Where would you buy a laptop from?

[Corriewatcher]

Hi there

I'm hoping some of you more IT savvy people might be able to give me some advice. I'm looking for a laptop as I'm hoping to start my own business and a laptop would enable me to work in different rooms of the house. Nothing too fancy, as I'm not into gaming - just really want it for internet/email, word processing, book-keeping etc. I've bought "What Laptop" and done some research on the web, including on Mumsnet. So I think I want one with at least 2 ram of memory (more if poss), a hard drive of around 250 and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (but as a bit of a novice I'm happy to be corrected on this!). I also want a screen of at least 15 inches as I'll be working on it for a couple of hours at a time.

There seem to be quite a few around that fit the bill between £400-500. The problem I've got is knowing where to shop. I had a bad experience when buying my first ever PC from Comet (albeit 10 years ago but the pain is still there!!). The customer service reviews I've seen for PC World and Currys put them in the same league. I did look at Pixmania but they've got even worse reviews on reviewcentre.com than PC World. I've been to John Lewis a couple of times as I've heard they're good if things go wrong, plus they do a 2 year warrenty. But they haven't got any stock in in my price range in my local branch (and the website is the same).

Does anyone know a laptop retailer who is reliable if things go wrong and offers reasonable prices? Thanks a lot.

Now, I do have to admit a bias, but if it's any help, PC Pro magazine did a reliability and service award, where readers vote for (amongst other things) top internet IT retailers. I think its the biggest independent survey, about 15,000 people.

Noticibly the big names didn't do too well (esp pixmania and PC World!) but the winners were CCL (for the third year in a row) and runners up Novatech and SVP. I'd do some online price checking too.

The survey results are here

Comet are lovely.
I got mine from John Lewis, but my Mum bought same one from Comet and their customer service was just as fab as JL (and I'm a total snob and wasn't expecting it to be!)

Thanks very much for these replies. I'm off to do some price research on the sites mentioned!!

I bought out last laptop from Misco. I had no real problems, so no need to try the customer service.

Apple.

Or ebuyer.