Can someone recommend a good laptop

[Turquoise]

I suppose around 3 - 400 pounds (less preferably, obviously!)

I need : the internet; word; movie and tv downloads; photos; itunes. Wireless would be nice.

Don't need graphics etc, no gameplaying will ever happen, this will be mine all mine!

Am clueless about windows Vista, though have heard generally Bad Things.

Any suggestions?

[nannynick]

For 3 years now, I have been using a Packard Bell laptop, purchased from Currys. Not top of the range by any means, back then I think it was within your price bracket - and prices have in general I would say dropped since then.
Just looked online, they don't have any in that price range branded by Packard Bell, but do have another manufacturers models in your range. What I liked about Packard Bell, was that their laptops were made by NEC, which I feel is a higher quality supplier. Thus by buying a Packard Bell laptop, made by NEC, I was getting reasonable quality at a good price.

I would avoid Vista if you are able to, though not sure that is possible if buying brand new. What I would say is have as much memory in the machine as you can afford. I upgraded my Packard Bell to 1GB RAM which made Windows XP run much more smoothly. When looking at laptops, look for Memory Size 1024 MB, or figures higher than that.

[Turquoise]

Thanks for that NN. Wasn't sure if everything comes with Vista now, looks like it on the Dell website.

[Tamum]

I'm using Vista on my laptop but XP on other computers and don't find it a problem- I prefer it for organising pictures and things. I don't use it with things like printers though, so maybe I would be less keen if I had lots of driver problems.

[kimi]

Vista is designed to take advantage of the same graphics technology as games, if you don't want to pay for this then XP will work better.

Also, as we are still in the change over period, more TV downloads work better on XP (e.g. BBC iPlayer), however this is likely to become less of an issue over the next 6 months. Conversely it is unlikely you will find anything, except for a few of the latest games, that work better on Vista for several years.

£3-400 is a realistic budget for a laptop now, go for something that looks sturdy, and is the right weight for you usage. (Bigger heavier laptops should give you more for your money, but are obviously less portable). If you need a longer battery life (they 1-1.5 hours) you need to look for this especially, but expect to sacrifice performance.

Double check if you really need MS Word, even if it is bundled it is fairly expensive and their is a free alternative that has all the same features (though it is less good if you need to edit a lot of complex Word documents from other people, or are unwilling to learn a slightly different interface)

openoffice.org/

[kimi]

Don't think that like works... sorry

[Turquoise]

Thanks for these responses. So - if I don't want games, I don't need Vista? Woohoo!

[Sidge]

I've got an Acer laptop, and it's fine for me - emailing, pictures, music etc. Cost about £350 from Comet and I got a free bag, memory stick and wireless mouse.

Can't remember the memory size but it's pretty fast, and I've had no problems with it.