Bought an Acer from Tesco for £335 and it's excellent.

It also depends on the type of gaming you are after as well. If it is just silly little web games then a bog standard laptop will do. However if you are looking at Call of duty etc you want a decent graphics card.



Look for one that can run Crysis well.

Indeed



A laptop isn't the best platform for gaming, a console is much better suited (as it's what they are designed for)

JUST get an external drive to house all that..........."cough"

If you have space, get a desktop. I've found them to be cheaper (for similar spec machines) and more reliable.

That's why I said Macbook, 'cos people don't usually buy a laptop if they "all about the gaming".

Also if you buy a desktop pc you have the benefit knowing that you can keep upgrading it rather than replacing the whole thing. Laptop upgrades are very limited, usually to memory/hard drive and a change of cd/dvd



Once your CPU/Graphics are dated your stuck with them.



Check places like ebuyer.com scan.co.uk as well as plenty of others. Do not get sucked into buying a named brand \IE Dell, HP, Packard Bell etc although you can sometimes get a good deal more often then not you are paying for stuff you do not need.

. Also get a rough idea of what you are after and check at your local computer stores as well for competitive prices.

definately a buyers market, even in PCWorld, if the OP states a budget then it will be easier, a lot of people buy more memory than the OS can actually use, unless you buy a 64 bit OS then anything above 3.2GB is pointless.



As stated, for real gaming I'd buy a £300 console and then sign up for a mobile broadband laptop (effectively getting a laptop for nowt), unless a real multi-function PC is needed.

Only do this if you have another internet connection as your main connection, or if you want really slow, unreliable web access.

the trick is to get a mobile broadband laptop, for £20 a month, and then connect it to your home broadband, they offer good kit, but you are right that the mobile broadband is garbage.

If your going to that though Standee, much better to get the free console with the phone. Plenty of cheapo laptops about nowadays that will function just fine as an online surfing machine and simple basic usage.



Bigpockets and many more are offering some cracking deals on used laptops with wifi that will do just that job.



I agree it is a buyers market, just make sure you get plenty of quotes and drive a hard bargain with them because at the end of the day they need your custom more than you need them.



PS If you do buy a gaming console take out the extended warranty because they are all made with lead free solder nowadays and that causes malfunctions due to excessive heat. (RROD & YLOD are examples of this)

so you end up paying £500 when you could probably get the same spec machine for about £300