Recommend a laptop

Been looking at hp, novatech, and Acer. My cousin got an hp for £295 from curry's and it looks a solid machine although I don't know the spec.

Would like an i5 with 500gb Ssd and 8gb ram but am open on other specs. I see lots of driver problems on win 10 on Lenovo laptops so would like to avoid, so over to you.

I bought an HP laptop (quite an expensive one) for my wife from PC World for Christmas. By the day after Boxing Day it had stopped working. A one-off I realise, although a little research turned up quite a few people having the same problem - certainly enough for me to say "never again".

On the other hand the (fairly cheap) Lenovo that I bought there for myself a couple of years ago has never missed a beat. It upgraded to Windows 10 with no problem whatsoever.

What was the problem with the hp?

Display went dead, both internal and external. Google search showed that this meant a replacement motherboard was needed. I cut my losses and asked for my money back. As I say, a one-off but just my experience of the two brands.

If I ever buy another laptop I will go for one of the Microsoft Surface range. Expensive but they have a good reputation and are lovely little machines.

I had a Acer for years, it was a good solid machine that never let me down until last year. the main board fried. I still have a Acer that was given me and I stuck the memory and drive from my old Acer into it, going to replace the CPU as well as my old Acer had a faster chip and it is compatible with the Acer I have now.
I don't use laptops enough to justify getting a new one.

So I think Acer are good ones to go for.
Novatech laptops used to be MSI based machines so I was told, I do not know what they use now, but Novatech is a pretty decent company from the few times I have dealt with them and also you can customise the laptop.

What sort of thing are you looking at using it for?

Windows 10 and drivers on a few machines are a bit of a pain at the moment. Try and get a Windows 8.1 machine, update it to ten soi you got the free version and then put it back to Windows 8.1 until Microsoft get their act together, if they ever do. Then you can update back to Windows 10 when ever you want.

I've bought 2 Acer laptops, 2 of the same model, in the past 2 weeks. 1 for church and 1 for a friend.

They're both Windows 10 systems and are running very sweetly. Certainly no driver issues, or any other. Yes I've changed the privacy settings to the lowest possible. But no other issues whatsoever.

I think that buying a non-Windows 10 system and upgrading it has the potential for Win 10 driver (or other) issues. If it's Win 10 from the manufacturer it'll work fine - or it's back for a refund otherwise, but to be honest I think the latter is unlikely.

some Windows 10 drivers are windows 8.1 anyway, so if the computer works on 8.1 it should work on 10. the problem with 10 is that sometimes it thinks it knows best with drivers and try to overwrite ones that are working fine with ones that don't.
Most of Windows 10 driver problems have been with Nvidia cards, since most laptops will not have them, it should work fine.

I was considering getting a new laptop, but if I do i will try and find one with 8.1. Novatech is good in that they do not supply a Os as standard with their machines, the only problem is they supply either Windows 7 or Windows 10, but not 8.1

It don't matter what you change the privacy settings to on Windows 10, data will still be sent to Ms, you can use some 3rd party software that says they can stop it all, not sure if they can.

Ther church one will rarely be connected to the internet. The friend really isn't bothered. At 88 he says, what have I got to hide!

Novatech sell Windows 8.1: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/software/operatin...

Fair enough.