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I'd keep your iTunes library on a separate hard drive



IN MADNESS YOU DWELL

Fair point but this is a 17 year old and not techie so it has to be simples.

Quote:
I'd keep your iTunes library on a separate hard drive
I wouldn't. I would keep it on the same drive, but MAKE SURE everything is backed up to an external drive regularly (keep all required files in the User area and just back that up using a Robocopy script).

Sue - they're all fairly similar these days and there's not much to choose between them.
I'd be looking for at least 3GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.
They all seem to have webcams and wireless built in these days, so they're a given.
What will make a difference will be the CPU and the battery life.
If you look at the latest Intel i3 CPUs they tend to get better performance vs battery life (from what I've read) and you should be able to get 4hours or so from one with conservative usage (and Windows 7).

To give you an idea of hard drive space required for music libraries...I have over 800 albums on my PC (in various bitrates, but all at least 160kbps) and that takes up around 80GB of space.

Argos have a refurb E-bay site if that helps. 

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Clearance-Bargains_Laptops-netbooks_W0QQLHQ5fTitleDescZ1QQ_fsubZ1683056016QQ_sasiZ1QQ_sidZ66512606QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em14?_trksid=p4634.c0.m14.l1513&_pgn=2

As a general rule of thumb, these are things you really should be looking for in that price range:

• Windows 7 Home Premium
  (64bit if you have 4gb of ram)
• nVidia or ATI graphics
  (Intel is rubbish)

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Hi Sue,
I would stay away from Acer I recently bought a new Acer pc aftyer nine months, the video slot went down and the power supply a week after. Also the customer service is appalling.
have a look a dell and also HP or toshiba my Toshiba Laptop is on its third Year and still going strong.
One thing to look out for is the Video card make sure it has independant memory, shared memory laptops tend to slow down and the video rate when playing  movies etc is affected.

badboybez idea of the ITunes on a seperate drive is worth considering. 1 TB drives are so cheap now and you can partition it  then keep all your movies, music and photo's seperate as well. We all say we should backup but we never do until its too late

Sue have a look at the new Outlet section of Ebuyer, they've got some great spec laptops starting around the £300 mark. They're marked as exdisplay but still come with full warranty.

HTH
Bryan

If I were after a laptop I'd be after something like one of these which should both go for within your price range:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sony-Vaio-VGN-FW56E-2-2-Dual-Core-Blu-Ray-4Gb-Windows-/260632343397?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item3caee5f365

or

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sony-VAIO-VGN-FW11E-16-4-2-26-GHz-Laptop-PC-MINT-COND-/330450481955?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item4cf0623323


Just reread your post though and there's no guarantee the batteries will last four hours!

This item was edited on Tuesday, 13th July 2010, 13:05

With Sony you are paying a lot for the name and the beauty if you are not that fussed and just want something cheap and simple go for Dell, upgrade the screen to a good one and you'll be fine.

This Toshiba one looks good value for money although doubt battery life will be anywhere hear 4 hours more like 2.

Stolen from HUKD

This item was edited on Tuesday, 13th July 2010, 14:46