wow 4 bucks a gallon is about average around here. I saw 6 bucks a gallon in Cali once though... AMD procs are better in Acers and HPs since they really don't get hot so they don't need the maintnance. Not like 5 years better, but 3 years sounds about right. I'd had mine for 1.5 and I hadn't had any problems- yet. HP factory direct doesn't ship to Europe. They have to buy them preconfigured and the prices do really suck.
Consumer grade notebooks are all pretty much garbage, it's just that Acer is one of the worst. Unfortunately, notebooks are so expensive in Britain that's about all he's going to be able to get with his budget. If you want a notebook that will last, you need to go with something business/enterprise grade like a Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, Panasonic Toughbook, etc. These are workhorses that are designed to take a lot of punishment. But they're also expensive and not suitable for gaming. Although laptops in general are pretty terrible for gaming.
Exactly. And even if he had a lot of money to spend, I'd still recommend a desktop. Sure, he could get an Alienware or that gaming Asus, but they would be disgustingly expensive, huge, hot, and get laughable battery life. On top of that, even some of the most high-end gaming notebooks are maybe equivalent to a $500-600 entry level gaming desktop in terms of performance. Laptops are for portability. Desktops are for power. Trying to mix the two isn't a great idea.
Even then, consumer laptops will usually fail in a couple of years. My relatives are finally listening to me and buying Thinkpads after dealing with consumer grade trash, and now they never have major computer problems. My aunt just got a really nice sandy bridge i5 based Thinkpad T-Series. It's built like a tank and gets awesome battery life. She says it's the nicest computer she's ever used and takes it to work with her to use instead of the computers that are there. My sister in law listened to me a lot sooner. The Thinkpad she replaced her POS Toshiba with is still going strong after almost five years. I upgraded it to Win 7 recently. Other than that I've never had to work on it. Compare that to my wife who bought a Sony Vaio around the same time in 2007 because it was "pretty" and practically everything on it has had to be replaced (motherboard, screen, HDD). It's now out of warranty and I'm pretty sure it's not long for this world. I learned my own lesson with consumer laptops the hard way. I had a Toshiba back in the day, and everything that could possibly go wrong with a laptop went wrong with that thing. It went through three motherboard replacements before the warranty expired.
Here you go dudebro. How to build a computer with a cute, big breasted girl as your host so you don't get bored. The guide itself isn't half bad either. Just watch the videos and she talks you through pretty much everything. http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-your-own-computer-ask-ars-diy-series-part-i.ars http://arstechnica.com/software/guides/2011/04/ask-ars-computer-building-diy-series-part-ii-software.ars A little girl can build a computer. Why can't you?
Samsung have announced a new gaming laptop but I think it is a bit out of your price range... http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/samsung-notebook-gaming-laptop-series-7,news-38454.html