I very rarely get asked to spec up laptops, so I'm hoping Bit can help me out. For a budget of £500-700 ex. VAT, I need to find an excellent all round laptop with the following basic specs: Windows based (no Macbooks/Chromebooks) 14-17" screen, 1080p preferred Large (>250GB) SSD or dual drive to allow for small boot SSD & mechanical. Reasonable speakers At least 8GB RAM Good looks (subjective I know) Great battery life Decent processor (no Celerons etc.) Standard "business connectivity" such as Gigabit Ethernet, video out etc It's for the boss (not my wife ), who will mainly use it for browsing, office, and media consumption, but nothing more so nothing as high as an i7 will probably be required. Preferably a standard laptop configuration rather than a hybrid tablet. Let me know if I've missed anything you'd need to know, and thanks in advance for any help
I was speccing a laptop for myself, for no other reason than I could sort of do with one, but I still can't justify the price of a reasonable one. Anyway, I came across this. Its got all the specs of a decent mid-range laptop and I'd be happy enough with it. Don't know about your boss though. It also comes with superfish as an added bonus http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=ECE3340870 Its an Irish website but I'm sure you could something similar uk based. Also the latest dell xps 13 looks like a great laptop, not sure of the price though. It will also come with its own version of superfish
You're going to struggle to get a decent laptop with those specs for that money, you could likely get something from a non-name but from one of the big players you're looking at much closer to £1000. The closest I can find is this but it's only 128GB SSD and only standard warranty: http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/l...sm038le5450buk&model_id=latitude-e5450-laptop If it was me personally, I'd want to spec something with an 3yr next business day on-site warranty... IT look really bad when they have to send away the entire laptop for warranty, especially for someone as important as your MD. Anyone else can deal with a lower level warranty but you don't want to skimp when it comes to your directors as the possibility of them loosing half a day productivity isn't worth it to save a couple hundred quid. Bump your budget to £1000 and you can get a business class laptop like a 14" Latitude, with 3yr NBD Warranty) and a docking station to use in the office. edit: I'm sure HP also do a comparable model, but I've worked with Dell business kit (very different from their consumer lines!) for so long I'm more than happy to recommend their kit and support as it's top.
Thanks for the suggestions so far gents, keep 'em coming. I'll edit the OP as well, but I ought to point out that the price range is ex VAT (so approx £600-850 inc) and this will be his personal laptop, not a work supported one.
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-13-7359-laptop/pd?oc=cn73903&model_id=inspiron-13-7359-laptop It meets all of the specs except screen size.
Dell 7440/ 7450 The outlet always has a reasonable selection and i believe (dont quote me) the lattitude comes iwht he 3YR NBD warranty or it can be added
Currently the following for 545+ VAT Latitude E7440 Latitude E7440 Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4310U (3M Cache, up to 3.00 GHz) Windows® 8.1 Pro 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory (1x8GB) 256 GB Solid State Hard Drive No Optical Device 14.0 inch WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare Display Windows® 8.1 Pro (64Bit) English Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 + Bluetooth 4.0 No WWAN Card Included LCD Back Cover (Non Touch) Primary 4-cell 45W/HR Battery Internal Qwerty Keyboard Light Sensitive Webcam and Noise Cancelling Digital Array Mic No Fingerprint Reader and No Smart Card Reader (Contact and Contactless) Palmrest mSATA Interposer 3Yr NBD Basic warranty Premium support upgrade for +91 In my last role I had been buying from the outlook / dell outlet resellers and finally directly from a dedicated Dell outlet account manager for 6 years without any major issues. If you stick to the cert refurbs / new ones you wont go wrong, to be fair Ive also had a couple of grade 1 scratch /dents and I was hard pressed to find the fault. Nims
