need a new laptop

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chadcharb

Well-Known Member
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the wife and i are in the market for a laptop. shes going to go back to school at the end of summer so i wanna get her one.

uses: internet, email, school work ect... we dont pc game at all so i dont care about anything to do with that. i only wanna spend 6 or 700. the only thing that i an completely opposed to is mac's and acers. my dad wants me to buy a dell but i like toshibas and hp's to. what do ya'll think?
 
Toshiba and HP are still top tier system manufacturers. Look at Lenovo, Fujitsu too- but there are a ton of good brands out there.

For internet/office applications, just about anything on the market that's not a netbook will do fine. You just want enough screen real estate to be useful when doing schoolwork. Pretty much any i3 or higher will be good from the Intel side, and something even as low as AMD's new E-350 line will be good too. Go for at least 2GB of RAM, but more than 4GB is a waste. Hard drive space is all up to you- if you're not going to load it up with pictures and video, pretty much anything on the market will be big enough.

You can probably get away with a good setup for right at $400 for what your needs seem to be.
 
Go for at least 2GB of RAM, but more than 4GB is a waste. Hard drive space is all up to you- if you're not going to load it up with pictures and video, pretty much anything on the market will be big enough.

You can probably get away with a good setup for right at $400 for what your needs seem to be.
thats good to hear. i wouldnt get anything less than 4gb of ram and all of our pics and such are saved on external drives already so no big deal. thanks
 
RAM is cheap as hell, so I wouldnt do lower than 4GB. I would either go for an Intel system with Core i2xxxM or AMD with A4/6/8 because of the superior GPU and processing power. I would lean more towards AMD right now because so much web content and video is moving to HD with hardware acceleration, so itll help a bundle with the new fusion APUs.

Toshiba has decent build but every single one that ive had to deal with personally has had heat issues and the fans are always max because they get so freaking hot (mostly due to insignificant ventilation). Dell has supposedly upped their build quality, but the two ive had circa 2005-2009 (700m and XPS 1330m) have had plenty of issues that I probably wouldn't buy a Dell anymore. That leaves HP, IBM and Sony.

Sony ive had good luck with, except their driver support is stupid as f**k. HP, i havent had too many issues with and ditto with IBM.

If I had to pick, I would do HP, IBM or Sony depending on specs and price. BTW, if you register with an .edu email, you get free Xbox 360 with certain Windows 7 computer purchases $699 or more :D

Microsoft Announces New Back-to-School Offer for Students: Students who buy select Windows 7-based PCs will get a free Xbox 360 console with purchase.
 
IBM sold their consumer level hardware division to Lenovo a few years back, so if you get anything new that's IBM branded, it's going to be enterprise level hardware and nowhere near the $600-700 price range.
 
It could be just a return. Some states require refurb status on anything that's been opened. Or someone could have destroyed the display and they put a new one on.
 
Drake said:
It could be just a return. Some states require refurb status on anything that's been opened. Or someone could have destroyed the display and they put a new one on.

I wazs reading that...soo is it a good computer? Decent processor and what not?
 
I think so. I my self am looking around at picking up a new laptop myself. I am still researching and what not though. Blu Ray player + HDMI port is pretty cool. And I think for what you are wanting to do it should work just fine hardware wise. Calesta and endlesszeal are the hardware gurus though ha ha. So I would maybe wait for their input.
 
That looks like a pretty good deal. 17.3" is pretty big, but the battery is a 9cell (doesnt list the whr), so id except it to last roughly 3-4 hrs, which isnt bad at all for such a big laptop.

Processor wise, its equal to a desktop Athlon II X2 245, so itll be plenty for whatever youre doing except heavy audio/video editing. The graphics core is pretty good too if its based on the RS880, but I couldnt find any info on the laptop at all besides what is posted on the Woot page. Pairing it with an HDMI out and that processor, I would be shocked if it wasnt, so it will do HD acceleration nicely.

So basically what you lose out versus spending the extra money on what I recommended above is battery life (pretty significant), some processing power vs the intel (roughly equal to amd's newest offerings) and a superior gpu. But if youre not going to game and the woot laptop does (and should) have the RS880, thats no biggie anyways.

hope that helps =)
 
I really like my Samsung R580-JBB2 15.6" Notebook
Intel i3 core, 4gb ram, blu ray player

$500-$600 range

 
i didnt end up ordering it. im gonna take some more time and do some research, ive got a few months till she starts school
 
if you can , wait it out till Black Friday
 
Or the beginning of the school year... there are always good deals to be had, you just have to know where to look. If you wait all the months until Black Friday, you might as well wait for Christmas to get an even better deal- or wait until Spring Break, or wait until the next summer for graduation. You just have to decide when to pull the trigger, then look for the best deal. The hardware keeps getting better at the same price point, so you just have to figure out when you want to jump.
 
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