Hi,

I'm being given a budget of £1100 (maximum) to buy myself a laptop, but am not a techie person at all. I've been told that it would be good if the laptop was XP compatible (because I was told Vista is rubbish and word documents on XP won't work on this), and would only really use the laptop for 'regular' stuff (i.e. internet, typing word/powerpoint documents, reading/maybe creating articles on pdf, etc). Also, it would be good if it was lightweight as I'll need to carry it around with me when I'm travelling about.

So far I've been recommended the 'Toshiba Portege R500-1LZ' and 'Sony Vaio - SR and CR series' ... any thoughts?

ANY recommendations (obviously, I'm happy to use the budget up!)?

Not sure which would be the best to get but I would avoid getting an acer laptop.. I have one and my other half has one; they are both breaking down and both fairly slow which I think is due to all the background 'management' programs that run on it.

I would definitely try to get one with XP, I find Vista an awful operating system with a variety of compatability problems and I would never want to get a laptop that runs it.

If you don't want it for anything too special, check this out: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tipnote/cheap-laptop-deals

Go for the Toshiba, it will last you. I had a Toshiba all the way through my PhD.

By most accounts XP is preferable to Vista, although hard to get hold of for private individuals. Check whether your uni/department has a procurement contract with any computer manufacturers - if so, they will often have an educational agreement that enables access to machines/systems not available to the general public, which includes those still running XP.

I'm not sure about your comment that 'word documents on XP won't work on Vista'. I suspect what you need to be aware of is either
(i) that some specialist programmes (or specific versions thereof) one might have used on XP can't be transferred over to a Vista system
or
(ii) Documents created using Office 2007 (denoted by '.docx') won't open in earlier versions of Office, unless you've made the effort to save them in a suitable format ('.doc')

Hope this helps.

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I wouldn't recommend Fujitsu-Siemens; I know of two people who needed multiple repairs within 12 months, and very poor customer service.

I agree about the Office 2007 .docx documents, thats probably what you meant.

Vista is rubbish though so really stick to XP.

The other thing I recommend is to go through quidco.com and buy from a website they offer cashback for.

If you are spending over a grand and the cashback is 5% (for example), that's at least £50 back in your pocket :-x