Which laptop for college work for £500?

[Big Rig]

Can anyone recommend a half decent laptop for £500? It's for a friend who is starting an OU course. It'll be used for Word, Power point, Excel and general surfing.

He's found this so far for £499...

https://www.johnlewis.com/hp-14s-laptop-amd-ryzen-...

Is there anything better for the money?

Must be a laptop, he doesn't want a tablet with a keyboard.

TIA.

[SCEtoAUX]

I'd save myself £260 and get one of these:

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-lenovo...

I have similar, it's superb and will breeze through those tasks.

Excellent keyboard too.

[The_Jackal]

Literally any laptop of tablet will do what he wants.
Any differences in specs wont make much difference to what he will use it for.
Even a modern phone with a bluetooth keyboard and a chrome cast will have a huge amount of processing power.
And be a hell of a lot lighter to carry around.
Sounds like he isnt bothered about quoting specs, so I would just let him buy the one he likes the look of.

[Jonny_]

SCEtoAUX said:

I'd save myself £260 and get one of these:

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-lenovo...

I have similar, it's superb and will breeze through those tasks.

Excellent keyboard too.

Refurbed ex-corporate ThinkPads are my default recommendation. Perhaps wouldn't go with a T420, though; they're pretty old now and will struggle with Windows 10 and modern bloated browsers etc.

About 18 months ago I bought a refurbished T450s, with i7 CPU, an SSD and full HD display for £350 via eBay. A quick dig around on eBay suggests that between £350 and £500 will currently get you a nice T460 running Windows 10.

The T450/460/470 series are lovely machines. They have 2 batteries, one inbuilt and one removable, which gives you a good long battery life and if you intend to do a lot of work away from a power source, so long as the internal battery has some life left you can hot-swap the removable battery while the machine is running.

A few things to look out for...

• Don't buy anything with a traditional hard drive. SSD makes a massive difference to performance.
• Most of the laptops will have the miserable 1366x768 resolution screen, it's well worth looking for one with the full HD (1920x1080) display.
• Make sure that the laptop has a UK keyboard, quite a few crop up with the US or oddball European keyboards
• If you are ever likely to run a virtual machine, you need Windows 10 Professional, NOT Home
• A lot of ex-corporate machines will have a locked BIOS, which can make future upgrades or repairs tricky. Check that the laptop has an unlocked BIOS or that the seller will supply the password

[SCEtoAUX]

Good points, but I find that even my humble T410 makes incredibly light work of anything the usual office/browsing/email stuff.

It's running Windows 10, with just 4Gb Ram, though I did chuck a cheap SSD in.

Screen is 14 inch at 1440 x 900 which I find to be perfect. Battery has long seen better days but I only use it on mains power. If I want something battery driven I take my Galaxy Tab.

[ayedubya]

Jonny_ said:

Refurbed ex-corporate ThinkPads are my default recommendation. Perhaps wouldn't go with a T420, though; they're pretty old now and will struggle with Windows 10 and modern bloated browsers etc.

About 18 months ago I bought a refurbished T450s, with i7 CPU, an SSD and full HD display for £350 via eBay. A quick dig around on eBay suggests that between £350 and £500 will currently get you a nice T460 running Windows 10.

The T450/460/470 series are lovely machines. They have 2 batteries, one inbuilt and one removable, which gives you a good long battery life and if you intend to do a lot of work away from a power source, so long as the internal battery has some life left you can hot-swap the removable battery while the machine is running.

A few things to look out for...

• Don't buy anything with a traditional hard drive. SSD makes a massive difference to performance.
• Most of the laptops will have the miserable 1366x768 resolution screen, it's well worth looking for one with the full HD (1920x1080) display.
• Make sure that the laptop has a UK keyboard, quite a few crop up with the US or oddball European keyboards
• If you are ever likely to run a virtual machine, you need Windows 10 Professional, NOT Home
• A lot of ex-corporate machines will have a locked BIOS, which can make future upgrades or repairs tricky. Check that the laptop has an unlocked BIOS or that the seller will supply the password

which 'grade' refurbished did you get? i like the idea of a thinkpad, i need a 14inch laptop for some on the couch work, and done want to lug my heavy work laptop from my home office. i would like to pay circa £350.

a lot of them on ebay are grade 2 refurbs 'scratched and showing signs of wear' i would be interested to see what the condition is of a grade 1.

thanks

[Big Rig]

Jonny_ said:

Refurbed ex-corporate ThinkPads are my default recommendation. Perhaps wouldn't go with a T420, though; they're pretty old now and will struggle with Windows 10 and modern bloated browsers etc.

