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My laptop has finally died after only 2 1/2 years use, (the 5 year old is very slow but keeps on going)
Anyway, what do I replace it with I need to keep below £400 if possible, it's mainly internet use, and messing with sound and photos, very occasional Excel spreadsheet, and the odd letter, our lass has just got a new Dell i3 something or other £449 which looks OK, but I've always had a yen for a Apple laptop, obviously I can't afford anything like a new one, and the terminology of them escapes me.
So which way do I jump, I must be able to access my Googlemail/Gmail account which I assume isn't an issue,and be able to open & edit MS office docs, Open office doesn't have the facility I need for the spreadsheets.
I certainly don't want to go slower than an i3, but not sure which one.
Any advice or links to macs on Ebay which might be useful very welcome
The December edition of PC Advisor magazine has a Group Test of budget laptops, a number of them costing less than £400. You can also see their reviews here. I guess you could buy an older macbook off ebay but like anything on ebay you take your chances. I would advise getting a new laptop with a manufacturers guarantee. You don't say why your current laptop has died - 2 1/2 years old seems awfully young. Are you sure it can't be fixed? For the applications you mention (unless you are doing heavy duty photo editing), I would have thought that a 30 month old working laptop should be up to the challenge.
My money would go on an Acer or Asus laptop well below £400 unless you want 17 inch plus screen.
I don't think you have to spend so much money to do comfortably what you say you use it for. If you do not do games and produce video dvds then I would set your sights much lower.
With a budget of £400 a Mac may be out of the question. Obviously you may find a second hand one, but I would be cautious about buying one. The cheapest refurbished MacBook on the Apple site is over £700. They have a nice i5 13" MacBook Pro for £779 I think.
You may not need such a fast processor as you think. I have a 15" MacBook Pro that is now 5 years old and still goes very well. It is perhaps a little slow at times when lots of applications are open, but I think it is probably time I reinstalled the OSX and gave it a good clean-up. It has a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo chip with 2GB of RAM. Hardly dramatic by today's standards but it is reliable and, as I said above, still quite fast.
You mention that Open Office will not do what you want with spreadsheets. Is that because you need to run VB macros? If so, be aware that earlier versions of MS Office for Mac did not support macros. I have Office 2008 and that does not run macros. If you need to automate anything, it has to be done using Apple Script - not that I do. The latest version of Office for Mac - 2011 - does support VB programming.
Ultimately, whether a Mac is good value depends upon what you need. Apple do not try and compete with lower priced PCs, but if you compare a Mac with a similarly specified PC the prices are often similar. When I bought mine, I compared it with Dell and HP laptops of the same spec and the Mac was slightly cheaper.
If your laptop is really beyond repair it may be worth looking at a genuine factory refurbished PC usually with a full warranty. HP have an ebay shop and I bought my previous HP desktop PC from Morgan (now Benthams I think).
I also bought my MacbookPro as a refurb from the Apple UK shop and saved a few hundred pounds. I couldn't see any cosmetic marks or other faults - often just an ex-demo or customer return
I still prefer to do my photo editing on the desktop PC
Steve
______________________________________________________________ Steve & Sheila
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at
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I don't think £400 is a budget to be considering a Macbook and is unlikely to purchase anything recent enough to be considered current. Add to that if you are unfamiliar with the interface you don't really know what you are getting or how to setup sounds like a recipe for disaster (or perhaps a barrage of mac related threads on MHF!)
I would check the Apple Refurb store as already mentioned, but would suggest your looking at doubling your budget. If you just use use Gmail, web etc perhaps consider an iPad? These are also sometimes available refurb.
A PC (IBM Compatible? That takes even me back circa 20 years!) seems a better option. In March £300 purchased us a Asus UL30 with 11hr batter life, 13.3' Screen, 4GB memory, 320GB HD. Perfect for use in the van and just as slim/sleek as a Macbook (if you squint!).
Just a thought but dont bin your old laptop if its beyond repair as you say. I replaced a three year old Toshiba Salellite Pro this year that got litterally smashed up. Screen smashed and in bits and most of the casing cracked (no I didnt have IT Rage but I do come close sometimes)
I sold it on Ebay for £100!!!
So you may have extra in the kitty!
For me battery life is everything so I got an Acer Timeline i3 with 6-8 hour battery life and its a full size laptop (well 14" screen)
It was about £400 to me but I am in the trade. Retail a bit more I think
Forget the Mac, doesnt sound like you need one.
______________________________________________________________ Hank the Tank has a website. Follow our adventures at http://www.hankthetank.co.uk
You don't say why your current laptop has died - 2 1/2 years old seems awfully young. Are you sure it can't be fixed?
It's been in and out of PC World for over 5 weeks as I know one of the Tech guys, and it's one of their brands, he's thrown everything at it he thought he'd sussed it when he physically checked the RAM, which was slightly out of it's socket, it only fell over once while he had it on soak test for days on end, but as soon as I get it home even after a full format and re-install of vista, within an hour the blue screen was back, it never stayed on for more than a couple hours at the most, sometimes only minutes.
I've looked at the log of crashes and it did only crash once with them, but over 50 with me.
As I actually use it as a laptop on my lap we think it just over heats and dies, so it's off the the laptop shop in the sky, or maybe Ebay for spares, don't know yet.
With a budget of £400 a Mac may be out of the question. Obviously you may find a second hand one, but I would be cautious about buying one. The cheapest refurbished MacBook on the Apple site is over £700. They have a nice i5 13" MacBook Pro for £779 I think.
You may not need such a fast processor as you think. I have a 15" MacBook Pro that is now 5 years old and still goes very well. It is perhaps a little slow at times when lots of applications are open, but I think it is probably time I reinstalled the OSX and gave it a good clean-up. It has a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo chip with 2GB of RAM. Hardly dramatic by today's standards but it is reliable and, as I said above, still quite fast.
You mention that Open Office will not do what you want with spreadsheets. Is that because you need to run VB macros? If so, be aware that earlier versions of MS Office for Mac did not support macros. I have Office 2008 and that does not run macros. If you need to automate anything, it has to be done using Apple Script - not that I do. The latest version of Office for Mac - 2011 - does support VB programming.
Ultimately, whether a Mac is good value depends upon what you need. Apple do not try and compete with lower priced PCs, but if you compare a Mac with a similarly specified PC the prices are often similar. When I bought mine, I compared it with Dell and HP laptops of the same spec and the Mac was slightly cheaper.
Thanks JeanLuc, I think that lets the Mac out on cost alone.
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