Your best bet is Dell outlet, they have some great spec laptops for a lot less than they cost new. Most are customer returns that in most cases are still brand new, its where a customer has had a change of mind or Dell have sent them the wrong spec and they have been returned etc. Its just by law you can't then sell them as brand new once they have been opened and returned. outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/Inve ... l=en&s=dfh

Your best bet is Dell outlet, they have some great spec laptops for a lot less than they cost new. Most are customer returns that in most cases are still brand new, its where a customer has had a change of mind or Dell have sent them the wrong spec and they have been returned etc. Its just by law you can't then sell them as brand new once they have been opened and returned. outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/Inve ... l=en&s=dfh

Ive sworn by HP laptops for years (currently using a g61) they are bullet proof and wont let you down

Stay clear of dell, most of the ones my mates got at uni broke withing the first 6 months. try and go for a samsung or an hp. Not sure what model etc, because i use a mac, and you don't want one of those.

Sony is the most reliable from my experience (work for a computer repairs company) HP have a high percentage of new models that fail almost immediately.

Basis for this is their attitude;
Sony go through rigorous testing before releasing any products hence the higher than average price tag but extremely reliable products and quality business reputation.
HP will fire out the blocks making the new technology available first but barely do any testing, so can offer their products slightly cheaper than other manufacturers. So we find that the customers are actually the testers of the products!

Obviously your laptop will be in warranty anyway so it's not much to worry about bar a minor inconvenience - After a few years there's not too much difference between the two in reliability, Sony again just edges it.

My personal experience - Steer clear of Packard Bell, blummin' useless!

My advice would be not to spend £700. I use mine for work, Excel and word mainly. Paid £300 from argos for a low spec Hitachi. Bit slow (but quicker than the network at school), but does the job. I'm not gaming on it, so why do I need shed loads of RAM or a top graphics card? Save yourself a couple of hundred and use the cash to come to a few extra home games next season. I managed to get office 2010 pro for free!

I agree, you don't need to spend £700 for what you need, as others have said, sony is very reliable, around £500 for what you need. Not really sure if you can get windows laptops with office (full versions) already installed, doesn't take much installing good luck.

I run this program every night before logging off.

rlhttp://www.piriform.com/CCLEANERrl

It will delete any passwords your computer has remembered for you, and cookies, so you have to log on to everything everytime you revisit a site. But I think it's worth it.

Oh dear. Yes ccleaner is good but it's a cleaning program, it will only delete saved passwords if you tell it to; not by default.

If you're getting rid of a computer with it's hard drive you should ideally use dban on the disk or simply keep the hard drive and ditch the rest.

What are your intentions for the old laptop? If you are throwing it away, the safest and easiest method is to smash it up! I opend my old pc and submerged the harddrives in a bucket of water as well as smashing the loving heck out of them!

If you are selling it, I may be interested (In the laptop, not your passwords) unless it's a ruin now?

I need a laptop for basically running Champ Manager on when TOWIE, Big Brother or Emmerdale is on my T.V!

Both my daughter and myself have used Acer laptops which have been fine. They have hdmi connections and we have Skygo so can plug them into the tv so can watch Sky upstairs if anyone is the downstairs tvs.

I'll bet you use that HDMI link to display far more than Emmerdale don't you Rogues?

Someone with enough desire could still get the data from that as you didn't actually destroy the data on the disks.

A big magnet would also work well.

Philth it's not worth sh*t and is also a piece of sh*t, had it for 3 years.

It's a Dell inspiron 1520 core 2 Duo with Vista, the battery no longer charges, the computer overheats.

It's slow and old, things don't run on it and it needs to retire, i nickname it Wellens.

I download RL games on to it so need a bit of space, i want a webcam(have friends and family abroad), and excel(for work), pref as standard save me f'ing about. £700 is my top end budget so if it's under great.

Go into PC world with those requiremenst and they will bite your hand off! TBH you would probably be talking about £300 for a GOOD spec laptop with webcam etc. MS Office can be bought for £40 student licence or for an older versions (depends on what your work uses...we still have 2003 on some of ours) of MS Office for about £50. If you need to do work at home, ask your employer about installing a copy of theirs on your laptop. Some version of MS Office come with a limited USER license not limited machine. As long as the user is only on one machine at a time then it will work and is legal to do (we confirmed directly from MS!)

As for deleting data, if you are trading in, then as long as you go to high street store you would normally be OK. If selling privately you can get a "drive wiper" for free which doesnt delete your data, it overwrites it with blank data.