Need help on picking out a laptop

ledvedderman

The wife and I are tired of our old piece of shit desktop, and are looking to get a laptop. We're not picky at all. All I really want it for is; to be able to record some music onto it through a program I have, make DVD's from photo based on a Adobe program I have, and have wireless internet.

We're not looking to spend much money and don't care if it is re-furbished or used. Neither of us are real tech savvy so we don't really know what we need.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cree Nations

ledvedderman wrote:

The wife and I are tired of our old piece of shit desktop, and are looking to get a laptop. We're not picky at all. All I really want it for is; to be able to record some music onto it through a program I have, make DVD's from photo based on a Adobe program I have, and have wireless internet.

We're not looking to spend much money and don't care if it is re-furbished or used. Neither of us are real tech savvy so we don't really know what we need.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

get a Mac and if you want PC, get a toshiba.
Good luck

know1

Cree Nations wrote:

get a Mac and if you want PC, get a toshiba.
Good luck

No need for a MAC if the use is going to be fairly simple and cost is a factor.

We have two laptops that rarely leave the house and I'm reconsidering the whole laptop idea myself. I can pretty much do all my internet surfing with my phone now, so I do not really have much reason to have a laptop.

rival.

i bought a dell inspiron a little over a year ago, and i love it.

it's your middle of the road/afforable laptop. which is perfect for me, because i all i use it for is internet, music/itunes.

ledvedderman

know1 wrote:

No need for a MAC if the use is going to be fairly simple and cost is a factor.

Yeah, I think a MAC is a bit out of my price range. If I would use it like crazy, I would have no problem spending that type of money. Since I don't plan on using it that much...no need in spending big bucks.

You just need to sell one of those laptops know1...

Cree Nations

know1 wrote:

No need for a MAC if the use is going to be fairly simple and cost is a factor.

We have two laptops that rarely leave the house and I'm reconsidering the whole laptop idea myself. I can pretty much do all my internet surfing with my phone now, so I do not really have much reason to have a laptop.

yes, good point, I thought about it after but you can still get pretty nice refurbished macs...granted they are still pricey...but its a mac!

one who surfs the web and lives in the 21st century still pretty much needs a comp though whether it be a lab top or a desktop but to each his/her own.

ledvedderman

This is something I found while browsing online...thoughts?

http://www.usanotebook.com/1534-DLAD600_Dell_Latitude_D600_Centrino_Laptop.php

fuck

ledvedderman wrote:

This is something I found while browsing online...thoughts?

http://www.usanotebook.com/1534-DLAD600_Dell_Latitude_D600_Centrino_Laptop.php

dude.

NO.

That laptop looks like it was made 6 years ago. 40G harddrive, barely 1G RAM, and 56K modem?

No way. Plus I really don't like Dell. Check out Sony Vaio, my sister has one and it's pretty sweet. HP isn't bad if you take good care of it. Mac is the best though.

norm

try here

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=17&name=Laptops-Notebooks

look at acer....inexpensive yet well built....most windows laptops are all the same now so it's a matter of what you plan to use it for....you shouldn't have to spend more than $800...:)

Stone Is God

_outlaw wrote:

dude.

NO.

That laptop looks like it was made 6 years ago. 40G harddrive, barely 1G RAM, and 56K modem?

No way. Plus I really don't like Dell. Check out Sony Vaio, my sister has one and it's pretty sweet. HP isn't bad if you take good care of it. Mac is the best though.

You beat me to the punch.

A piece of advice, if you get a Windows based laptop, get at least 2GB of RAM especially with Vista.

If your going to be doing a lot of download/storage get a pretty big hard drive too.

markymark550

ledvedderman wrote:

This is something I found while browsing online...thoughts?

http://www.usanotebook.com/1534-DLAD600_Dell_Latitude_D600_Centrino_Laptop.php

If you want to burn your own DVDs, then I would suggest against this one since you wouldn't be able to do that. The CDRW\DVD optical drive means that you can read and burn cds but only read dvds. You'll want to find one that specifically states it is a burner or has this: DVD±RW.

That and like the previous poster said, not a lot of RAM and a small hard drive. 56K modem would be negligible if you have high speed internet, which I'm assuming....

polaris

mac

you'll be glad you got one when it still works 18 mths down the road and you aren't worried about stupid programs being embedded into your laptop - plus, I think that the programs you want come standard on most macs now so, consider the potential software premium in buying PC ... having said that - a mac will for sure always cost more but you get what you pay for ...

eyedclaar

Go for the busty blond with glitter on her stomach. What the hell kind of laptop are you people talking about?

