So the lappy dies........

[badbaz]

My well used Dell laptop has chucked it - it has some weird error and won't boot, I dare say I could work at it and maybe get it back to life but since it's over 5 years old, I transferred a lot of files from it last week, has too little storage and struggles to multi task I thought I'd ask what everyone uses or would recommend as a suitable replacement?

It's main use is sitting on my knee whilst watching TV: surfing the net, using Skype, downloading and storing my pictures and videos from cameras, cards and iphones. It is not needed for gaming, is not needed for world domination but does need some decent storage space!

Ipad would be great but it cannot fulfil all of the above - cheap Dell from Tesco? Maybe better deals online? Don't want it to be obsolete by next Friday!

Open to ideas, but on a budget here so keep it sensible

[scouk]

I'm always one to go for quality and top of the range stuff with my tech... But laptop wise I've been very happy with Acer... Their cheap but get a fair bit of abuse from me.. I've had 3 now.. First one I knocked off the bed too many times.. But still got a netbook which i use for car stuff and currently typing on a acer Aspire 5742 that I bought a couple months ago to do work on while I was off work.. I wouldn't necessarily reccomend this specific model as I bought it on a budget for what I needed it for.. so no use for games and only has mono sound. But it was the cheapest I could find with an Intel i3 preocessor and decent memory..

TBH - Tech doesn't move that far ahead these days... You should easily expect somethgin you buy to day to last at very least 3-5 years.. Rather than be forced an upgrade every 12 months.. My main Desktop PC (yep I have several) was last upgraded 4 years ago and still going strong and plays latest games.

[rob1468]

Check out the dell website if you see anything you like ring them and normallly you get more discount or extras thrown in for nothing , but on another note i have an acer aspire and find it brill for run of the mill web surfing , but im using a desktop as im typing this quad core venom with 9 gig memory and hooked up to a 32" lg tv lol nice size and pic is quality lol

[sti pretender]

I bought a refurbished laptop from Pcworld saved about £150. It's usually the latest models that are customer returns fixed and tested. You still get a full years guarantee.

[BalliSTIc]

+1 for Acer.

[badbaz]

Ok chaps, thanks for the replies (and Kevin's wherever that went)

Still contemplating. Wondering if an iPad is the best answer - I have two PCs which I can type on, USB stuff, etc etc

95% of the time my laptop is used to surf the net. So it's bulky for that but then again, I can't drag the PC to the plasma to watch racing and type my latest complaint to those chuffers at the Council Tax office

[scouk]

Know what you mean about considering a tablet.. Quite tempted by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 SOmetimes all you want is a decent webbrower to play with and none of the extra computery stuff getting in the road..

[badbaz]

Agree with both and to add to the mix - original iPad 16GB Wi-Fi version new for £250 - as a web browsing tool it may be worth that??

[scooby222]

ifnyour going laptop i really cant fault acer, mine gets carted everywhere in the works truck or the scoob and (touch wood) no probs so far

[badbaz]

Spent the weekend trying to salvage the laptop - and still it tries to make a copy of the hard drive..... update to follow

[thebigfelly]

hey barry ,

when my philips laptop bit the bullet after a few years , the misus promptly redirected me to http://www.very.co.uk/electricals/computing/e/b/4872,5615/s/bestsellers,0.end?trail=4739-5615-4872

lots of decent laptops with discount and if your a new custimer theres a discount code you get aswel that gives you a further 10% discount ontop of that and also dont have to make any payments for the first year , we didnt pay anything for about 6months and then just paid it of all at once hope that helps baz

Edited August 21, 2011 by thebigfelly

[rig-pig]

i have a toshiba LT its used mostly for the net and i have photoshop on it and a scan tool for cars still works nice and fast and was cheap, i also got a portable hard drive for all my pics, tunes, films and so on, you can pick up a 1TB hard drive for around £60 and that should be more than enough storage for all your stuff

[badbaz]

Thanks guys - I'm no IT expert but I can usually fluff my way to a solution.

I decided on Friday that (on money grounds) I would attempt to repair the laptop. I bought an external case for the drive and hooked it up to the PC - used some disk tool to recover the files from the hard drive. I then discovered that the dell laptop has a hidden partition from which you can restore to factory. I used that and it worked but the hard drive has damaged sectors. I also bought a new, larger hard drive and at the moment I am using a bootable cd with disk cloning stuff on it to try to duplicate my old drive to my new one. Problem is, it's having difficulty getting 'past' the bad sectors on my disc and now has been cloning for 36 hours.

There are obviously many better ways to get around the problem but I figured it was worth a go to have the hidden partition there for future 'incidents' If it doesn't work out I'll just need to get an XP disc - dell kindly don't give them out with the laptops

As far as iPads go - I'd love one and it would be ideal for browsing but the issues with flash etc would burst me and in all honesty, until they have usb ports I probably won't have one. I think an iPhone and iPad is almost like duplication? No?

Craig, I already have a 500GB external drive and luckily for me I had been taking stuff from the laptop in the weeks leading up to the big failure.

Getting the time to ever catalogue these pictures and music will be a nightmare - has anyone got a program that can check for duplicate photos lol

Anyway, if the iPhone 5 wasn't just weeks away I would have just replaced the laptop but that's Apple for you - teasin b@stards

[badbaz]

Almost there now. The laptop is ALIVE!!

After much headaches and stress and a too long saga to tell the laptop is now up and running Windows 7 and has a 320gb hard drive.

Had a play with an iPad yesterday and it looked and felt really good but I can't get past the whole 'it's for surfing but I can only surf certain pages' thing - reference to Apple and Adobe's love tiff. That and getting an iPad 1 when a 3 could only be a few months away and may be that much better!

In addition, I'm not sure how many of you know of the hysteria over the HP Touchpad in the last few days? A £400 tablet given away at £89!! None to be had for love nor money except for the lucky few who were on the ball!! That would certainly have been a great price for a surfing gadget! Oh well - a small chance some more will appear but not holding my breath

So for £45, and some clumps of hair missing, the laptop is back in use - now to focus on getting a good back up of everything that I want to keep from here on in!!