Help Me Buy A Laptop!

My PC is on its last legs and I think I want to get a laptop. I'd like to have one for when I travel and such (like being able to lay in bed while part of the mini jam's, lol). The thing is, I don't know that much about laptops. I was thinking about a netbook but I don't like how they don't have dvd drives. Here's a little bit about what I'm looking for:

Budget: $500
Ram: 3 gigs unless upgrading it with something from newegg or tigerdirect is cheaper than getting the additional ram with the new unit.
OS: Xp or Windows 7
Processor: 2.0GHz with an Intel Pentium Dual Core chip or something close
Webcam and mic integrated
Hardrive: Not a big deal
DVD writer

As an example, I really like this one http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...?EdpNo=5311061&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs but it doesn't have an integrated mic! I'd like to stay away from Dell.

Thanks for all your help!

Well you could get a netbook for about 300 clams, and then get an external DVD reader/writer that you'd only hook up (via USB or Firewire) when you needed to use it. (If you wanted to watch a DVD while travelling, you could just rip the DVD onto the netbook's internal hard drive before you leave.)

Although I'm not so sure I'd want a netbook for my one-and-only computer. They're great as a second one though. So maybe you could get a netbook and upgrade your current PC with the remaining money? Does your current computer read/write DVDs?

JJ

Ukulele JJ said:

Well you could get a netbook for about 300 clams, and then get an external DVD reader/writer that you'd only hook up (via USB or Firewire) when you needed to use it. (If you wanted to watch a DVD while travelling, you could just rip the DVD onto the netbook's internal hard drive before you leave.)

Although I'm not so sure I'd want a netbook for my one-and-only computer. They're great as a second one though. So maybe you could get a netbook and upgrade your current PC with the remaining money? Does your current computer read/write DVDs?

JJ

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I'd like to avoid getting a netbook unless it really is my best option. Doesn't seem like it though with the budget I'm setting myself.

Stephen's new computer really fits your needs to a T - except it's a Dell. He got a pretty good deal on it. My wife has a Dell Inispiron 15 (basic model) and it's a really nice laptop! I have an Acer budget laptop and it's great - fits all your criteria except for the camera - I have a decent webcam that I clip on it and it does great - $380 if you include the price of the camera. I was skeptical about Acer, but the price was right and it has been a real workhorse with NO problems whatsoever.

Shop BestBuy.com's sales - they often have some real bargains that last for a week. Both Sheryl and I got our laptops from them, and we each paid less than $400...

if you can, check out office depot and staples for there clearance items, I git my current laptop , an 800 dollar dell studio 15 for 500 bucks last year. Just ahave to keep your eyes open.

JT

Acer's an okay brand... The best laptops (IMO) are Toshiba and Apple and if I were you (and wanted a good laptop) I'd try to get one of those- maybe even used as for 500 USD you won't be able to get all the features you want with those brands. All the other laptop brands are meh- as they don't tend to live too long (maybe 2-3 years). I have an apple laptop from 2000 that still runs like it did out of the box and three Toshiba laptops from 2001, 2004 and 2009 that all run excellent. I use the 2009 as my main computer, the Apple as my travel/ school computer, and the other two for music and picture storage. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is you get what you pay for. Apple and Toshiba are more expensive and per cost you get a lot less features- but those features will work forever, and work well.

I've had Dell, Gateway, and HP laptops given to me by friends~ Most of which had broken within a year of purchase. I'm no repairman (but I do so love stealing parts, and cracking things open to see how they tick...) and I can tell you those brands are crap as far as the layout goes and the components used. (granted- they all tended to be lower end <1500USD models, so maybe the more expensive models are better... I don't know...)

Cheaper laptops with lotsa features... They aren't the best built. But, if you don't mind the headache of taking a computer to a repair shop and such in a couple of years- the Acer should be fine.

The biggest danger with laptops is overheating- (they overheat, fan breaks, sodder melts, scrambles logic board or some such...) And so- as far as longevity goes- bigger laptops are usually a bit hardier. Netbooks have a horrible life expectancy and I'd not touch one with a ten foot pole.

No matter what laptop you end up getting: spend the 30 bucks it takes to buy a cooling pad and use it religiously and the laptop should last a good long while (no matter the brand). Laptops are designed so that when you place them on a table air can run underneath the unit to cool the computer and prevent overheating. You take a laptop in bed with you and place in on your lap: no airflow and wala! Broken computer. So if you do use a laptop in bed- definitely don't forget to buy a cooling pad (and one that you can use anywhere- not just on a desk.)

