New Laptop for between £400 - £600

[biggestseagull]

My sister in law is about to start university and wants to buy a laptop for around four to six hundred pounds.

She's doing an architecture course so I guess she'll want to do CAD and stuff on it but she won't play games on it. I guess she'll want a gig of RAM and a pretty decent screen but clock speed won't be a necessity for her. From my own point of view I think she'll find the extended battery life of a true mobile processor more useful than a desktop processor and she is a girl so nothing too heavy.

Any ideas guys? Or a decent website where I can put in my desired specs. If you have a specific model in mind could you add if you know whether I can buy it in the UK or not.

Thanks!

P.S. Hard drive not a worry and I can upgrade ram if necessary .

 

[Mingon]

I would consider building a barebone, ebuyer have a 12.1" with 6200 card, this is based around the dell 710 chassis. I have built 3 barebones (all aopen) and it is easier than your would think 1-2 hours fist time 30 mins when used to it. Most of the bits can be bought from ebay cheapily (except cd/dvd drive).

 

[biggestseagull]

hey that's a great idea - I hadn't considered doing it myself. Does it work out much cheaper then? I'll do some research - I guess I can get a bigger screen if I need to.

Thanks!

Any other suggestions (to all) if I don't get round to building one (or she doesn't trust me!)

 

[AmigaMan]

for that little money, you're pretty much stuck with building it yourself or going to Dell.

 

[biggestseagull]

Really? I appreciate it's not in the league of what one could pay but you see 'ok' ish specced machines in Dixons and the like (I hear your responses of... 'why don't you just do that then' but I want better than that for my family!)

On another note, are Dell laptops ok? I wouldn't touch a desktop but I haven't heard anything bad about the laptops.

Cheers for continued ideas.