The Mac is gone, some months back when I made the decision, as madam was unhappy with it, to move on as I wasn't around to help out. We have been using a very very old and slow, borrowed Sony laptop with Windows XP, which has been OK but now the action is stepping up and it is exasperating to wait for it.

Therefore we are in the market for a new PC laptop, I can't afford a Mac so we are looking for a 16/17" screen, to allow us to travel with it (something we said we would never do) around the £400 mark. I know nothing about Windows so will need to learn that and I am told it's a b*g*e* to get to grips with. Ah well at our senior years, everything new is and we have the time.

I did like Firefox as a browser. We need emails, basic word processing. browsing of course and some simple photo editing, not as complicated as Photoshop. Also prefer using a mouse at home, but not when away in the Puck L.

Any thoughts, guidance and help would be gratefully received?

Now there's a can of worms if ever I've seen one

Ding ding, round one:

For me, having trashed an old slow mechanic beast ( windows) PC that needed a power station, desk to sit it on, not forgetting several power sockets to power it all.........get my drift......

Announcing the iPad . Perfect for your needs, and perfect for touring (without hook up naturally)

Back to my corner for a rubdown with a wet towel...

Quote: Silverfox wrote in post #2

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Ding ding, round one: Announcing the iPad . Perfect for your needs, and perfect for touring (without hook up naturally)

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Hello Derek
Firstly its good to hear from you again I hope you are progressing well.

A few hints from me, Windows 8 will be on almost all new laptops these days. or even the new update windows 8.1 you can read about it here

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/meet

I bought a new laptop this year, I don't think you will want anything bigger. Its available for around £300.00 but do shop around as retail prices vary quite a bit.

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/pb/en/GB/content/serie/easynotete

Microsoft office has a word processor but costs a fortune to buy, for my laptop I went for open office it is comparable with Microsoft office so all my home stuff works on the laptop too and best of all its free

http://www.openoffice.org/

The people who do firefox also do thunderbird for email and that is free too

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

Neville

I was thinking iPad as well, although I'm not sure whether it has photo editing capability and Mrs SDA who is umbilically connected to hers is out at present so I can't check.

For basic email and browsing I've found my Google Nexus 4 mobile phone has been fine while away.

Well until recently anyway. Since I changed my ID back to SDA the darn thing hasn't been letting me onto this site. It's fine on the old desktop PC and fine for all other sites I visit, it just doesn't like Eribafolk. I've not been able to fathom why.

Derek....
iPad!
Easy to use, intuitive, 10 hrs battery, plenty of simple photo editing apps etc.
The perfect Eriba companion!

I'll second that. We wouldn't be without ours, so versatile.

Derek, the iPad has huge artistic potential. Doesn't Hockney now do all his sketching on an iPad? There are many apps available.
TonyP

hi Derek
I watched qvc shopping channel when they were doing demos on laptops, it took me an age to decide, but went for a windows 7 not 8
I then popped off to a book shop and got a how to.
there was a 1tb laptop

Hampshireman, IGNORE all these well meaning people!
go out and buy a copy of Computer Shopper Magazine
If you are not in too much of a hurry take advantage of their
offer of several magazines for a low fixed price.
They do reviews that include speed, Battery life, screen clarity,
keyboard ease of use, and importantly Sound from the speakers.
I have a 17" screen on my Toshiba laptop, and it is difficult to
find somewhere to put it down safely, I would go with the smaller 15"
size it makes buying a protective slip or bag far easier. Do you use the
numeric keypad frequently ? No then you could even use a note book.

Make a list of what you want on a laptop computer, make sure it receives
LIST;
Wi Fi, (Bluetooth is useful if you take photos with a phone or compatible camera)
Play DVD's
Long Battery Life
Screen viewable from an angle
Large keypad buttons
Storage size

Well you get the idea .........
Four or more USB ports

Now I went from all this malarchy to a phone, it has all I need occasionally (twice) this year I fire up the coals and get the TOSHIBA 17 inch (they must of had an offer as thats 3 on this thread) but I don't need or want anything else.

Just Aggy's 2p worth

I wholeheartedly agree with Crow when he says to make a list because only you can decide the things that the computer MUST have. However, I'd skip all this magazine nonsense and the advice of well meaning individuals because (a) each and every one of us is biased to a certain degree and (b) if you're not completely *with it* as far as computers go then magazines aren't really going to be much help to you.
Knowing 100% what you want, I'd then seek out a good computer shop in your area (not one of these chain stores cos most of the assistants haven't got a clue what their talking about anyway), or better still search in Google for outlets in your area that will build one for you. Here you will be able to state what you want, receive perhaps alternative ideas based on your needs and..........well you get the idea. You might pay a bit more with this second approach but are better guaranteed to get the computer that you want for your needs. I'm writing this text on a super duper computer with umpteen Gigabytes of RAM because I do a lot of photo and video editing both of which are memory intensive something that by the sounds of it you don't need. Be aware though, that technology is advancing in leaps and bounds, words such as *Cloud* are newer vocabulary so it might pay you to get something slightly ahead of what you need as a buffer against a changing tomorrow.
Most importantly - also think BACKUP. If you've got all your lovely photos stored on the computer and the hard drive goes belly up, and they all do it's just a question of when, then without a backup you'll lose all those memories. On trips I always take along my Laptop and in addition two 32GB USB sticks, which are dirt cheap nowadays, so in total I always have three copies of all the images/video that I've shot on the trip. And please, please install a good anti-virus application. One that consistently gets good reviews and which is also my personal application of choice, is Kaspersky Internet Security.

Getting back to Ipads (or any brand of decent tablet I guess) we find that mostly the laptop is excess baggage on trips.

Mrs SDA was a bit circumspect when I gave her the iPad last Christmas and thought it was a good thing that it came with an optional demountable keyboard, because 'I'll never get used to typing on a screen'. The result is that the keyboard has never been used and is still in its box and the iPad is glued to her side. I often don't get a word out of her all evening, which can be considered a good or a bad thing I guess .

Personally now I've got a Google Nexus 4 smartphone I find that fine for when we're away. It handles email, I can browse the web, take photos and video, browse Google Maps and use it as a satnav if really pushed, it's got our interactive calendar, I could use it to read a book, it's got my music stored on it and it even handles calls and texts. Brilliant piece of kit, I even watched the Cathedral episode on Wells this morning on it, via iPlayer and our home wi-fi.

Oh and everything is backed up on Google and synchronised with the home desktop.

Never had a tablet type pc or I pad
I had to update the laptop for more storage space
My photo's and music take up about 100 Gb of space.