replacement laptop advice

[tismehi]

my wife has a wee advent laptop about 3.5 years old . it has been dropped several times and is severly overheating. also the power socket is loose and i think it is about time to replace it.

 

i googled best cheap laptop and one of the top answers was from money saving expert, whom i trust.

 

their top 3 sub £300 laptops have i think already all been sold out. one of them was an acer through the argos clearence site of ebay, a refurbished model. when i trawled through their refurbished models available there are lots to choose from and from as little as £230.

 

is there anything wrong with getting a refurbished model?

 

are there any manufacturers to avoid?

 

i will stay away from celeron and would know some other things to have in specs, eg, ram, wi-fi, etc.

 

any advice would be most welcome.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, a lot actually depends on what it is intended to be used for. Considering the biggest majority use these small machines for not much more than surfing and E Mails then any low priced machine is OK. However if games are needed, that really puts things up and quite a lot, depending on the level of games required.

 

Refurbished machines can be OK, but do pay attention to any warranty and how long it is for, as in some cases there isn't very much given. Say three months is one I have seen, so watch out for that. Always go for a full twelve months cover, especially being a refurbished machine.

 

As for make? well go by your own instincts and knowledge, though I believe Asus, being a major motherboard manufacturer, have a good reputation.

 

Let us know a bit more about the intended use, and we may be able to offer more advice regarding the more nitty gritty stuff such as processor, RAM, Hard drive, ETC.

 

Nev.

[tismehi]

hi, only very basic use - email, web shopping, facebook, bingo, etc. not too much more. i seen a few laptops in the argos clearence ebay shop. one seems particurlarly fitting. its a manufacturer refurbished acer aspire 551a 250gb, 15.6" amd athlon, 320gb sata hdd, 3gb ram, windows 7 premium, with a 12 month argos warranty.

 

it's priced at £249-99. reviews of this model seem to be ok.[h=1][/h]

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, Acer can be a bit poor in their technical support but in general not too bad a machine, though one review I have looked at suggested the processor was a bit slow, but if not used for high intensity stuff such as games then it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Nev.

[tismehi]

thanks for your thoughts and time.

my wife would never game or even watch a dvd or burn a disc so the processor would probably do ok.

i would hope it would be faster than a celeron and as it is "new", it should do the job.

 

thanks again.

 

joe.