You can get very good deals if

you go for a refurbished laptop. Much higher spec for the same budget, if you don't mind the fact that it has been returned or slightly used and returned to factory settings.

There are specific sites that sell such machines and a lot of the laptops in the John Lewis sale recently were customer returns (Basically people have decided they don't want them within the statutory period and returned them, but JL can't sell them as new, so knock up to 50% off.)

For me, I knew I wanted Windows, for compatibility, for budget and because it is what I'm used to. I did a lot of what people below advise - look at what components are important to you and then read reviews around your budget. ***

For me, largest screen I could get was important (as portability isn't) as was a decent processor/RAM, 10 key keypad on the right of the main kb, etc. Not important was touch screen, top of the range processor, etc.

I mainly use for Chrome browsing, email and Office. Office is a consideration if you have to pay for it; I get Office with my domain, so I have already paid for it - if you do word processing and are used to MS Word, then you might want to build Office into your budget (unless you don't pay for it)

Long story short, I was able to get everything I wanted, 17.3 inch screen, core i5 processor, 8gb ram, decent screen/sound/build quality for under ?300 because it was half price at JL. Normally would have been ?550, so I feel I got a bargain for what is more or less a brand new laptop.

My tuppence anyway...

***Read Amazon, etc. feedback too because if you read between the lines, you can find out whether a particular model or brand has features or problems that you are going to have issues with. e.g. one brand has a flexible keyboard that some people like but other feel it makes the entire laptop feel flimsy and cheap - I went to JL, tried it, hated it, so avoided it. It wasn't just a cheap component necessarily, as they had the same kb on their high end machines too, so was just a feature. Also look at which brands install a lot of bloatware because this can really slow down your machine and some even routinely pre-install spyware on your machine for data collection - keep an eye on this, unless you are able to install a vanilla windows build

Posted By: Jester, Aug 10, 19:50:13