Laptop help needed please

[Eddas]

HI, I wonder if anyone can help? I am going to buy a new laptop shortly and have never bought one before(always used a PC) so I need some help with which one I should buy please.

I will use it for internet access, if anyone could help with wireless access and how that all works I'd be grateful too [dunce emoticon] currently we have broadband on our pc which I would keep but i'd like to use the laptop for internet too. Would I need a new connection or could I just plug in the current one to the laptop some how, obv not use the pc at the same time

I will also use the laptop for microsoft office which I think i'll need to buy in additon?

I won't be storing photos or anything on the laptop as they're on the pc and we have an external hardrive(passport) with them on so i don't think i'll need much storage space. Similarly I don't have an ipod and doubt i'll get one, but would more likely store things like that on the pc. I don't download videos etc

Budget is £300-400 ideally

I have no idea what spec I need to be looking at and have been looking through the PC World website thinking 'eh' for about an hour

TIA

bump

As far as connecting to the internet, it depends a bit on what equipment (eg router) you have at present.

There are still some people with USB modems for their internet access, and I use a mobile network 'dongle' at home.

If you are using USB then you may need to find the original CD that came with it, but the likelihood is that you currently use a router.

On the basis that many people have a normal phone line (ie not Virgin Media cable) then some routers can have many PCs plugged in, or using the connection simultaneously (it's their purpose, to connect one or many 'local' machines in your home, to a single connection at the ISP, and allow your phone line to carry data for as many PCs as you have active at the time.

Some routers have a single ethernet (RJ45) socket for a PC to plug in, many have 4 ports, and newer routers (especially those supplied by ISPs) may have both wired (RJ45 cables) and wireless connections.

Many laptops these days include a wireless card, so they can connect to any nearby network (and each network ought to be password protected - it's a way to reduce the chance of 'snooping' on what's being sent and received).

As you plan to use MS Office, and have not mentioned any Apple kit, then I would suggest you look for a machine running Windows 7.

The minimum spec for a Windows 7 machine is said to be one with 2 GB of RAM.

You could now do a search on Froogle (Google here and then it comes down to how large a screen you want to have.

I've recently bought a Compaq CQ61 which was just under 250 pounds in Asda Living (but unfortunately it seems like they were running down stock so reduced them by 100 quid to clear the shelves), and that was for a machine with 15.6" widescreen, 2 GB RAM and a generous hard drive (160 GB).

If you can find some system with a screen of 14" or more, at least 2 GB RAM (4 GB would be nice) and under 325 then I'd think it would be a pretty good deal (within budget and allows for extras you might buy, like a wireless router to make it usable anywhere in the house). Hope that gets you started...

Re MS Office - plenty of people on MN have youngsters in their family so may be eligible for an educational discount on MS Office, making it more affordable.

Alternatively, you could try out OpenOffice (a free alternative, which has recorded over 100M downloads) and see if it will open your existing documents and save versions you can open - if that's the case, it could save you the cost of the Microsoft version altogether.

thanks for all that webdude really helpful. I currently have an adsl firewall router (that's what it says on it, I have no idea what it means) In the back it seems to have 4 places to plug the compter in so I suppose that means I could use this for the laptop to?

Excuse my ignorance, when I bought the pc i asked the computer support people at work what I needed and they came round to set it up and work sort my internet too so I really have little idea about the current set up!

Re educational discount on office, I do have 2 dc, dd aged 5 nearly 6 so I suppose she would count? ds wouldn't probably as he's only 2(nearly 3) I shall look into this.

I do know that windows 7 is the operator(i think that's the right term) i'm looking for as I currently have windows xp and have never used a mac.

Thank you so much for all the info

would this be the sort of thing I should go for?

or this?

mind you they both have a 2-2.5 hour battery life. That doesn't sound too good to me!

Sorry, didn't spot the responses until today.

I just took a look on the PC World site (only to use their quick comparison tool) and there are lots of laptops offering only 2 hours of use, whether they are under or over 300 quid. All the ones under 300 were limited, and in the 5 I checked in the 300-400 pound range, two were still only promising 2 hours (costing 340 and 400!)

One Compaq said 6 hours (400 quid) and an Asus at 380 promised 3.5 hours.

Unfortunately, with each Windows Operating System (OS) having more features, and therefore getting bigger on disk and in memory, the machines need to be more powerful (faster) just to work smoothly, and some of the extra processing will drain the battery faster.

Some features (that make the machine look 'cool', such as expanding windows etc) are just to be "pretty" and if you turn those off, then there would be less wasted processing (eg minimising a browser window, it would snap shut, not draw boxes getting smaller and smaller, IYSWIM) but I don't know what overall effect it would have.

Turning down screen brightness and enabling other power-saving features would help - using a blank screen instead of a "pretty" screen saver would be another (minor) saving... I hope you get the picture...

Back to your router - there are a few these days without any external (visible) aerials, but yours sounds like it only accepts ethernet cables. If you can find the make and model number on it, I can check...