All around laptop - under 500 euros/600$

daniel_loft

Honorable
Jun 12, 2012
2
0
10,510
I'm searching for a laptop for my girlfriend and, because I lost contact with the market 3 years ago when I bought myself a laptop, I'm asking for your advice.

These are the details:

1. What is your budget?
400-500 euros (or about 450-600$). Anything above that could be considered in case of very nice deals

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
The ideal screen size would be 14", but 15" would do good. Anything below or above is useless.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Nothing fancy. WXGA or similar.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
The computer would be a portable one, but not ultraportable. An untra-thin offer would be taken into consideration though.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Whichever is the norm these days for a 6 cell battery in a low-end - mid-tear computer. 3h+ I would say.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
No gaming.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
The computer will be used for day to day office & multimedia stuff: browsing, IM, movies watching, music listening, office.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
The current 320GB HDD is enough.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
A big player is preferred, but it's not a must.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
At least 3 years, but looking forward to it's 5th anniversary.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
A DVD-RW would be more than enough. Anything extra is bad spent money.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
I was checking amazon.de, but giving that I don't know the good shops in Germany... any suggestion is welcome!

13. What country do you live in?
Germany

Other MUST details:
German keyboard.

Other NOT SO IMPORTANT details:
Color (green).
No Windows licence.

The current computer is a 4-5 years old Dell Inspiron 1525 which was an OK choice until the battery died, the touchpad started having moods and the lid started being too wobbly.

Thanks!