My laptop just died :(

[Monkey Mark]

My laptop, which is about 5 years old, has been having some cooling issues recently. Then today, it refuses to swith back on after a shutdown.

I can't say I'm surprised after the issues it's been having.

So, anyone know of any decent laptop deals? Budget, £350 or under. General use, YouTube, browsing, sketchup. No gaming now I think.

Any suggestions?

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

I've just bought my Missus just such a machine for business use ie lightweight....no processor intensive apps like gaming and it was exactly £350......HP pavilion with a reasonable Intel mother board, 2Tb Hard disk and 16Mg Ram. First time I've used Win 10 and so far it runs everything I've asked it too including Office 2010. The machine is fast as you like and the battery life is reported to be good. It wasn't rocket science, just a regular from PC world. She's more than happy with the replacement of a knackered old Lenovo where the screen had given up the ghost.

Just as a tip, if your laptop is overheating you should take the back off and clean the dust out of the ports and ideally remove and replace the heat sync gel that's goes dry and stops working after a few years. I appreciate yours is kaput now but that maintenance will often return their ability to remove heat to like it was when new.

 

[Bm101]

Hey Mark.
You might want to check these guys out. https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ Built my rig 5 or so years ago. Great service. Phone em up and have a chat about what you want, They'll be glad to offer advice. Good ethos company. You can build your pc/laptop on the site. Careful now! Very easy to spend money this way. But they are good on service. I'd phone em up with a list of needs/stuff you require, take advantage of the advice and then look around based on price.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ Good choice but expensive.

Other ones to try are Dabs, Ebuyer, Aria, Novatech and AdvanceTec.
All depends what you want.
These days you should be able to get a cracking spec laptop for that price compared to 5 years ago.
(should still be able to play a lot of games too. *winks. Maybe not at full spec but dont give up on it.)
I sill admin (vaguely ... I dont really game so much anymore either), a gaming clan. I'll stick a thread up on there asking the tech geeks for advice. What would help is if you could list what you want it to do. Reason I ask, and I did read your post is that if you just want to you tube, sketchup etc but you dont want to do it all at once and you dont want to game you might well get away with spending less than £350. Memory? Cloud compute?
Let me know.

Cheers
Chris

Ps it might well be worth investing in a laptop 'bench' its basically a fan stand that increases air circulation for your laptop... googled generic type here for > http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/17187665 ... ue&ff13=80 Biggest failing in laptops is overheating.
Edit: Posted without seeing ROBobs post which also makes a lot of sense. And Just so you know BM101 is my old gaming name. BadMonkey. So, it's all the monkeys together lol. Just don't tell anyone lol.

 

[porker]

I just bought my daughter an i5 laptop for about £250 from ebuyer. Upgraded from Win 8.1 to 10 no problem and got Microsoft Office for a tenner through an employee purchase scheme (worth looking into if you work for a large company - my company never advertised it but I've got it through a couple of companies I worked for). She needed Microsoft stuff as that's what they use at her school.
Personally I run Linux (Ubuntu) and have breathed life into a couple of old laptops (one I was given the other had the dreaded Vista installed) that would be fit for the bin otherwise. It's free, reliable and I don't worry about viruses etc.
I know Linux isn't everyones cup of tea but for browsing which is what I do 95% of the time its great and cheap.

 

[Racers]

Hows about this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-15-6-Inc ... shmedia-21

Pete

 

[Bm101]

Thats not a bad call Pete. Might be the ideal time to buy if there is such a thing and you fancy a late night searching tinterweb

 

[Wildman]

have a look at www.morgancomputers.co.uk

 

[sitefive]

Have you just tried to blow out the dust from it? ( 99% of the times that's the problem with cooling)
Blow in the open vents until no more dust comes out, or just take it apart and clean it, after a reinstall should be good as new!

 

[Monkey Mark]

Have you just tried to blow out the dust from it? ( 99% of the times that's the problem with cooling)
Blow in the open vents until no more dust comes out, or just take it apart and clean it, after a reinstall should be good as new!

It no longer turns on. I'll strip it this weekend if I can get some thermal paste as one last try. I have had it open before.

 

[IHc1vtr+]

you cant beat a panasonic toughbook, i have just bought one and it's a revelation. Dust and waterproof,fast as my old laptop and basically bomb proof. Search for cf-19 toughbook, mk3 onwards are faster.

 

[sitefive]

Well lets just say I will never buy another brand new Laptop ever again, for that money you will only get cheap consumer grade stuff.
Get something like x230 or t430 from Lenovo for well under £200 used, ( those laptops cost around 800-900 when new and has superb build quality and excellent specs)

Bought some 6years ago a laptop for like £1200 (best specs you could get at that time ,and it served me well) , was worth maybe £100 when I sold it off for £250 to some sucker last year lol.

 

[sitefive]

Well lets just say I will never buy another brand new Laptop ever again, for that money you will only get cheap consumer grade stuff.
Get something like x230 or t430 from Lenovo for well under £200 used, ( those laptops cost around 800-900 when new and has superb build quality and excellent specs)

Bought some 6years ago a laptop for like £1200 (best specs you could get at that time ,and it served me well) , was worth maybe £100 when I sold it off for £250 to some sucker last year lol.

It's the same thing with laptops as it is with Tools, buy cheap and you get crap. Unless you buy used where someone else has took the hit already.

 

[cedarwood]

Have you just tried to blow out the dust from it? ( 99% of the times that's the problem with cooling)
Blow in the open vents until no more dust comes out, or just take it apart and clean it, after a reinstall should be good as new!

It no longer turns on. I'll strip it this weekend if I can get some thermal paste as one last try. I have had it open before.

Replace the button cell battery when you have it apart all computers have one, dead laptops or desktops that wont start are because the battery has gone flat, not always easily seen on a laptop I have come across some where the cell is under the wireless unit and you have to unscrew it first to get at the cell.

 

[cedarwood]

Have you just tried to blow out the dust from it? ( 99% of the times that's the problem with cooling)
Blow in the open vents until no more dust comes out, or just take it apart and clean it, after a reinstall should be good as new!

It no longer turns on. I'll strip it this weekend if I can get some thermal paste as one last try. I have had it open before.

Replace the button cell battery when you have it apart all computers have one, dead laptops or desktops that wont start are because the battery has gone flat, not always easily seen on a laptop I have come across some where the cell is under the wireless unit and you have to unscrew it first to get at the cell.

 

[doorframe]

Why are you all double posting?

 

[Monkey Mark]

It just goes to show, never assume!

I may not be as up to date with computers as I used to be, but I like to think I'm still fairly good with them.
This is probably why my laptop is now broke. I assumed I knew better, but obviously didn't.

I opened my laptop today to find out what was going wrong. On first inspection all looked ok, until the fan was removed. No dust had been visible so I hadn't worried about it. But the section which is basically the heat exchanger for the secondary cooled section was completely blocked with fine dust. So now I known why it was getting so hot and I'm kicking myself knowing that it could of been prevented. I'll put it back together but I'm not holding up much hope. Think the heat has damaged the memory and an on board chip.

Pictures taken after the majority of the dust was removed.


Moral to the story..... don't be so bloody ignorant to the obvious facts!

 

[Monkey Mark]

Well, I'm very very surprised, but it's alive!!! Albeit a little poorly. It's not seeing all the memory (odd amount so part is damaged), so I'll need to replace that. But at least it's going....for now. One less thing to pay for. :deer

And lesson learn't; keep an eye on it.