Hope my ramblings help!
~Valerie

Thanks for the reply. I had Toshiba for about 4 years and in less than a year, it needed a new hard rive. A year after that, a new fan... so yeah, I know what you mean. As far as I'm concerned with a laptop, it's a 3 year piece of equipment, that's it. A Mac is way beyond my budget!

Really? Wow- I've never known anyone to have trouble with a Toshiba. Maybe me and my friends have been very lucky. Anyways- I'll just repeat that taking good care of a laptop is key. Most break because of overheating (which just doesn't have to happen.)

Sure cooling pads are a pain to tot around- but they make laptops last for ages (I mean- I've had my apple for a decade! And my first toshiba for almost as long) and I think it's in part because I've always used cooling pads.

In its last days, I had a fan on it, lol.

Best Buy had a decent in store laptop for $350, met all your requirements. But you'd probably have to go shopping for it

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstemp...terSP&sp=+currentprice+skuid&usc=abcat0500000

And try the Dell refurbished laptops, we've bought 3 and had no problems

Melissa82 said:

Thanks for the reply. I had Toshiba for about 4 years and in less than a year, it needed a new hard rive. A year after that, a new fan... so yeah, I know what you mean. As far as I'm concerned with a laptop, it's a 3 year piece of equipment, that's it. A Mac is way beyond my budget!

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did you ever sit in bed and use it? that's death for a laptop

brickerenator said:

did you ever sit in bed and use it? that's death for a laptop

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Nope, it was always on a table or laptop desk.

brickerenator said:

did you ever sit in bed and use it? that's death for a laptop

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I guess that depends on what you do with it in bed... :uhoh:

Anyhoo, if you're looking for a deal on a laptop and don't particularly care what it is, keep checking woot.com. Deals come up now and again.

For example, there's a 14" Asus on sellout.woot right now for $499. The trick is that you have to buy it now. It won't be there tomorrow.

JJ

What is the aversion to dell? I don't work for Dell or anything like that. I am just curious.

BTW, a friend purchased from Best Buy and it was a nightmare and DO NOT EVER USE GEEK SQUAD! ! ! ! !

If you consider an HP compare it to others dollar for dollar. I compared HP with Dell and You get more for your money at the Dell. I don't mean to push Dell, I am just offering more info for you to think about. The Clearance table is a great idea. You might be getting 6 month old technology but big deal.

Ukulele JJ said:

I guess that depends on what you do with it in bed... :uhoh:

Anyhoo, if you're looking for a deal on a laptop and don't particularly care what it is, keep checking woot.com. Deals come up now and again.

For example, there's a 14" Asus on sellout.woot right now for $499. The trick is that you have to buy it now. It won't be there tomorrow.

JJ

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Argh, that's really too bad I don't have the coin for that... and that Vista is on it...

My advice is whatever you go with, make sure the HDD is either a 7200 rpm model or a solid state drive. Often the main bottleneck with laptop performance is the storage device, usually you get some godawful 5400 rpm drive under the "it saves power" myth. I've upgraded my netbook from an 80gig 5400 rpm drive to a 500gig 7200 rpm drive, and on paper it uses maybe 0.01A more power, yet the performance difference is huge. A stink load of memory and an OS that is good with memory management can mitigate this, but Windows has never been that great with memory management.

Also, as far as memory goes - above 3 Gigs you'll want to go 64 bit (as 32bit can only natively address 3 Gigs), otherwise you come across this nasty little technology called PAE. Let me put it this way, every time you use PAE, you're killing your inner child, so like... don't. Or something. Also make sure that the graphics chipset will handle HD, or at least that there's a spare mini-PCIe slot so that you can get an HD codec card.

Netbooks are getting much better these days, their problem is usually that they can't natively handle HD (unless they're using an nvidia chipset, or you retro-fit a broadcom HD codec card), and that their CPU's have traditionally been single core atoms. No DVD drive can be a bit annoying, but I can simply throw a DVD into my HTPC and play the DVD over my wireless network, or rip the DVD... Gaming on them is sorted again by going to the network. The last gripe I have with them is the screen size - I have a 10" widescreen netbook and I can get through one verse and the chorus in a song's pdf before I have to stop playing and scroll down. Now that's really irritating.

So, I want something like this, but you might like to look at HP's offerings.

