annoy some.

Set it as UK when you reinstall W10 and add some stickers if you're not a touch typist. Some keyboards are hard to find, a git to install and crazily expensive.

[Dave.]

bloomen said:

dhutch said:

Indeed, mines not UK and it's not a huge issue to me (I actually tell it's it's UK and don't look at it) , else an replacement UK spec keyboard isn't expensive, but it would annoy some.

Set it as UK when you reinstall W10 and add some stickers if you're not a touch typist. Some keyboards are hard to find, a git to install and crazily expensive.

You could always use autohotkey to switch keys around if you'd prefer.

[Puggit]

Another vote for 2nd hand business laptop. Something for £250 from Currys (for example) will be very low powered. A £250 ex-business machine will last years.

This is what we do for our kids' laptops.