Whilst Dell’s machines in my opinion are pretty sturdy and work well (our family desktop is a dell and its been fine for 2 years so far!), they’re customer service is absolutely appaling!

So make sure you research the reputation of the company before buying, you don’t want to waste your time going back and forth or making calls when you should be completing essays or revising for exams!

Again contrary to what was mentioned earlier, I reckon Acer are fantastic. They build and manage systems with IBM and have a very good relationship with them. Having said that, IBM are definitely the best company for laptops, Toshiba are very good, as are HP/Compaq, but there’s also a company called Mesh Computers, the British version of Dell.

My brother recently got a laptop from the made by Asus…a company who themselves make motherboards, graphics cards and other pc components, when a company does that you know their computer is going to be good, and my brother’s laptop is superb!

So yeh! IBM and Mesh, make those you’re first choices, £500 should get you something good and long-lasting so long as you take care of it.

Otherwise go to PC World, but beware, I myself used to work there, so here’s a heads up:

Software problems are NOT covered under warranty, most hardware problems are only covered for 6 months, the service can either be excellent and very friendly, or appaling and a waste of time… Always get hold of a manager if there’s a problem, and make sure its a manager/assistant manager, not a supervisor.
The cover service is pretty good though, covers against all accidental damage with no excess under a free of charge replacement/repair scheme as many times as you need it under a monthly charge.

BUT, like I said go to IBM, Mesh, then check out Toshiba, thats the order I recommend.

Personally I avoid PC world, they have one or two ok deals, the ones used in their advertising, everything else is over priced.

Regards brands, everyone has their pet likes and dislikes. I don’t like dell, I used one of their laptops for a while and it fell to pieces. I have used Fujitsu a lot, a couple of different machines and they were good…

I recently used an HP and it was a very good machine, and is the best deal I have seen recently…

I haven’t used IBM for a while, but they seem to have a reputation for lasting a long time.

When all is said and done you need to shop around and get the best deal going at the time. I always take time to read the customer feedback on online stores, i.e. the comments left by actual customers.