Hardware New laptop

[MH]

The father in law is in the market for a laptop to replace his desktop.
He is looking for something that will have some longevity, decent battery and something that will not grind to a halt after 2 years.

Not sure in his budget yet, but obviously not stupidly expensive.

 

[rapha]

MH, without a guideline price and level of use this is difficult. If it's just for internet, email and mickeysofts office programs of word excel, then anything with a i5 processor generation 4 (haswell chipset), 4GB minimum of Ram would do I suppose. So £450 upwards.
If he has bigger requirements and wants from the laptop then I'd suggest a Dell XPS, light, slim, built well, i7 processor, 16GB Ram, 2GB graphics card, hybrid hard drive, touch screen and excellent battery life, but someting like this would set you back £1,200

 

[MH]

It internet and office stuff only.

 

[VectorZ]

It internet and office stuff only.

Quite a few £300 and sub offers doing the rounds for basic use.

 

[oneman]

If you start of with something like this, what things would you want to change,

Asus X550CC Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

 

[rapha]

If you start of with something like this, what things would you want to change,

Asus X550CC Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

Just had a quick look at the above, it is a generation 3 processor - personally I'd try and stick with the i5 4xxxx (generation 4) as this has better power saving built into the chip.
Have used Asus laptops, only gripe is the mouse/touch pad, it has to many features like a pinch/zoom etc. I think you can disable this in the control panel of windoze.

 

[MH]

£400 Max he wants to spend.

 

[turner brown]

IMHO laptops don't last most will have battery ,charger port or overheating problems after a couple of years . there not built to last now and even the higher end machines are not much better built

 

[Bronto]

Have a look at Lenovo Chris, quite decentish build

Refurbished i5 here with decent spec for £400 with offer option so may be worth a punt around £350 ?

Lenovo ThinkPad T420 intel Core i5 2.5GHz 14.1" Laptop 8GB RAM 320GB HDD | eBay

 

[MH]

IMHO laptops don't last most will have battery ,charger port or overheating problems after a couple of years . there not built to last now and even the higher end machines are not much better built

I disagree there, I have a Dell from work and the battery will last 2+ hours easily.

 

[trevortron]

I disagree there, I have a Dell from work and the battery will last 2+ hours easily.

I have to agree with you here @MH, a lot probably depends on how the machine is looked after. I am a bit of a hoarder, so I still have my first ever laptop (an Acer netbook, about 5yo) and although it's now semi-retired, its battery, charger port etc. are still fine. I have an even older Fujitsu Siemens (7?) which I 'inherited' from the other half- quite an austere looking thing, but I have it set up in the workshop, it seldom gets shut down and apart from occasional Windoze Vista issues, it is still good. Even the battery still holds a decent charge. Both the above were used mainly for sofa-surfing, but I kept a ceramic tile underneath to allow air to circulate and it seems to have paid dividends. (This was before the lays of £5 laptop coolers!).