Where to find cheap laptops in the UK

Given their portability, laptops are immensely popular. Prices vary from a little over £100 through to thousands, depending on their specifications. All computers can be expensive, this article attempts to give ideas of where cheap laptops can be purchased.

Specification

The specification of a PC laptop is important as its not uncommon for people to be disappointed by a laptop's performance. Therefore, before anyone looks at the price of a laptop, they need to work out just what they want the laptop to do. Use
While definitive, the following is indented as broad guides for things to consider. Probably the most common mistake is for people to buy a cheap laptop and then attempt to play games on it. Games are generally graphics intensive and most cheap laptops have unsuitable graphic processors. Tip one, therefore, is to look for ATI or Nvidia for the graphics card or processor. Avoid the laptop if it's unspecified or Intel. Different ATI or Nvidia cards have varying performances but they should be able to adapt to light gaming. Hard drive space
if you are a photographer or other user who will be working with large files, then going for a small hard drive just won't work. Memory
It's always worth going for at least 2gb of RAM. Any less memory capacity will slow down your system as it has to use the slower hard drive as temporary storage. Processor
Most processors are perfectly fine for most tasks but if you are doing tasks requiring complex mathematics, then it's worth going for a slightly faster one. This is probably the least critical component these days.

Where to buy

The Internet browser If you are primarily using your laptop for surfing the web with some general word processor use, then any laptop will do. The big High street stores such as PC World and Curry's often have bargains. You can also have a look at netbooks which are often available cheaply from Mobile Phone retailers. The photographer Larger screens and more RAM are likely considerations so a complete laptop is likely to be a good choice. Once again, PC World and similar supermarkets are a good choice. Keep an eye on the disk space and look for end of line systems. Some manufacturers such as Acer often have refurbished systems which are well worth looking at on their website. Laptops for gaming This is the trickiest user to get a cheap laptop for. The choices of retailer are more or less the same, with either refurbished stock from the manufacturer or a High street store. A lot of care over the specification is required, so don't just go for the cheapest.