The great laptop debate

I have a problem. No let’s step back as my father always says, it’s a challenge.

We have decided to replace my relatives laptops, they’ve got a mixture of IBM ThinkPad X30’s and a few Dell D600’s, they’re working fine, don’t get me wrong. But they’re approaching the high maintenance stage, Windows could probably do with a rebuild, the hardware is fine, but there have been comments about Vista, about upgrading memory or disk space, and I feel now is the time to consider selling the old ones on ebay and buying some new ones.

At this point I have a few confessions, we have a budget of about £400 a laptop and I need to buy four of them.

Realistically they’re being used for typing, Internet, maybe a little digital photo editing and that’s it. Decisions, decisions.

Should I buy them an iBook each? That would work perfectly, but then they’re used to Office to Windows, that might be a ’step too far’.

I’ve looked on google, cnet etc, and a few ideas came to mind:

• Dell Inspiron 1525 or their Vostro - the Studio looks really cool
• Acer Aspire
• HP 530
• Lenovo 3000
• Samsung

So I’m off to do some research. The last time I bought a laptop it was a relatively simple decision (ThinkPad or Powerbook), now there seems to be so many options: “AMD sir, is that an, “Athlon, Sempron or Turion you want?” or “Intel sir, would you like a Celeron, Pentium Dual Core or Core Duo?”, I know I want Vista on them, so I need 1GB probably 2GB, what about integrated video, is that a thing?  Vista basic or Premium, I’ll have to check it out.

Anyway, when I make my successful purchase, I’ll post a quick write up of why I bought it and what it’s like, and if you do have any comments/advice do write a comment.