Decent laptop for under £250?

[tvout]

Hi all,
Upon the death of my nice little Medion SIM2000 which although quite cheap and cheerful served me really well for several years.
I thought I might just bite the bullet and buy a new laptop but don't really want to splash out tons of money...
My old laptop was a 1.4GHz Celeron, 1GB RAM and 80GB HD with Sis661MX onboard graphics and 12.1" screen.
I like smaller laptops and have been wondering about Netbooks. I mostly surf the net, but also do stuff in MS Office and media (music, videos etc). The above spec was great and I've seen a couple of Acer's and MSI netbooks/notebooks etc which look quite good. I have wondered about getting one with a decent graphics chipset and card reader/Wifi/Bluetooth is preferable.
Can anyone recommend anything? Are these netbook things any good? I did wonder if it'd be hard working with a 8" or 9" screen, I was happy with 12.1". Wouldn't really need something larger than that...

[webcrawler2050]

Originally Posted by tvout

Hi all,
Upon the death of my nice little Medion SIM2000 which although quite cheap and cheerful served me really well for several years.
I thought I might just bite the bullet and buy a new laptop but don't really want to splash out tons of money...
My old laptop was a 1.4GHz Celeron, 1GB RAM and 80GB HD with Sis661MX onboard graphics and 12.1" screen.
I like smaller laptops and have been wondering about Netbooks. I mostly surf the net, but also do stuff in MS Office and media (music, videos etc). The above spec was great and I've seen a couple of Acer's and MSI netbooks/notebooks etc which look quite good. I have wondered about getting one with a decent graphics chipset and card reader/Wifi/Bluetooth is preferable.
Can anyone recommend anything? Are these netbook things any good? I did wonder if it'd be hard working with a 8" or 9" screen, I was happy with 12.1". Wouldn't really need something larger than that...

Can you provide me with your "MD Number" which is on the medion sticker on the bottom of your laptop.

And@ http://www.medionshop.co.uk/mdshop/a...23%29/.do?rf=y

Decent spec machine for a decent price.

[Hom3r]

Don't forget Netbook don't have an optical drive.

I copy CD contents on to a flash drive (another laptop/PC), then install on to my Netbook (Samsung NC-10) from that.

[tvout]

Originally Posted by webcrawler2050

Can you provide me with your "MD Number" which is on the medion sticker on the bottom of your laptop.

Sure, it's MD95370. The motherboard (ms-10061) seems to be really expensive where sold and I think the screen has also gone now. It's a real shame but I've gone into detail about the problems on my other thread on here about my laptop having died.
My gf also has a SIM2000 and has put the 1GB of DDR I installed in mine into hers now.
I'd really like to get a laptop very similar to the SIM2000 as I liked the design and its compactness.

---------- Post added at 20:48 ---------- Previous post was at 20:42 ----------

Originally Posted by webcrawler2050

And@ http://www.medionshop.co.uk/mdshop/a...23%29/.do?rf=y

Decent spec machine for a decent price.

Looks good, thanks. I definitely think the spec is great, shame it has Vista as opposed to XP though
My SIM2000 was bought with a damaged screen for less than £100. I purchased a replacement screen for £150 from Medion in Swindon and swapped it out. I enquired recently about getting a new motherboard but was told I can't buy spare parts which I thought was odd when I had before...

---------- Post added at 20:51 ---------- Previous post was at 20:48 ----------

Originally Posted by Hom3r

Don't forget Netbook don't have an optical drive.

I copy CD contents on to a flash drive (another laptop/PC), then install on to my Netbook (Samsung NC-10) from that.

I think that's the biggest worry for me. I did read some don't play Flash? I want to make sure whatever I get is a fully functional laptop not a big mobile phone.

How do you reinstall the OS on a netbook then? I had to wipe and reinstall the OS on a laptop without a CDROM at work and it was a nightmare (tried bootable USB, external optical drives etc).

