[foot-loose]

Ok, I need some advice. Me, mum and sister are chipping in together to get dad a new laptop for his Christmas. It doesn't need to do anything fancy, only connect to the interweb. The tricky problem is: I don't want it to be running on Vista. He has never used Vista and neither have I. While I would manage to find my way about, he would likely start crying - not a good look on Christmas morning.

Dell are a bit on the pricey side and they have at least a months waiting list on their cheapest model. PC World are idiots at the best of times, but they don't appear to sell any models running XP either in their store or online.

Any suggestions as to where I could buy something like that? I'm curretly looking on eBay. I don't know if I would want to spend that sorta money on there though...?

[Console]

Star Computers sell a pretty decent Fujitsu laptop with XP Home. It's £395 (plus £10 P+P), is that too much? If so, what price range are you realistically looking at?

[Bonanzoid]

From my experience, Acer are quite good spec for the money, but I can't remember which site I got my laptop from, it was one which sold solely Acers. I got mine for about £600, with bag and mouse - and it's an Acer 5100 with AMD Turion 64 X2 Processors and 1GB RAM. It is Vista Home Premium, but I haven't found it to be as bad as people make on.

[foot-loose]

Around the £300 mark.

It seriously doesn't need to be able to do anything other than get on the net through wireless. He doesn't download music or anything. I don't even think he watches porn!

Dell has one at £320 - i'd rather wait for that and tell him it's coming than spend an extra £100 on a load of features that, while they are cool, he won't need.

[S4B]

Woolies are doing a nice pink one for £400!

[foot-loose]

It will be running Vista.

Tesco are doing a pink one at £320. It's in Vista. It's also in Pink.

[S4B]

Can't you just delete Vista and put on XP? Am I being naiive? I think he'd like it in pink though!

[Chris]

Stick classic menus on and he really won't notice the difference.

[foot-loose]

Stick classic menus on and he really won't notice the difference.

Thats pretty much what I thought when I looked at it this afternoon - I said to the guy in the shop that it basically looked like XP but... cooler. And the chances are my printer wont work with it, so why do I want it. He kinda stumbled there.

I like annoying PC World people. Console must have a field day in there. Like giving a mouse to a cat.

[Console]

Console must have a field day in there. Like giving a mouse to a cat.

I can't stand going in most computer shops. The only ones I go in are the local, small shops that have people in them that actually understand what you're talking about. I once had a PC World (I think it was PC World) employee* refer to RAM as hard memory; I don't think I've been back since.

*It was one of the service centre people, the ones that are supposed to fix computers.

[foot-loose]

This was what I figured. Having worked in a supermarket, you get used to telling the customer whatever pish you can make up to keep them happy. PC World is similar to a supermaket in that respect - a lot of the kids in there only surprisingly seem to know whatever it says on the label on the front of a pc. (Or 'point of sale' for those with the lingo)

[MK Chris]

I've been into PC World to look for cables (I can't remember which) that we needed at work at short notice, so couldn't order them in, but no other time.

[foot-loose]

I used to hate the place, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I think thats more because computers have become less 'packaged' than they used to be than it is the shops doing.

It's not somewhere I would go regularly and I wouldn't recommend them - even to folk that don't know much about pc's.

Saying that... I might pop into one of those more local computer shops later and see if that gets me anywhere for my dad. If not, i'll just get him socks.

[S4B]

Pink socks?

[Yudster]

Euro-PC are quite good. Haven't looked on their website lately, but we've had some decent stuff from them in the past.

[Zoot]

Console must have a field day in there. Like giving a mouse to a cat.

I can't stand going in most computer shops. The only ones I go in are the local, small shops that have people in them that actually understand what you're talking about. I once had a PC World (I think it was PC World) employee* refer to RAM as hard memory; I don't think I've been back since.

*It was one of the service centre people, the ones that are supposed to fix computers.

I remember once, about 4 years ago I was in John Lewis's computer department, and this young kid in a name badge was trying to sell an apple ibook to an elderly couple.

"yea, all the laptops ship with windows XP nowadays..."
(this was before apple had intel/bootcamp etc...)

[Andy B]

I love going into PC world and asking the 16 year olds if the computer comes with an LRF support infrastrucure?

LRF = Little Rubber Feet

I haven't bought a computer in years, it just keeps me amused.....