I probably will. I'll speak to them myself tomorrow and if I'm not happy with what they say (which seems fairly likely) I'll take it somewhere else and see what happens.

Most of the laptops I've seen are fairly comparable to what I've already got, so I'd rather just fix that one if that's possible (and cheaper) then just step sideways rather than getting an actual upgrade..

I'll keep you all informed :)

I'd rather trust small repair shops, running by a passionate. Even if you're going to grab used one..

If I knew any of the local repair shops, or knew anyone who did I might agree.
But if I'm going in blind I'd rather trust a large organisation I know I can get a refund or redress from if required rather than someone who may turn out to be a cowboy...

could you exclude the possibility that just the contacts between laptop mainboard/gfx and display are broken? if you start it and wait about 10 minutes, do you hear any windows start sounds?

otherwise it sounds like a serious problem, i'd say most probably something on the mainboard with onboard gfx (never had a case where cpu or ram were broken). such cases are hard to repair and cause laptop cpu, mainboard and probably ram are soldered together, repair shop would end up replacing the cpu/mainboard/ram thing. i assume that this isn't cheap.

Yeah, it's definitely not just the screen or connections because it makes no attempt to start Windows normally.

Pretty much...



So. I've picked the laptop back up from the people who were looking at it.. and as far as I can tell they made no attempt to open the bottom and look inside, so presumably they've just guessed it's the motherboard from the behaviour when you switch it on (quite frankly I could do that myself and you guys had all guessed the same without even seeing it, though at least it was a free service..).
Are any of the other possibilities mentioned here (damaged connections, graphics card or processor failing etc.) likely to be cheaper or easier to fix than getting a new motherboard?
Should I pursue it further in case it's not the whole motherboard that's the problem?
The shop said they couldn't find a new board for my specific model and wouldn't advise using a second hand one as it may just break again pretty quickly (which makes sense), and the last motherboard they'd replaced in a laptop cost £260+
I'm leaning towards getting a new one, but if there's any chance of getting this one fixed for less than £100 I'd probably do that...

I haven't brought it anywhere else for a second opinion because when I phoned the other place I was thinking of trying they basically said the same thing (if it was the motherboard then not to even bother as it's cheaper / better to get a new one).

So I'm really struggling to find a cheap / refurbed laptop with any kind of decent graphics card (unfortunately I'm not sure what my old one had to compare to see if even the integrated ones might actually be better).

If we have a decent weekend this week then I might be able to stretch to this one:

http://www.laptopoutlet.co.uk/lenovo-b50-45-80f0-15-6-quad-core-laptop-amd-a8-6410-4gb-ram-1tb-hdd-win-8-1.html

Which seems a little more like it (and is actually described as a gaming laptop, including a proper graphics card)

The two things that concern me slightly are the brand; I've not really had good experience with Lenovo computer's in the past (although that was admittedly I cheap all-in-one). Does anyone know what Lenovo laptops are like?

And the second is the fact it's an AMD processor rather than Intel.. this is mainly an old prejudice as years ago one of our first computers was an AMD and it was awful and I've always gone for Intel processors since then.
Is there really much difference between the two brands? Looking around it sounds like a decent enough processor, if nothing too special (but I wouldn't expect anything fantastic for the price I can afford to pay)

Thanks for all the help guys :)

Lenovos are hit and miss. Their cheaper laptops are usually on the bad end of the spectrum, their more expensive ones are usually on the excellent end of the spectrum. Haven't used any in quite some time, but I still have friends who swear by them.

Just make sure to reinstall the OS from scratch to avoid any potential crap Lenovo bundled with the machine, though unsure if that particular machine also needs its bios cleaned.

Thanks JMich, though that was not quite what I was hoping to hear (I presume that just under £300 probably counts as the cheaper end of their range...)

Yeah, it would probably be a choice of upgrading to Windows 10 or downgrading to 7 (if I can somehow use the version off my old laptop / back up).

