Please Help: Laptop for my mum

Hi all

I am trying to help my mum decide which new laptop to buy. We have narrowed it down to 3 possibilities:

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/AdvSe...d=LX.TK90Z.084

Fujitsu Esprimo V6535
Toshiba Satellite Pro L300D-21U Laptop
Acer TravelMate 5720-4A2G16Mi Laptop

The important factors for her are that it runs smoothly - so 2GB RAM minimum, a decent processor, either has or could have XP (not Vista) and as light weight as possible - all at a low price (£400ish).

Our main problem is that we do not know what the difference between an Intel Core 2 Duo and an AMD Core 2 Duo. She mainly uses the laptop for email, internet, photos, films, Excel, Word, etc. Is there a massive difference in performance at this level of usage?

I hope this is clear enough. We would be very grateful for any advice.

Thanks

Hi and Welcome!Intel and AMD made sure, the customer has a hard job to find out, what gives better performance for the money
The faster CPU waits a little bit faster for next input from the user. Seriously, for that application profile, any CPU is good enough.

I would rather have a look at available service options. Maybe a warranty upgrade to 2 or 3 yrs hardware service isn't a bad idea.

Michael

I have laptops with both Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo and an AMD Turion Core 2 ultra, and notice little difference for your level of usage.

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Last edited by CCRomeo; 05-06-2009 at 16:13.

Thanks very much for your responses. One concern my mother has is that she heard that the AMD has a tendency to over heat and as she will be using it in Morocco this could be a big problem.

It turns out that the options that we narrowed it down to do not have XP. So the next challenge is to find a laptop that does as Mum has heard such bad things about Vista and doesn't think she can cope with learning how to use a new system. Any recommendations?

Thanks again.

Yeah, buy a cooling pad... No, not for mum, for the lappy of course..

My AMD laptop runs cool, I think it is more about the internal fan than the CPU, most of the time I use it on a stand with a built in fan.
You don't like Vista then reformat the HDD install XP and the needed drivers.

Many netbooks run on XP, I have a Asus Eee PC 1000HE, runs great and cool about 4 Lbs. great for travel.
No Optical Dive but you can buy a external one for about $60, keyboard about 92% standard size but she will adjust. I run microsoft Office 2002 in it all the time.

http://www.lambda-tek.com/components...prodID=1482104
Much better bang for the buck ratio than those you linked and decent hardware too :-)
//Danne

I think Fujitsu, Samsung and Sony are over priced for the hardware, look at Acer, hp, Toshiba and Asus.

You don't pay only for the hardware, but also for support.
Customer support for Asus and HP (Pavilion) is rather poor - at least here in Germany. Fujitsu (at least for their business lines), Samsung and even sony support are better.
Toshiba seems to be quite okay, but I have read of thermal problems with some models.

So, for office application in a rather hot country, I would look for a laptop with good internal cooling and chipset integrated VGA. Using a model with a slower CPU that generates less heat should be also considered.

Michael

CCRomeo, I don't know what you use but Acer is crap when it comes to support or anything that involves warranty not to mention that build quality isn't up to most other manufacturers standards. FSC gives you usually a very good "bang for the buck" as you can see above, or are you going to find a better deal in the UK? :-)
FSC, Asus, HP (business only) are usually good choices in general when it comes to hardware and support but in this case you have quite a small budget so if you want an HP you have to accept the fact that you'll end up with a Celeron CPU unless there's a huge discount.

As for the "use a slower CPU as it generates less heat" statement it's very inaccurate with todays standards. Please read up on TDP for current models and you'll see clearly that it's not the case.

Instead of giving out some pointers (which doesn't necessarily apply) how 'bout linking to some models instead?

//Danne

She´s not going to strain whatever lappy she gets...so it doesn´t really matter...

A friend has a cheapish Acer...3 years old now...still works like when it was new. She doesn´t thrash it at all...just reads online news, emails and looks at photos...sometimes a DVD.
It´s loud (Celeron), slowish, and has a crap keyboard...but she doesn´t notice any of this.

If it was just up to me, I´d probably take the Toshiba with Vista and not worry about it.

..and why would you go with the Toshiba which is slower and more expensive than the FSC I linked above?
Oh well, it apparently went out of stock quite quickly... I wonder why.... ;-)
//Danne

On this one I fully agree with mciahel.

Specs or cpu really doesn't matter here. I feel the mother in question needs a "basic" lappy able to deliver common prestanda.

Think support/service will be a more relevant question here though,
(although my mum, already past 60's, has no problems with Asus Eeepc worldwide support, heh).

Edit. BTW, to bad our parents still will have to fight with MS Vista crap.