Cheap Laptop for less than £250 (1 Viewer)

SkyBlue_Bear83 · Apr 27, 2022

Hi can any tech gurus help me pick a machine for less than £250

Not looking for anything amazing, just something that will do basic web browsing/emails/word/excel/streaming functions.

Toshiba Portégé Z30-C -Intel Core i5-6200U - 8GB RAM - 240GB SSD

The Toshiba Portege Z30-C is equipped with an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB Memory and 240GB Storage and has a 13.3 inch screen ensuring it is more than capable of reliably handling your daily work, study, or casual computing needs. All Stone Refurb

www.stonerefurb.co.uk

Been looking at this refurb which seems to have decent specs for the price but if anyone can advise

Tea & Busquets · Apr 28, 2022

Not a tech guru by any means but I don't typically recommend a laptop under $500. If that's all that's available to you then I hope someone can give a proper answer to your question.

stay_up_skyblues · Apr 28, 2022

Can’t comment on that site mate but our lad had one a few years ago for £250 from Laptops Direct and it does what your asking for. Bag of shit if he tries to play games on it though.

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ct/laptops-and-netbooks/laptops/refurbished

SBAndy · Apr 28, 2022

Got a Lenovo Ideapad from Curry’s a couple of years back for about £150 with a year’s subscription to Office 365 thrown in. Decent thing considering the price.

JAM See · Apr 28, 2022

SkyBlue_Bear83 said:
Hi can any tech gurus help me pick a machine for less than £250

Not looking for anything amazing, just something that will do basic web browsing/emails/word/excel/streaming functions.

Toshiba Portégé Z30-C -Intel Core i5-6200U - 8GB RAM - 240GB SSD

The Toshiba Portege Z30-C is equipped with an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB Memory and 240GB Storage and has a 13.3 inch screen ensuring it is more than capable of reliably handling your daily work, study, or casual computing needs. All Stone Refurb

www.stonerefurb.co.uk

Been looking at this refurb which seems to have decent specs for the price but if anyone can advise

I'm running almost exactly the same spec. (albeit 7th gen vs 6th gen).

Not having any problems at all.

The 8GB of RAM and SSD seem to just seem to keep it going.

You've not got any chance of upgrading to Windows 11, but I wouldn't worry too much about that.

As long as you're happy with a 13.3" screen, looks a good deal

clint van damme · Apr 28, 2022

SkyBlue_Bear83 said:
Hi can any tech gurus help me pick a machine for less than £250

Not looking for anything amazing, just something that will do basic web browsing/emails/word/excel/streaming functions.

Toshiba Portégé Z30-C -Intel Core i5-6200U - 8GB RAM - 240GB SSD

The Toshiba Portege Z30-C is equipped with an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB Memory and 240GB Storage and has a 13.3 inch screen ensuring it is more than capable of reliably handling your daily work, study, or casual computing needs. All Stone Refurb

www.stonerefurb.co.uk

Been looking at this refurb which seems to have decent specs for the price but if anyone can advise

I've only ever used refurbs for a few years now and never had any issues. My spectrum of usage is about the same as yours, browsing, spreadsheets, e mail etc.

duffer · Apr 28, 2022

Just a thought, and possibly a stupid one, but does it have to be a laptop? In my experience you'll get more bang for your buck with a desktop PC.

As a possible alternative, after a fair amount of research I bought the kids one of these on Amazon before Christmas. Going new for £280 at the moment. Certainly no issues with it so far...

Acer Swift 1 SF114-34 14 inch Laptop - (Intel Pentium N6000, 4GB, 128GB SSD, Full HD Display, Microsoft Office 365, Windows 10 in S Mode, Silver) Amazon product ASIN B097F3GRSQ

duffer · Apr 28, 2022

Sorry, ignore that, the link I was looking at was for a used one on Amazon. Might still be decent value though, it is at least a recent spec.

SkyBlue_Bear83 · Apr 28, 2022

duffer said:
Just a thought, and possibly a stupid one, but does it have to be a laptop? In my experience you'll get more bang for your buck with a desktop PC.

As a possible alternative, after a fair amount of research I bought the kids one of these on Amazon before Christmas. Going new for £280 at the moment. Certainly no issues with it so far...

