Bigpower

My trusty old Acer is dying
The battery is non-existent and now the hinge has started to fail pretty abruptly! It's pulled the right hand side corner of the controls away from the main board

It is four years old and experiences pretty heavy use, so I am not grumbling! I never use the LT for gaming, video editing or anything particularly high end. I browse the net (too much) and stream videos; that's about it. I quite like the idea of getting more familiar with software like Photoshop but I have said that before!

Budget? Value for money, bargain, free........something along those lines.

Advice Gentlemen please. I especially want feedback on battery life and whether you use laptops or desktops. My battery on LT's always seem fine at first and then rapidly go down hill. Is there a protocol for long life that I am not aware of? (Batteries not me)

My Acer Aspire 5735Z has fairly good battery life, and without wireless or WIFI will run for a about two to three hours playing video's or surfing via a wired connection. (WIFI and wireless hit it quite hard though- maybe down to 1hr and 1/4)
It's about a year old, and I too have noticed a decline in the battery life. It used to run for about 4 hours, maybe 5+.
I think the usual rules of running it down almost completely before charging it fully at least once fortnight won't do any harm.
This was

I made the move to a Mac last year and was the best thing I could do as its a doddle to use, quite well specced (you dont need anything like the power and spec as you would for a windows machine) and the apps are great out of the box eg iPhoto. The battery on mine last about 4-5 hours with everything on but without wifi its a bit longer. The newer ones last about 6-7 hours.

Appreciate this probably doesnt count for any of the criteria you have there but felt I needed to comment.

Yes it wasnt as cheap as a windows laptop but when you consider that most people have laptops for a good 3-4 years its not as bad as it sounds.

If its just surfing and vid and stuff though what about an iPad ? Now before anyone points out the faults (yes it doesnt have flash) it has a super battery life (9-10 hours), it can be turned on in 2 secs etc. I am planning on getting one after the refresh (April).

I'll go and sit in the 'fanboy' corner

I got fed up with carrying a full size laptop away with me to Brazil so bought a little Samsung NC10 netbook about 2 years ago. OK it doesn't have a DVD drive but for surf the net while in airport lounges etc it's great. The battery lasts for about 4-5 hours even with WIFI. Most of the time when I'm at home I'll sit on the sofa in front of the TV using it rather than sitting at the desk on the desktop. For the

This is a high spec enough to be 2 yr futureproof and they are running a trade in of

I bought one of these....

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-g56-13 ... 3-pdt.html

Can't fault it tbh

If you need to get anything off the old hard drive I have an external USB lead you can use to connect it to the new laptop

I'd go for another Acer mate ... low price, great spec - do a tesco special! ..

Sarah and I both have Dells. Hers was a Tesco special and mine is a 2 year old one from work. No problems with either and the spec is reasonable for the price.

Did you get that email Stu?
The

[quote="Rob S"]Did you get that email Stu?
The