Disclosure: I work in IT, I'm a disgruntled Linux Sysadmin by day and a slightly inebriated ukulele player by night I've had all sorts of PC's over the years, even a chrome-plated overclocked and watercooled beast, but currently my requirements are a lot more pedestrian, so I have a stock standard Macbook for work and a warmed-over Asus Eee-PC 1000H at home (with a mac mini w/ a 1TB drive for my HTPC)

whetu said:

My advice is whatever you go with, make sure the HDD is either a 7200 rpm model or a solid state drive. Often the main bottleneck with laptop performance is the storage device, usually you get some godawful 5400 rpm drive under the "it saves power" myth. I've upgraded my netbook from an 80gig 5400 rpm drive to a 500gig 7200 rpm drive, and on paper it uses maybe 0.01A more power, yet the performance difference is huge. A stink load of memory and an OS that is good with memory management can mitigate this, but Windows has never been that great with memory management.

Also, as far as memory goes - above 3 Gigs you'll want to go 64 bit (as 32bit can only natively address 3 Gigs), otherwise you come across this nasty little technology called PAE. Let me put it this way, every time you use PAE, you're killing your inner child, so like... don't. Or something. Also make sure that the graphics chipset will handle HD, or at least that there's a spare mini-PCIe slot so that you can get an HD codec card.

Netbooks are getting much better these days, their problem is usually that they can't natively handle HD (unless they're using an nvidia chipset, or you retro-fit a broadcom HD codec card), and that their CPU's have traditionally been single core atoms. No DVD drive can be a bit annoying, but I can simply throw a DVD into my HTPC and play the DVD over my wireless network, or rip the DVD... Gaming on them is sorted again by going to the network. The last gripe I have with them is the screen size - I have a 10" widescreen netbook and I can get through one verse and the chorus in a song's pdf before I have to stop playing and scroll down. Now that's really irritating.

So, I want something like this, but you might like to look at HP's offerings.

Disclosure: I work in IT, I'm a disgruntled Linux Sysadmin by day and a slightly inebriated ukulele player by night I've had all sorts of PC's over the years, even a chrome-plated overclocked and watercooled beast, but currently my requirements are a lot more pedestrian, so I have a stock standard Macbook for work and a warmed-over Asus Eee-PC 1000H at home (with a mac mini w/ a 1TB drive for my HTPC)

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My husband got a netbook and ended up "overclocking" it. I say that in quotes because to my understanding, netbooks are underclocked to save power or something like that. I really don't want to have to do anything like that so that's why I'm thinking maybe a netbook is not for me. The screen is not a big deal, I'm little so most screens are huge to me anyways. Thanks for all the info, I'll def look into that.

Melissa82 said:

My husband got a netbook and ended up "overclocking" it. I say that in quotes because to my understanding, netbooks are underclocked to save power or something like that. I really don't want to have to do anything like that so that's why I'm thinking maybe a netbook is not for me. The screen is not a big deal, I'm little so most screens are huge to me anyways. Thanks for all the info, I'll def look into that.

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Ah, the overclocking bit was really for the first wave of netbooks (i.e. Eee-PC 700's), that's not really so much the case these days... They're pretty much all 1.6GHz Intel Atoms that you won't get much gain from overclocking... said netbooks lack in other areas as I pointed out, and dealing with the HDD and Memory bottlenecks will gain you more of a performance boost than overclocking will. If you do go the netbook route, hunt for one with a dual core Atom and/or an nvidia graphics chipset.

Oh, the other thing I don't like about netbooks is on some of them the keyboards are just plain awful. If you can, try typing on one in a store, paying particular attention to the placement of the right hand shift key (assuming you're a touch typist?). On my 1000H the right hand shift key shares space with the up arrow key, so I'll be typing away, go to hit the shift key but accidentally hit the up arrow key, and then I wind up typing in the previous line of text! It drives me up the wall! Have a google around for "eee pc shift key" and you'll find it's a common complaint

Stay away from a Sony Vaio. Thought I'd pay extra for the name. My mistake. DVD drive failed after 1 year, it freezes up on me. If I had the $$ I would go with an Apple laptop. I recently purchased an iMac for home and I'm so glad I did... e.lo

brickerenator said:

did you ever sit in bed and use it? that's death for a laptop

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That is death... I keep a board in my bedroom that goes on the bed if I take the computer in there with me.... its a piece of plywood that my chil mat sits on top of...