Buying a first laptop.....

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

dh are finally in agreement that a laptop would be pretty helpful to us but we don't know much about them! So I thought I'd ask here for advice.

Budget is £400

dh needs it for business trips abroad:
for taking notes at conferences
needs excel - dh can get office for good rate.
ability to take memory sticks
For emailing me back at his hotel room.

dd would like it for:
watching dvds when camping turns into a week of rain.
playing webkinz when I'm working

I'd like it for:
taking to conferences/meetings to give presentations.
to browse net when I'm out and about
to mn while exciting things on telly.
Would like wide screen cos I love it.

Have looked at Dell Inspiron 15 and Acer Aspire 5735, both look quite good. Would they do the job? Should I look at anything else?

Some extra questions.....

battery life is quite important but budget laptops seem to have low life.
can I charge a laptop easily in the car? What about trains- I'm sure I saw a plug hole for laptops in one once.
What would dh do for charging abroad?

Also connectivity. Am with virgin - they do a 3g dongle thingy for £5/month. What does that mean in practise? Can I surf while I camp?

Thank you!!!!

[CruelAndUnusualParenting]

Dell and Acer are usually OK. Which reckoned Sony and Toshiba were the best for reliability. We have a Toshiba Satellite Pro, which is pretty good.

£5 per month is cheaper than I've seen for a dongle. £15 is what I would expect Vodafone to charge. Surfing while camping might be possible, it depends on where. 3G coverage is patchy, so unless you're camping in a built up area, you probably won't get much bandwidth.

[ljhooray]

Hi there,
Think over the years I've been througj just about every make! For PCs, Sony have been the most reliable and enjoyable to use so of all thebrands, that's what I would opt for (Dell are pretty good for desktop, but I've not had a great experience with laptops). As for mobile broadband, Vodafone will be best for coverage, although I've been pleasantly surprised with 3 (I have £15 per month deal but use no where near the alowance, so the the £10 would be sufficient for the average user - meaning e mails, surfing the web and every downloading from itunes or bbc iplayer). However, I've trid using it on holiday and getting any decent coverage to support mobile broadband can be tricky. If that's very important, think I'd opt for Vodafone.
As for widescreen, I had a widescreenAcer which in theory was great but in practice, a pin to get a decent bag to fit and a tad heavy, so make sure you can get a good case for it, v important to prevent annoying backache!
Oh and just to be contraversial, once this laptop has had it's day, I'm getting a mac! Sick of PC speed and inevitable performance loss, so going to defect! (Obviousy £400 is a bot tough to get a mac but tbh, I woud spend anymore than that on a pc anyway, expect about 2-3 years from it tops, no matter what you spend).

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Cool - thank you all for your replies Plenty of stuff for me to consider!

dh is seeing today whether he can get any deals from work. I think in the end I'm just going to have to take the plunge and choose one.

I suspect we can manage without one for camping!

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Reading a bit more, would I be able to make an eeepc 901 do all that?

I thought that perhaps I'd be able to put dvds onto a memory stick. Would that work? How would I put office onto it? Also, would I be able to connect a projector to it?

thanks

[CruelAndUnusualParenting]

Dell's latest netbook.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

now that looks nice I like the 2GB with it and the tv tuner!

I went over to pcworld to have a look at netbooks this afternoon to have a play and found that surprisingly I could read the screen on a 10" which was one of my concerns.

In the end I've gone for a Samsung NC10 because of the fantastic battery life. Seems to have good reviews. Ordered it from amazon as it seemed to have one of the best prices and I can gather nectar points from there. Signed up to a free trial of amazon prime to get free next day delivery

I'll be pestering the mn geeky section with lots of questions I'm afraid now! netbooks are a whole new universe to me.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

It has arrived
Very easy to set up.
Need to increase the font size though. Connected to the home network astonishingly easily.
Have increased touchpad sensitivity and am removing the trial mcafee and putting avg on there. Need to get firefox and thunderbird on it.
Very pretty little thing

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Am now typing on it. I've found a pair of specs that actually work with it. Much less back-achy now that I'm not hunching over it!!!

Do I|look any different?

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

My Bad Cat can't work out why shes not allowed to sit on it on it!