New Laptop Advice

[Just Gillian]

Offspring's laptop has died and (for some mysterious reason) they have asked for my advice on choosing a new one.

The maximum they can afford to spend is £250. It will be used primarily for Office, emails and movies. They need a DVD drive and a decent sized screen and would like it to be as lightweight as possible.

This is one they have found online. Can anyone tell me if this would be a good option please?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-15-6-inch-Notebook-Integrated-Graphics/dp/B00PC8166C/ref=lp_4660209031_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1440578214&sr=1-2

I currently have a houseful of visitors so will be out entertaining all day but will be back online tonight.

[DavidNewton]

Advice of this nature is always tricky as you will no doubt feel bad if you make the wrong decision.

Lenovo have attracted some bad publicity recently because of the superfish adware installed on their machines (but you can get rid of it). However, what would put me off here is that more that 12% (33 out of 260) of the reviewers awarded a one star rating, although the number of reviews indicates it is a popular buy.

There is an old(ish) article in the Independent (Dec 2014) titled 10 best laptops under £250 which may be worth a look

http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/gadgets-tech/10-best-laptops-under-250-9913325.html

David

[TrevorFranklin]

I have two Lenovo laptops, and I have never had a problem with them

Currently Ebuyer.com has this

http://www.ebuyer.com/700318-lenovo-essential-b50-70-laptop-mcc2nuk

At £239 (normally £299)

Has high reviews of 8/10 from over 200 people

The one that you have seen on Amazon is via a third party seller, but Ebuyer are their own company, whom I have used for years o purchase laptops, PC and components from

[Just Gillian]

Thanks David and Trevor

Would the Lenovo adware be easy for an amateur to uninstall David?

I've looked at reviews for the Lenovo one for which you posted the link Trevor. A few people mentioned replacing the HDD with SSD. This means absolutely nothing to me so I was wondering if it was something that would be an essential modification?

[TrevorFranklin]

HDD is a standard magnetic drive which will be completely suitable for your needs
A SSD is a solid state drive (Rather like a massive pendrive) inside the laptop.
The only advantage is the speed of it working, but for the general home user this has no noticeable difference at all.
I teach computers and still use a standard HDD in my laptop

[DavidNewton]

Gillian removing superfish is something that Lenovo have taken on board and they supply a removal tool on their support website - just Google 'removing superfish' and it is likely to be the first result.

As you now have a personal recommendation for Lenovo you should probably ignore my reservations regarding the reviews.

David

[TrevorFranklin]

"Lenovo is no longer adding Superfish to its consumer PCs, but those who purchased one during the holiday season might have it on their machine."

So those purchased at Christmas were shipped with it, it should not be on the latest ones

I purchased my newest early last year and it had none of this on it, so it looks like it was only a short period.

It is definitely not on those shipped since Feb this year

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish

Though all they were doing is what Google and facebook already do and millions of users are not bothered with that

[Just Gillian]

Thanks again David and Trevor.

My own laptop, a Samsung, was a gift in 2012 and it has been brilliant but, looking at laptops under £250, no make seems to stand out as more highly recommended than any others.

Trevor, I've only bought small bits and pieces from Ebuyer in the past. Do you have any idea what they are like re returns in the event of faults?

[Oscar]

I have a Lenovo laptop, Gillian. It's now 7 years old and I haven't had any trouble with it at all. It was a present, so I have no idea of the cost, but it's given me wonderful service.

Gwyn

[Just Gillian]

Thanks Gwyn, that's useful to know.

[DavidNewton]

Lenovo has not yet given up the ghost regarding c***ware. There was a news article in the recent Computeractive magazine and information on it here

https://www.streetlife.com/conversation/1eelhaz3gh50d/

again there are methods supplied by Lenovo to remove it but one wonders why it is there in the first place.

The Computeractive comment on this suggests that Lenovo are so far the only PC manufacturer to be exposed but speculate there may be more to come.

David

[TrevorFranklin]

The story is not accurate in the way it is telling things
It did not remove windows products and replace it with it's own, it worked alongside Windows in keeping the main BIOS for their PCs up to date.
Lenovo and Windows were informed that this COULD pose a risk in the way it worked.
No different to the zero day exploits that are fond in all the main working software these days.

Like I said David,
Windows, Chrome, Facebook, Twitter and Google are all full of background running advert tracking, user browsing habit recorders etc, so what Lenovo have admitted to is TINY compared to what we face each time we log on and touch our keyboards.

Lenovo has not yet given up the ghost regarding c***ware. There was a news article in the recent Computeractive magazine and information on it here

https://www.streetlife.com/conversation/1eelhaz3gh50d/

again there are methods supplied by Lenovo to remove it but one wonders why it is there in the first place.

The Computeractive comment on this suggests that Lenovo are so far the only PC manufacturer to be exposed but speculate there may be more to come.

David

[DavidNewton]

My apologies, this is not a suitable forum for this discussion.

David