What is a good second computer?

[Rizzlekicks]

DH and I are constantly needing to use the computer so I thought we should look at buying second computer.

We don't need anything flash - just something that is easy to set up, something that can access the internet and something that we can do Excel/ write letters from.

Can anyone recommend a good, cheap-ish model? Thanks

How much roughly do you want to spend?

As little as possible but enough for something decent if you know what I mean.

I really don't know an awful lot about them but dh has just upgraded ours. It has to be good enough for him for a lot of work stuff, for dd who does a lot of school stuff on it, plus both kids games etc etc....
We got this one www.johnlewis.com/toshiba-satellite-l870-18v-laptop-intel-core-i3-2-5ghz-8gb-ram-1tb-17-3-silver/p231820512
I think you can get it cheaper with a smaller screen.
I don't know if that is how much you wanted to spend. It is our only computer and I was surprised how much prices have come down since we bought our last one 10 years ago

How about a Chromebook?

I was looking out for laptops for my BiL the other day. On Ebay you can find not unreasonable systems from 100 quid (running Win XP, on a Toshiba A120, which despite being a few years old would likely run for another few years anyway). One had MS Office 2010 installed, and was 100 quid, including delivery, but sold on Monday morning, unfortunately.

In some local (to me) second hand stores like CEX, CashGenerator etc, a modern spec (Windows 7, 500 GB HD, 4 GB RAM) system might be 250.

Someone else posted very recent thread asking about 4 laptops, ranging from 299 to 340/350 (or the comparable ones I saw hit the 350 mark) with 6 GB RAM, and even larger hard drives.

It really does depend on how much you want to spend and whether you want brand new with 1-3 year warranty or are willing to have a s/h system for perhaps half the price.

Nice spec and probably not unreasonable price, Parisbanana ...

As a second computer it might be a bit of a luxury to be getting one with 8GB RAM and all the bells and whistles :)

I've bought 2 (quite old) iMacs and a Dell Inspiron 17" laptop from Ebay in the last year for the same total ( though admittedly no 2 year warranty ).