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these new cheap core 2 due laptops - any good?

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nudone:
since vista has come along i've noticed there are plenty of laptops available below the £500 price mark (no idea what they are priced at in the US and everywhere else but i'll guess that they are less than $1000).

typically, these laptops will have vista home premium and 1 to 2 gig of ram and a hard drive over 100 gig. they'll have wifi but won't have a high end graphics cards. they'll have an intel core 2 duo chip.

i don't know anyone that owns one of these budget machines but i'm tempted to buy one. but before that i'd like to know if anyone has used any of these cheap laptops and whether they perform well for typical internet and office related tasks.

my interest is in whether they perform better than a laptop from a few years back. i have an old gericom pentium 4 laptop with 512 meg running xp home - it's crap and always has been, it's sluggish and prone to crashing (i've cleaned it and reinstalled a couple of times but it just isn't up to the job). at the time it cost me £1000 which seemed like a bargain but i wouldn't be at all surprised if these new cheapo intel core 2 duo laptops easily out perform it.

i could add more ram to the old gericom laptop but as the machine is such a noisy lump of plastic that cuts off the blood supply to my feet when i place it on my lap, i'd rather just sling it into a nearby lake - and then buy one of these new cheapo things.

anyone had a go on these new laptops and been able to compare them with older machines?

f0dder:
The machines themselves are nice (I bought two Lenovo v100 (iirc) for the museum), but Vista isn't nice on them - and battery life wasn't all that hunkydory on the Lenovos. Fair amount of computing power, no-good-for-gaming graphics, not-too-bad heat.

nudone:
gaming isn't a concern but heat and battery life would be important. saying vista isn't nice on them makes me wonder if that means they feel sluggish or just look a bit nasty.

f0dder:
gaming isn't a concern but heat and battery life would be important. saying vista isn't nice on them makes me wonder if that means they feel sluggish or just look a bit nasty.
-nudone (October 20, 2007, 05:37 AM)
--- End quote ---
Look fine, and smooth enough once started, but feels too heavy - but I feel the same running Vista on my AMD64x2 4400+/2gig/GF7600. I chose the standard battery pack for the lenovos (higher cell-count ones are available), last around an hour and a half doing real work.

Armando:
I'm sure there are some nice laptops among the cheap ones. Just check for their battery life (and any other info about the LCD, etc.) on the net... There are soo many forums.

I believe any dual core CPU will really improve your everyday computing. If you plan on using Vista, i'd say RAM is the primary factor -- I wouldn't go beneath 2gig. For Vista's fancy effects, my 1.5 years Inspiron with an ATI x1400 is supposed to work well. Haven't put it to the test though.
 
Buy one, test its endurance for a week, return it if it does weird things, try another one. That's what I'd do.

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