[/i][i] The B50 range is indeed the cheap end of Lenovo's range. Regarding the build quality, I'll let a reviewer do the talking : "It’s not often you see a 15.6in laptop for only £200, for that reason alone the Lenovo B50 immediately had our interest. However, it’s obvious that corners had to be cut, and concessions made, to hit this ludicrously low price. This is immediately apparent from the build of the chassis. It’s all plastic and the area around the keyboard and touchpad in particular feels very cheap and has a hollowness that doesn’t feel reassuring."

Regarding the AMD processor, if you're on a small budget, AMD APU's will probably be your best choice. They offer an acceptable core performance ( between the Pentium G and the I3 ) and an integrated GPU that gives acceptable entry range gaming performance. My curent laptop ( ASUS , AMD A10-8700P http://www.amazon.com/X555DA-WS11-15-6-inch-Laptop-A10-8700P-Windows/dp/B01CGGOA9W ) is very decent for its price, more mid range than entry range. But with a lower budget, check A6 or A8's Toshiba offerings for instance.

Thanks, not brilliant then... hmmm...

That's reassuring. I did think that at least with an AMD the integrated graphics should be a little better than Intel's (which I've not heard great things about), I've looked at a few refurbed Toshibas that seemed pretty decent. Maybe I will go for one of those over the Lenovo.

Well, I managed to find the emails about buying my old laptop so I have some of the specs and details for it to compare to new ones.

And basically I'm worrying about nothing, even the cheaper laptops with integrated graphics and slower processors are probably miles better then what I had if the various benchmarking and comparison sites are to be believed.
Which isn't really surprising as I was finding it hard to believe that a laptop I bought almost 4 years ago for £250 could be better than anything of a similar price available today...

So I'll probably choose one of the various Toshiba or HP refurbs that I've seen that's a reasonable price and has a decent processor / integrated GPU over the Lenovo one with the dedicated graphics card.

So the question then is just between an Intel or AMD processor and GPU, so I'll do a little research on that myself after the weekend to see which is likely to be better for me.

Thanks for all your assistance everyone, any further suggestions are always welcome and I'll let you know what I go for in the end :)

So work has been pretty good this week and budget has been stretched to around £300 (might as well get something half decent now and not have to upgrade again for a while).

So sticking to new models (I don't mind a refurb but if I can afford new that is definitely preferable), these two seem to be my best options:

http://www.ebuyer.com/699629-hp-pavillion-15-p264na-laptop-l0e38ea-abu
http://www.ebuyer.com/740903-hp-250-g4-laptop-p5r50es-abu

First is an AMD and second an Intel (i3 as i5 with 8GB of RAM is outside my price range if I'm buying new). As far as I can tell the Intel is better all round, processor and GPU so I'd probably go for that one unless anyone can suggest a reason why not.

Only slight downside is I'm not 100% keen on the HP keyboards, but the one's I find I really like (ASUS) are actually quite expensive and generally difficult to track down here.. but that's a minor issue.

In the mean time I've hooked up the HDD from the dead laptop as an external one, so I can access all up to date info from my girlfriend's laptop and use it as an extra backup or something once I get the new one and all the data transferred over.

What does everyone think? :)

Yeah, realised I was actually looking for the 7410 series ones when I was comparing those too.

So would it be better to go for something like that (with less RAM) and upgrade the RAM later?
I'm more inclined to stick with an Intel if the difference isn't likely to be huge, as long as the GPU is decent (but from what I've been looking at the 5th generation ones are a lot better as you say)
I suppose if I drop the RAM I might even be able to strerch to an i5, but I'm not sure if the difference would be very noticeable on the meantime with only half as much RAM (or if the better processor would more than make up for that?)

Thanks :)

Depends what you do and intend to do with your laptop. If I had to advise an arbitration, that would rather be to have a laptop with a dedicated GPU like a GeForce 840m or 940m, but I doubt it would still fit your budget. Other than that the only advantage of the i5 is turbo boost, and in some games, that could make the difference between running it on medium settings rather than low.

As far as RAM is concerned, I'm pretty sure it would be quite easy to find spare DDR3 modules somehere. the problem is that adding ram yourself is likely to void your warranty.