[webcrawler2050]

Sure, it's MD95370. The motherboard (ms-10061) seems to be really expensive where sold and I think the screen has also gone now. It's a real shame but I've gone into detail about the problems on my other thread on here about my laptop having died.
My gf also has a SIM2000 and has put the 1GB of DDR I installed in mine into hers now.
I'd really like to get a laptop very similar to the SIM2000 as I liked the design and its compactness.

Medion - can provide an out of warranty repair I do believe it's £150.50 + parts. With a 10 working day turn around. I'd be happy to book this in for you. You may notice, I work on the tech desk for Medion, in Swindon.

Looks good, thanks. I definitely think the spec is great, shame it has Vista as opposed to XP though
My SIM2000 was bought with a damaged screen for less than £100. I purchased a replacement screen for £150 from Medion in Swindon and swapped it out. I enquired recently about getting a new motherboard but was told I can't buy spare parts which I thought was odd when I had before.

You can of course, downgrade to Win XP - Without it ruining the warranty. Aswell, the unti comes with a Win 7 Voucher. Parts are all now in Germany, as well as most repairs. Thus we can't sell parts either and or they don't make them no more.

[xpod]

Originally Posted by tvout

..........

How do you reinstall the OS on a netbook then? I had to wipe and reinstall the OS on a laptop without a CDROM at work and it was a nightmare (tried bootable USB, external optical drives etc).

USB.
I`ve re-installed XP on a couple of different netbooks now with a USB key i made from this guide .I keep the USB key just for that reason in fact.

[tvout]

Originally Posted by webcrawler2050

Medion - can provide an out of warranty repair I do believe it's £150.50 + parts. With a 10 working day turn around. I'd be happy to book this in for you. You may notice, I work on the tech desk for Medion, in Swindon.



You can of course, downgrade to Win XP - Without it ruining the warranty. Aswell, the unti comes with a Win 7 Voucher. Parts are all now in Germany, as well as most repairs. Thus we can't sell parts either and or they don't make them no more.

I did indeed see it in your sig I didn't expect to get a reply from tech support on here. I think the cost of the repair might be huge to be honest. I mean I admit I swapped out the memory for 1GB and the Celeron CPU for a Pentium M and HD for an 80GB myself. I'm not really sure what damage had occurred to it before I had it but the motherboard failure I think was inevitable. I can imagine the cost of repairing it would be around £400 at least (motherboard and screen - tested screen on my gf's laptop and it just lit up white as well )so it might be better for me to just get a newer better spec laptop really.
That laptop does look good I must admit. A bit more than I was planning to spend and Windows 7 is tempting. Are Medions just sold in Aldi's now?
I thought it was oddly coincidental that where I work the head UK office is in Swindon and the international HQ is in the same place in Germany as Medion!

---------- Post added at 21:29 ---------- Previous post was at 21:27 ----------

Originally Posted by xpod

USB.
I`ve re-installed XP on a couple of different netbooks now with a USB key i made from this guide .I keep the USB key just for that reason in fact.

Cheers xpod. Can you completely format the HD etc as you would installing from a CD? I do have an external DVD-RW drive I could use.

[webcrawler2050]

Are Medions just sold in Aldi's now?

Aldi has *exclusive* models built to their requests and thier budget.

Cost I would approximate to be around £200.

Medions UK outfit, used to have a service centre and repairs. However, in a bid to "save" money, they moved it over to the Germany.

[Ben B]

I have this laptop, it's £249.99 at Argos, the screen's a little larger than what you have stated you would like at 14.1in but it's still nice and compact. http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/st...emachines+d620

[xpod]

Originally Posted by tvout

I did indeed see it in your sig ....

Cheers xpod. Can you completely format the HD etc as you would installing from a CD? I do have an external DVD-RW drive I could use.

You can indeed delete/create partitions with it.You actually need to delete any excess partitions and create the one big partition if i remember correctly.
You also have access to the recovery console and you can do repair installations with it too.

[Jules]

Great thread for me as son and heir would like a lap top for Christmas.