Acer Swift 1 SF114-34 14 inch Laptop - (Intel Pentium N6000, 4GB, 128GB SSD, Full HD Display, Microsoft Office 365, Windows 10 in S Mode, Silver) Amazon product ASIN B097F3GRSQ

Living in a one bed flat with small pets and gf has a so not much room for a desktop pc

stupot07 · Apr 28, 2022

SkyBlue_Bear83 said:
Living in a one bed flat with small pets and gf has a so not much room for a desktop pc

Chromebooks are a decent option.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

duffer · Apr 28, 2022

stupot07 said:
Chromebooks are a decent option.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

I thought about one of them, but I was put off by people saying they didn't work well with MS Office. I also wasn't keen on anything with less than a 128Gb SSD.

I could well be talking out of my backside of course, if you've got one can I ask how you get on with it?

duffer · Apr 28, 2022

SkyBlue_Bear83 said:
Living in a one bed flat with small pets and gf has a so not much room for a desktop pc

The pets are non negotiable of course, but maybe there's scope to make a bit of room elsewhere?

FulltimeWum · Apr 28, 2022

Chromebooks are great for web browsing, Netflix etc. Always turn on instantly.

Google Docs and the rest of the suite replicate MS stuff very well and have some added bonuses, slides works really well with YouTube.

duffer · Apr 28, 2022

FulltimeWum said:
Chromebooks are great for web browsing, Netflix etc. Always turn on instantly.

Google Docs and the rest of the suite replicate MS stuff very well and have some added bonuses, slides works really well with YouTube.

Definitely interesting that, thanks. The worry is that we're tied into MS Office for work and school.

With apologies for another probably daft question, can you save Google docs into Word and Excel readable formats, do you know?

FulltimeWum · Apr 28, 2022

Yes there's no need to convert them unless there's some over the top formulas in them.

Regarding work, if you need to work on it. Work should be paying for it.

School, teams has a log in via the web.

duffer · Apr 28, 2022

FulltimeWum said:
Yes there's no need to convert them unless there's some over the top formulas in them.

Regarding work, if you need to work on it. Work should be paying for it.

School, teams has a log in via the web.

Yep, in fairness I've got plenty of kit for my work, and a ton more old stuff besides (IT hoarder alert!) but the school pass on a lot of stuff in Office, and want it back in the same format. The kids do get a student licence for free, but of course the laptop has to be able to run it.

I'd be happy with Windows and Office 95, personally, I'm the only bloke at work who can still use command line DOS. At this rate I'll be the only person left in the office who uses his mobile phone to... phone people.

LastGarrison · Apr 30, 2022

Being a tight fucker here but anyone know of how or where to download Office for free?

New job only work off Google but annoying if someone sends me something through Excel and I need to edit it etc.

JAM See · Apr 30, 2022

LastGarrison said:
Being a tight fucker here but anyone know of how or where to download Office for free?

New job only work off Google but annoying if someone sends me something through Excel and I need to edit it etc.

Home | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Free office suite – the evolution of OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. Updated regularly, community powered.

www.libreoffice.org

Worth a try. I mainly use googledocs, but I know people who swear by Libreoffice.

LastGarrison · Apr 30, 2022

JAM See said:
Home | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Free office suite – the evolution of OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. Updated regularly, community powered.

www.libreoffice.org

Worth a try. I mainly use googledocs, but I know people who swear by Libreoffice.

Cheers JAM, I’ll give that a go!

Deleted member 5849 · May 1, 2022

I use Libre Office. It's absolutely fine.

Liquid Gold · May 2, 2022

LastGarrison said:
Being a tight fucker here but anyone know of how or where to download Office for free?

New job only work off Google but annoying if someone sends me something through Excel and I need to edit it etc.

Just torrent it. Or if you're on a mac I can probably send you a disk image

Kieranp96 · May 6, 2022

You won’t get anything that will last under £250, it be old and slow even if it’s a “new machine” technology is moving so fast, invest in a machine around £500/750 and you will be good (obviously some people don’t have that money) but I say it’s worth the investment Over a slow ass machine that break in a year.
I run a pc and a MacBook Pro m1 2021 and combined they cost me over £5k but it was a investment one that’s paid off.

Deleted member 5849 · May 6, 2022

Kieranp96 said:
You won’t get anything that will last under £250, it be old and slow even if it’s a “new machine” technology is moving so fast, invest in a machine around £500/750 and you will be good (obviously some people don’t have that money) but I say it’s worth the investment Over a slow ass machine that break in a year.
I run a pc and a MacBook Pro m1 2021 and combined they cost me over £5k but it was a investment one that’s paid off.

Depends what you want to do with it though.

SBAndy · May 7, 2022

Deleted member 5849 said:
Depends what you want to do with it though.

Indeed. My £150 Lenovo still runs pretty solidly and is 2-3 years old now.

Cheap Laptop for less than £250 (1 Viewer)

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