The only thing I can offer to the discussion is to beware of the cheap laptops, or more specifically, beware of the LCD hinges on cheap laptops. Both myself and a family member had bought cheap laptops ( both were from different manufacturers and were different processors, features ect ) and both suffered with failures to the LCD hinge area after the warrenty ran out.
To be specific, it wasn't the actual hinge, but the thin, pressed metal frame that the hinge and LCD attaches to, that suffered metal fatigue and cracked from the repetitive strain of opening and closing. Chasing the manufaturers was completely fruitless, my Father-In-Law ( who works at a sheet metal fabrication plant ) got one of the welders to TIG weld it for me, but it broke again on the first open/close cycle.
I did manage a Heath-Robinson type fix, involving a sheet of 6mm MDF and some screws, but needless to say it did not look very good, although still operational.
I've since got a Dell Vostro laptop( I got it on special offer, and got Quidco cashback too
) and it shows no sign of the same problem, even after 2yrs.
OK some are faster etc, but twice the price faster??
I guess some of the extra cash goes on higher quality hardware like the hinges and keyboard ( I forgot to mention that the "i" key had also stopped responding on the old laptop ). Some laptops( the more ££££ ones ) have a dedicated graphics card with onboard dedicated memory instead of shared memory. That makes a big difference to games, but can also make a difference to scrolling through pages of text in a Word document or a webpage.
I hope you get a good-un
Tim
