Back to the Dell Outlet, this looks a good deal.

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/S...&puid=4cd2b381

Free delivery until thr 4th of August.

An i5 with 1TB Hard Drive, 8GB of Ram, a decent graphics card and a long life battery - all for £332.00.

Got to be a bargain.

 

Ordered!

Inspiron 15R - 5537Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4200U (3M Cache, 1.6 GHz) with 2 GB AMD Radeon HD 8670M DDR3Windows® 8.18 GB DDR3 Memory 1600MHz (2 DIMMs)1 TB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)8X DVD+/-RW Drive Tray Load15.6 inch LED Backlit Display with Truelife and HD resolution (1366 x 768)Back Up Media Not IncludedWindows® 8.1 (64 Bit) EnglishWireless : Intel Wireless N 7260 2x2 (802.11a/b/g/n with Bluetooth 4.0)LCD Back Cover : Moon SilverBattery : Primary 6-cell 65W/HRInternal Qwerty Keyboard

 

Took you long enough I told you the specs on there were unbeatable for the price

 

Couldn't you have got an ssd hard drive instead, far superior? good spec otherwise

 

I guess I could have but that would have pushed the price up even more. I was reluctant to spend more than £300 to be honest, so I wasn't going to start upgrading.

It will for light office work, internet browsing and watching videos. Should be more than enough for a few years.

These are going for £500 on eBay. Can't see how Dell do them so cheap. I guess I will see when it arrives with the lid hanging off knowing luck!

 

Arrived today. Very impressive piece of kit with no marks/scratches that I can see.
Online reviews indicated that it was quite heavy, but I have no such issues for what it is.

I have only used it for internet browsing so far but it is lightening quick.
Battery life also seems very impressive. I have run it for 4 hours so far tonight and the battery indicator is still showing over 4 hours remaining.

Just one thing....Windows 8.

After a few hours accustoming myself with this latest Microsoft operating system, I am seriously considering purchasing a copy of Windows 7. However, how easy would it be to find all my drivers online after the fresh install? This laptop was supplied with no backup discs so I don't want to create any hardware/software headaches.

Or will a free upgrade to Windows 8.1 64 bit make it a bit more user friendly?

Any advice appreciated.

 

Upgrade to 8.1 as your first port of call.

Win 8 is the first MS OS I've skipped since DOS 5.0, but 8.1 is OK once you've got used to it. There is an adjustment phase though.

 

8.1 update 1 is excellent and as Beef says this is the first thing you should update to on any Windows 8 machine. Then install either the free classicshell or pay a couple of quid for startisback and have Windows 8 with the Windows 7 start menu and boot straight to desktop (8.1 update 1 on it's own has a form of start menu but startisback is the full works and you don't need to buy and install Windows 7).

 

Cheers guys.

Will try that.