Q from a Luddite

[carrust]

I'm thinking of getting a laptop for Xmas. What's the best one for around £400-00. Remember that I'm a bit of a tecnophobe, so please answer in plain English.

[VHG]

There is no "best one". Rather like cars they have the pluses and minuses and generally it is a compromise.

Also like cars it depends what you plan to do with it. You would not buy a mini if you had two large dogs, and you would not buy a huge estate car to drive round central london.

So you need to tell us if it is going to be used in one place most of the time, or if you are going to carry it around a lot. This may define the size of screen and weight of the laptop.

You also need to tell us if you are going to use it for "normal" office work (email, word processing etc), or if you are going to play games, and if so what sort of games, or if you are going to be doing video editing etc.

Also, if you have a computer (or laptop) at the moment what you like about it and what you dont like about it, to help us try to choose a laptop for you.

Finally give us an idea where you may buy it, in a shop like PC World, Currys, Tesco, Sainsburys etc, or do you want to buy it online, Amazon etc, or maybe you dont care one way or the other.

[carrust]

Thank you for an excellent answer VHG. I'll be using it for general office work & I wont be carrying it round very much.
I've got a desktop at the moment & I want to get rid of it to create some space in a bedroom. I'm also not bothered where I buy it from.