Sony or Toshiba are the market leaders. Majority of their laptops will come with a webcam built in now. Look for dual or quad core and 4gb ram. Majority of laptops come with Office 2010 installed, it is a full version but is tiam limited as a trial. You have the opportunity within the trial program to purchase the full licence for about £120 but when you order the laptop they will generally sell you the licence as part of the deal.

With regards to the data on your laptop the only tru way to make sure no one can get at your data is by putting a drill through it or taking the plates out of the drive and scratching them with a drill bit etc.

Dropping the laptop in water etc is not 100% as it is possible to take the disks out of the drive, dry them out and read the data off it. 99% of the population wouldn't know how to do it though.

Take the hard drive out which is located on the Left hand edge, it is held in by 2 philips screws. Pull the drive out and smash it to bits with a hammer. Put the rest of the unit on ebay as spairs or repairs. Screen is worth about £35, The charging board which also has 2 USB ports on, VGA out and the ethernet port sell for £25, Memory is worth a tenner, Hinges are worth about £15 (Common fault on this model) Motherboard is worth £75. You will only get these prices if you strip the machine down and sell it seperatley. Worth more as individual parts than it is as a complete unit.

DO NOT BUY FROM PC WORLD UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO LET THEM BEND YOU OVER AND BUM YOU LEAVING YOU TO PAY FOR THE PLEASURE.

They are nothing more than box shifters! All of the manafacturers sell direct from their websites that way your warranty is direct with the manafacturer. In my experience they also wont sell you a load of bollox that you dont need unlike PC World.

Pc world will push you to take a Copy of Norton Antivirus why, because they make a fortune selling that brand of internet security. They know that it is bloated and will slow your machine down. It will cost you around £40 Trend Micro titanium is regarded as the best currently and will set you back around £20 if you shop around.

rlhttp://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/364747/trend-micro-titanium-internet-security-2011rl

Also with Laptops don't rule out the Lenovo which is IBM rebranded. The IBM thinkpad was the business market leader for years.

IBM trying to shake off the Nazi association then?

btw cheers G, sounds like very good advice.

Whilst we're on about laptops, does anybody now where I can get a machine thats decent enough to surf the net and play a couple of games on. Hard drive space not really essential as I have an external. So just decent speed and memory, but nothing too special.

Reckon I'll get models from 2 years ago for £200?

Yed - appreciate the honesty, though a mytech 3-4 year old picture laptop is still better than that essex program!!

Something like this would be perfect

rlhttp://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WHITE-DELL-Inspiron-1525-CoreDuo-1-73GHz-2GB-160GB-Win7-/180701130145?pt

added to watch list

Sony all the way Yed!

Go Mac

I resisted for years, now I feel like a tool for holding out for so long

Hilti nail blasted through the case. No spinny!

I have a Lenovo T400 (my work laptop) and also a Toshiba. Have been very pleased with both - although they are now (after a couple of years) slowing down. They take ages to boot up although the Lenovo works well once on. My older desktop is also now grindingly slow.

Why do computers do that? I've never been able to find a simple solution. None of them have masses of software on them, so why do they take so long to boot up and sometimes run slowly? Even when just browsing the internet or simply using a document?

Haha, it's not the spinny you have to worry about, but the data on the disks. Of course, put a nail through them (with enough impact) you'll up the magnetic field inside and would be akin to putting a magnet on it too.

Once you're done with that, burn it; literally.

This,

I managed to convert people who have been using PC for years to convert to a mac, and now their whole family, Both parents and both kids have a mac, as well as me converting my family too. There is no better, i've had mine for 3 years, download all sorts, run all programmes, and not once has it slowed down in three years, never had any problems whatsoever, it is quite literally an investment.

I disagree

A variety of reasons SEB. Usually because of all the activity over the years, ie saving files, installing programmes, swtiching on and off, or the computer crashing etc., all this activity gets logged in the registry (everything), and this can easily become corrupt over time. As more and more of it gets corrupt, it takes the computer longer to access the data which is OK.
As much as it isnt something you ever want to hear because it's a ball ache, you really need a fresh format and re-install of the operating system after a while.

Another common reason is rather simple because technology advances, and programs advance too. As they advance they tend to get more resource heavy, and generally require a higher spec machine to cope. As things get more graphically user friendly, this will only become more apparant. Increasing the RAM (memory) can have such a devestatingly good effect and these days RAM is dirt cheap. It's the one thing that grates on me when I see new specced netbooks. They all come with 1gb and Windows 7. It really should be 2gb minimum these days. 4gb for anything other than surfing.

Finally, Viruses, spyware, malware and all the other goblins that exist without you knowing about them can slow you down no end. Again, fresh install of OS and start again.

Yet you offer no other product better?

Have you used both a laptop and mac? or are you just basing this on your dislike of mac/ apple products?

I have used both for a long enough time to give a good decision, and in my opinion, you can not top a mac with a laptop.