Laptop ideas

[leejames04]

Hey everyone, as you can probaly tell by my profile I am 15 and live in the UK, I am about to finish my GCSE's and start my A-Levels, I currently own a PC but think that in preperation for my A-Levels about getting a laptop for school work so that I can do work during free-periods, if I get any, I also want to get a mac to continue my iPhone Developing.

To begin with I thought of getting a Macbook, due to screen size I then thought about getting a Macbook Pro but even with my Mum's Educatioal discount, which I have checked she is eligble for this was still a lot of money and with several holidays pre-booked this year I wouldn't be able to scrape enough but was still going to try anyway.

But today I had an epifiny, the new Mac Mini's are still perfect for my iPhone development work, are reasonably cheap and means I can keep my School Work and Personal hobby seperate, one problem with having a Macbook would be needing Windows for my Computing course which uses VB but I knew how to overcome this.

But with a Mac Mini I would still have no laptop, my original intent, but I believe I can pick up a reasoably good laptop for school work for anything under £500

I had a quick look earlier and found this Refurbed Acer laptop for £300 which looks decent but I feel there must be something wrong with it:

£200 Acer Refurbed Laptop

But I don't have an amazing idea of what laptops I should be looking for,

I will most probably be using Office and Visual Studio on it most of the time so I doubt I need something amazing but if it was semi-futureproof then that would be better.

So does anyone know of any decent laptops for under £500?

[Skyline34]

Mac's are expensive, go for a Sony VAIO, they're not too pricey but also very good all round and stylish at the same time, or you can buy mine off me :]