About 18 months ago I bought a refurbished T450s, with i7 CPU, an SSD and full HD display for £350 via eBay. A quick dig around on eBay suggests that between £350 and £500 will currently get you a nice T460 running Windows 10.

The T450/460/470 series are lovely machines. They have 2 batteries, one inbuilt and one removable, which gives you a good long battery life and if you intend to do a lot of work away from a power source, so long as the internal battery has some life left you can hot-swap the removable battery while the machine is running.

A few things to look out for...

• Don't buy anything with a traditional hard drive. SSD makes a massive difference to performance.
• Most of the laptops will have the miserable 1366x768 resolution screen, it's well worth looking for one with the full HD (1920x1080) display.
• Make sure that the laptop has a UK keyboard, quite a few crop up with the US or oddball European keyboards
• If you are ever likely to run a virtual machine, you need Windows 10 Professional, NOT Home
• A lot of ex-corporate machines will have a locked BIOS, which can make future upgrades or repairs tricky. Check that the laptop has an unlocked BIOS or that the seller will supply the password

Excellent advice especially about the bios password, never knew that!

[Jonny_]

ayedubya said:

which 'grade' refurbished did you get? i like the idea of a thinkpad, i need a 14inch laptop for some on the couch work, and done want to lug my heavy work laptop from my home office. i would like to pay circa £350.

a lot of them on ebay are grade 2 refurbs 'scratched and showing signs of wear' i would be interested to see what the condition is of a grade 1.

thanks

Can't recall what grade it was, the eBay listing is no longer available to view, but with these things it's all in the detail. If all the listing states is a general "grade", then I'd either ask for more details or look elsewhere. "Scratched and showing signs of wear" could cover a wide range of conditions, from very insignificant marks to something that's a bit of a state. My T450s has a few marks on the outer casing but otherwise is immaculate.

Dealbreakers for me are any damage to the screen, any cracks or breaks to the casing, or anything that affects the function of the machine - missing keys, noisy fans, broken ports etc.

SCEtoAUX said:

Good points, but I find that even my humble T410 makes incredibly light work of anything the usual office/browsing/email stuff.

It's running Windows 10, with just 4Gb Ram, though I did chuck a cheap SSD in.

Screen is 14 inch at 1440 x 900 which I find to be perfect. Battery has long seen better days but I only use it on mains power. If I want something battery driven I take my Galaxy Tab.

We did the same with our T430 (bought for a mere £150 nearly 3 years ago, incidentally - that machine was an absolute steal). Fitting a cheap SSD made a big difference, and adding another 4Gb RAM module helped too, but it's still noticeably slower than the T450.

It's entirely usable at the moment, daughter does her homework on it, mrs uses it for browsing, etc, but you definitely notice the difference after using the newer one. The trouble is that each Windows update bogs it down a little more. For that reason I'd always advocate buying as new and fast a machine as possible so as to maximise its useful life.

[devnull]

Came here to say 'buy a refurbished Thinkpad' but this thread has already been taken care of!

Dell XPS 13 refurbished would also be a good shout but is less modular / repairable than a Thinkpad.

[ayedubya]

sorry to jump on to OP's post... but looking for similar guidance.

looking elsewhere from ebay i have found a "Grade A"

T460

HD screen
Core i5 6th gen
8gb RAM
256gb SSD
charger
uk keyboard
win10 pro 64bit

£300 inc delivery

this a decent price?

[Tony N]

Would this be a good buy at £515?

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-hp-eli...la-931676328627&channel=googlesearch&gclid=CjwKCAjw4rf6BRAvEiwAn2Q76sRp3mTLz0aY6rJKU2GdxEFfGo59T7AM3AMm2cQY-fUJ8XvpW-PsmBoCzsIQAvD_BwE

Don't know why there is a smiley in the middle of the link sorry

[sgrimshaw]

Big Rig said:

Can anyone recommend a half decent laptop for £500? It's for a friend who is starting an OU course. It'll be used for Word, Power point, Excel and general surfing.

