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[Grumpy]

There seems to be a fair few Oofers on here with detailed
computer knowledge, so I would like to take advantage of
that.

Although I normally use a pentium desktop, running XP,
which seems perfectly adequate, I also sometimes use my laptop.

My 6 year old laptop is struggling to keep up with modern
resource hungry requirements. So as they are now so cheap
to replace, I thought I might treat myself to a new one, rather
than trying to upgrade this one.
Murphys Law states that as soon as I've spent the money
upgrading the old one, it'll vanish in a puff of smoke.  

All the ones I see now seem to run Vista. From what I read
on Vista, it seems to be very resource hungry.
So would a minimum spec required to run it be a twin processor
and 2mb of Ram?
Or should I be looking at something higher than this?

I don't need the computer for running anything particularly heavy.
For instance, what I normally have open is two web windows.
One used for stock trading software and the other browsing
for news etc..
I also have open a couple of spreadsheets. One about 1mb in size
and the other a few thousand K.

All comments appreciated.

[jereboam]

I'd be inclined to go for whatever is PCWorld's offer of the week.  Or any other supplier if you don't like them.

What you need seems to be more or less "entry level", so you should be able to pick up something decent for about £400 or so.  

If you're very lucky, you may even manage to find one that doesn't have Vista

[cem_devecioglu]

Just converted one friends notebook from vista to XP..

Although notebooks come bundled with Vista home , still XP is more suitable I think..However if you still prefer Vista even 1 Gb Ram and duo core is sufficient..  And for disk, I would prefer 7200 RPM (% 40 latency drop ) if battery life is not #1  for you..

[Richie London]

i bought this 2 yrs ago, paid 495 for it
advent 7105 xp pro.
http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/laptop/7105.htm

has been good to me apart from losing dvd drive a couple of times, i

[unclelicklug]

dabs.com have regular good offers.
If you can find something with Windows XP then a pretty minimum spec should be fine.
If you are going to be lumbered with Vista then the minimum recommended RAM is 1 Gb, by all accounts that is an absolute minimum and 2 Gb will perform much better.
Was looking at one of these for my son
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4YHX&CategorySelectedId=11105&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11105,46460000
the Acer stuff I've had has been reasonably OK touchwood.
Although it would be nice to see before I buy, some of the keyboards on cheaper laptops are pretty rattly.
And FWIW my Fujitsu Siemens Amilo has lasted reasonably well, not great battery life but that might not apply now.

[Albert1]

2Gb should be fine, surfing the net isn't particularly memory-intensive.  Consider buying a 1Gb model and then buying an extra chip from someplace like ebuyer.com and inserting it yourself - it'll be cheaper than paying for the 2Gb when you buy the laptop.  Just make sure it's got a spare memory slot, rather than 2 smaller capacity chips hogging all the slots.

[stuart30]

Well personally id be inclined too spend a little more and get a much better spec laptop.

Ive just bought a Dell Inspiron 1720 with 205GB hard drive and 3 GB ram and its a nice 17 inch screen and lots of other features i wont bore you with.

And best of all it only cost £600...and its gonna be able to cope with just about what ever you ask of it.

[Albert1]

Well personally id be inclined too spend a little more and get a much better spec laptop.

Ive just bought a Dell Inspiron 1720 with 205GB hard drive and 3 GB ram and its a nice 17 inch screen and lots of other features i wont bore you with.

And best of all it only cost £600...and its gonna be able to cope with just about what ever you ask of it.

Not for long though - the rate of improvement/development in the PC industry puts the car industry to shame.  (Gordon) Moore's Law and all that....

[jereboam]

Well personally id be inclined too spend a little more and get a much better spec laptop.

Ive just bought a Dell Inspiron 1720 with 205GB hard drive and 3 GB ram and its a nice 17 inch screen and lots of other features i wont bore you with.

And best of all it only cost £600...and its gonna be able to cope with just about what ever you ask of it.

Not for long though - the rate of improvement/development in the PC industry puts the car industry to shame.  (Gordon) Moore's Law and all that....

Absolutely spot on - you can't future proof a PC.  I've just chucked out a PC that cost me over £3000 some 10 years ago - it remained start-of-the-art for about 3 months, and after about 3 years it had to replaced.  What a waste of time and money!

Buy only what you need now - the new toys will be cheaper late on.

[stuart30]

Well personally id be inclined too spend a little more and get a much better spec laptop.

Ive just bought a Dell Inspiron 1720 with 205GB hard drive and 3 GB ram and its a nice 17 inch screen and lots of other features i wont bore you with.

And best of all it only cost £600...and its gonna be able to cope with just about what ever you ask of it.

Not for long though - the rate of improvement/development in the PC industry puts the car industry to shame.  (Gordon) Moore's Law and all that....

Absolutely spot on - you can't future proof a PC.  I've just chucked out a PC that cost me over £3000 some 10 years ago - it remained start-of-the-art for about 3 months, and after about 3 years it had to replaced.  What a waste of time and money!

Buy only what you need now - the new toys will be cheaper late on.

But im not talking what it will be able to do in 2018 im talking about in 2008 thats the difference....and even then i dont really agree with what your saying,ive still got some old Toshiba satellite pro 4200"s thats are 5/6 yrs old now minimum and they still do 90% of what i want or need them too do.

Maybe in 3/4/5/20yrs time a £600 spec laptop wont run the with big boys but im sure it will be just as usable as my old tosh"s are 5/6 yrs on from when they were made.

[Albert1]

Yes, but an old machine would be dog-slow with a modern operating system, and if you stick with an old O/S you'll find MS will have stopped releasing security patches for it years ago, leaving your machine more vulnerable than it needs to be.

[stuart30]

Yes, but an old machine would be dog-slow with a modern operating system, and if you stick with an old O/S you'll find MS will have stopped releasing security patches for it years ago, leaving your machine more vulnerable than it needs to be.

I know we all use Vista Ultimate now days but you cant really call XP pro that old....heck they just released service pack 3  

I do appreciate what your saying though..

[unclelicklug]

Bought my laptop 5 years ago, base model and it can still do the necessary today - I would not spend more than necessary to buy a machine to do basic surfing/document writing unless you have a specific task/application in mind in which case you probably know what you want already.
Avoid Vista if possible, and if your Microsoft Office apps (Word Excel etc) are too slow on your machine then download Open Office for free (this is legitimate), it has 99% of the functionality of equivalent MS and will open Word and Excel documents.

[stuart30]

Bought my laptop 5 years ago, base model and it can still do the necessary today - I would not spend more than necessary to buy a machine to do basic surfing/document writing unless you have a specific task/application in mind in which case you probably know what you want already.
Avoid Vista if possible, and if your Microsoft Office apps (Word Excel etc) are too slow on your machine then download Open Office for free (this is legitimate), it has 99% of the functionality of equivalent MS and will open Word and Excel documents.

Why avoid vista.....?

[Grumpy]

Thanks for everyone's input, so far.
Much appreciated.

Looks like with the economic crunch we're now facing, stuff is
getting cheaper as we talk.
Just followed a link in an Amazon e-mail that they sent me and
came across this.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Satellite-L40-17H-Trubrite-DVDSMDL/dp/B0013EWQ22/ref=pd_ts_zbw_ce_14014431_5?pf_rd_p=178249991&pf_rd_s=right-5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=405287011&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=01T39C0BVWK2RW9AH6MS

Toshiba with dual core pentium and 2gb ram.

£299  

How much lower can stuff go??

Edit: I put 2mb ram. Should obviously read 2gb