Yet more laptop stuff

[minervasolo]

So, the nice one I was eyeing up yesterday has gone (no realy surprise), leaving me with two reasonably priced Core Duo 2 processor laptops: an Acer and a Packard Bell (or, if I'm willing to pay about £100, a Sony). Poking reviews (of which there are very few for either) PB is apparently unreliable while Acer comes with a lot of strange, memory clogging software. So, does anyone know anything more about either brand? Which should I choose, or neither?

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ETA
I have purchased the Acer. There wasn't one in town to look at, but I'm not going to find those sort of specs anywhere else for under £500. There's now a very good chance my insurance will cover the total cost, and maybe a bit more (I'm not going to tell them I've already bought a new laptop, obviously). What programs I buy will probably depend on how much more I get.

Comments

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Boris V is an Acer Aspire 1520, and he's had to go back twice under warrantee, once when the motherboard or something similar fizzled, and once when the DVD drive stopped working. Other than that, the only problems I've had have been short battery life, he's too heavy to lug around comfortably, and he has a tendancy to crash when C Drive is really full. I've remedied that by unclogging C Drive (which is only 20GB, the other 20 can't run program files). The software it comes with is good, I much prefer Arcade to play DVDs than Windows Media Player.

Anyway, the Acer you're looking at has better specs than Boris, who only has 40GB hard drive and 512MB RAM.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

So it's alright, but might have some reliability issues?

I'm hoping, these being refurbsihed laptops, that some of the commonly known problems and reliability issues might have been dealt with. I got the impression when looking up details of my laptop that refurbs had a lot of the bugs ironed out.

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Those are the only two hardware problems I've had, and I've had no software issues. Plus, you do get a year's free warrantee, so if there are still issues, you have some measure of protection. But as you say, any bugs should have been ironed out, and that's a decent price for such a shiny laptop.

And I now have computer related stufflust despite that Boris does everything I need him to.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

btw, do you know why 20Gb of your harddrive can't run program files? Is it being used by something else?

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

It's because my hard drive is divided into C and D drive, both of which are 20GB. I can only run program files from C Drive (or at least that's what Boris tells me), so I use D drive to store photos. The only problem with that is that I only know how to store music on Windows Media Player, which has to be on C Drive, and hence I have clogged C Drive with music files.

With far more memory, this shouldn't be an issue. It's only a problem for me becuase 40GB was a good size laptop memory 2 years ago, when I bought Boris.

I wanna bigger C Drive!

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I had 40GB on my old one, it turns out. I did fill it, but only just.

[enyay.livejournal.com]

I use an Acer; it's not perfect, and it's an 0870 number (or email) to get through to tech support, but once you do get through they're competent and things do get fixed. Not too much bloated software, and you can uninstall it. I'd mark them as "average".

I have heard bad things about Packard Bell, though.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

Is it worth going for it now, then, before it disappears, or should I hold off in case something better crops up?

[enyay.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew the answer to that for anything I buy.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to skimp on essay, just for a bit longer, and go and look at teh Acer's they have in the Curry's in town, and just hope the refrubed one's still availble online when I get back.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

Been and come back already, alas. Sorry!

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

No worries. I deleted the comment about 5 minutes after posting becasue I realised you'd probably already gone out and it was a stupid thing to post!

I hope the laptop works out well :)