Must be a laptop, he doesn't want a tablet with a keyboard.

TIA.

If they don't need the portability of a 14" or they intend using an external monitor, I'd go for 15.6" screen ... the extra inch and a half makes all the difference

[Jonny_]

ayedubya said:

sorry to jump on to OP's post... but looking for similar guidance.

looking elsewhere from ebay i have found a "Grade A"

T460

HD screen
Core i5 6th gen
8gb RAM
256gb SSD
charger
uk keyboard
win10 pro 64bit

£300 inc delivery

this a decent price?

Worth checking with the seller that the BIOS is unlocked or that the password will be provided. But price wise, for £300 I'd be on that like a tramp on chips!

Tony N said:

Would this be a good buy at £515?

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-hp-eli...la-931676328627&channel=googlesearch&gclid=CjwKCAjw4rf6BRAvEiwAn2Q76sRp3mTLz0aY6rJKU2GdxEFfGo59T7AM3AMm2cQY-fUJ8XvpW-PsmBoCzsIQAvD_BwE

Don't know why there is a smiley in the middle of the link sorry

I don't know a great deal about the HP Elitebooks, but the spec of that looks very similar to the T460 mentioned above. Seems a little expensive for the spec although it does have the larger screen. This ThinkPad T560 gives you similar spec and same size 15.6" display for less... (Usual caveats apply re enquiring about BIOS password first, etc)
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313178228447

sgrimshaw said:

If they don't need the portability of a 14" or they intend using an external monitor, I'd go for 15.6" screen ... the extra inch and a half makes all the difference

... Yep, in which case the larger T5xx ThinkPad will fit the bill, they're a bit rarer than the 14" T4xx laptops but easy enough to find on eBay.

For big screens a Dell Precision might also be worth a look, I was working with a contractor recently who uses a 17" one similar to this...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124262545070
Was a lovely machine, bulky but huge spec, it had both SSD and HDD (boot from SSD, with a big mechanical drive for bulk data storage) and if I remember right the chap said he could swap the DVD drive for another HDD!


... Need to stop looking at this thread before I buy another bloody computer

[dickymint]

No Chromebook supporters then?

[AJB88]

dickymint said:

No Chromebook supporters then?

Here.

[ging84]

dickymint said:

No Chromebook supporters then?

What's the point?
It's like trying to convince people to try a different sort of car, they've never driven but have already made up their mind it's not for them.

[AJB88]

ging84 said:

What's the point?
It's like trying to convince people to try a different sort of car, they've never driven but have already made up their mind it's not for them.

Agree.

[Bacon Is Proof]

Jonny_ said:

Refurbed ex-corporate ThinkPads are my default recommendation. Perhaps wouldn't go with a T420, though; they're pretty old now and will struggle with Windows 10 and modern bloated browsers etc.

Better processor than my old sub £300 Acer, which has no problems with W10 or Firefox. It does have 8Gb of RAM, and also a SSD which contrary to popular opinion made fk all difference to performance! Not that I shift large files about mind.

[mmm-five]

dickymint said:

No Chromebook supporters then?

Whatever does the job should be considered - pencil & paper perhaps?

The OP may not even need MS Office, and may get by with Google's own offerings - but as the OP specifically stated Office, we'll have to assume they do need it.

I don't believe the Chromebook/mobile version of Office is exactly the same as the full Windows version, so maybe that's why the OP isn't considering one?

If it's anything like Office on iOS or web, then I couldn't use them for my purposes as there are too many functions/features I need that are missing.

Although I believe Google are planning to use a virtualisation solution from Parallels to allow Windows apps to run.

[mmm-five]

ging84 said:

What's the point?
It's like trying to convince people to try a different sort of car, they've never driven but have already made up their mind it's not for them.

If I need 4 seats, then I don't have to drive a 2-seater to know it's not suitable (or in my case, I bought both*)

* same goes for computers as I've got iPad, 2 iMac, MacPros, 2 dual-boot Mac Minis, Intel NUC, HP Z-Book, Lenovo IdeaPad Chromebook, Acer Chromebook - nothing linux though