Get_Right

singularity wrote:

i bought a dell inspiron a little over a year ago, and i love it.

it's your middle of the road/afforable laptop. which is perfect for me, because i all i use it for is internet, music/itunes.

same
$899 I think and I upgraded the internal wireless card to the "pro" version


only thing I dont like is that it is big and it has a "glossy" screen
you need a portable one get a latitude if they still make em
think pads are nice too, but not cheap

if you need go cheap get a dell
if the number creeps up over a grand-and you dont need to worry about interfacing with windows (i.e. accessing work servers via the laptop) then go with a mac-I have heard that even the basic mac book is a pleasure to have

Slip Kid

_outlaw wrote:

dude.

NO.

That laptop looks like it was made 6 years ago. 40G harddrive, barely 1G RAM, and 56K modem?

No way. Plus I really don't like Dell. Check out Sony Vaio, my sister has one and it's pretty sweet. HP isn't bad if you take good care of it. Mac is the best though.

Yeah I agree that computer is way too low for anything that is decent

ledvedderman

markymark550 wrote:

If you want to burn your own DVDs, then I would suggest against this one since you wouldn't be able to do that. The CDRW\DVD optical drive means that you can read and burn cds but only read dvds. You'll want to find one that specifically states it is a burner or has this: DVD±RW.

That and like the previous poster said, not a lot of RAM and a small hard drive. 56K modem would be negligible if you have high speed internet, which I'm assuming....

Thanks. As I stated in the original post, I'm beyond worthless when it comes to understanding what makes up a decent laptop, and this post helped me out quite a bit.

Slip Kid

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147746

This seems pretty good

fuck

Slip Kid wrote:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147746

This seems pretty good

That one's very good, but it depends on whether or not the OP is good at taking care of his electronics (especially for an HP), and if he likes 17 inch screens...

markymark550

ledvedderman wrote:

Thanks. As I stated in the original post, I'm beyond worthless when it comes to understanding what makes up a decent laptop, and this post helped me out quite a bit.

no prob....I understand wanting to keep costs down, but if you can afford it, I'd spend the extra $400 or so and go with the one Slip Kid just posted

fuck

Here's another one:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8897679&type=product&id=1212192350379

HushBull

_outlaw wrote:

Here's another one:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8897679&type=product&id=1212192350379

Seems like a pretty good deal ^

Slip Kid

_outlaw wrote:

That one's very good, but it depends on whether or not the OP is good at taking care of his electronics (especially for an HP), and if he likes 17 inch screens...

True.

Shop around newegg they have pretty good prices.

Here are some:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117722

Seem pretty fair price. You could burn DVD/CD run music programs

imo the only draw back is with the lower price of that one I already posted you're not going to be hitting the core ghz speed, that and it has Vista which can be taken if you so choose


Now this is really close to a macbooks' specifications without the spending an extra 300 dollars:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117729

from what I can see there is very little difference with 2 major exceptions

1) You're getting a bigger hard drive (macbook has 120gb this one has 200gb)

2) One more gb of ram for this guy verses the 1gb of ram for the macbook

If I didn't already have a MacBook Pro i'd probably snatch this one

again just shop around and see what is out there.

StateOfLoveBoatCptn.

just got an HP dv6915 at best Buy for $729

15.4 inch display
DVD+RW with double layer support (lightscribe)
built in web cam
3g memory
200g hard drive
AMD Turion 64 X2 processor
built in wireless

so far so good...

DeLukin

Keep in mind that you're going to get what you pay for. I bought a low end dell inspiron a couple of years ago for my wife to do general computing and the thing was nothing but problems. Worse than that, Dell's tech support SUCKS. It's been nothing but a headache from day one. I use a Macbook Pro for work and it has never given me problems. Macs do cost a little more than low end PC's, but you definitely get more for the money and they're worth it in the long run, in my opinion.

Julien

ledvedderman wrote:

The wife and I are tired of our old piece of shit desktop, and are looking to get a laptop. We're not picky at all. All I really want it for is; to be able to record some music onto it through a program I have, make DVD's from photo based on a Adobe program I have, and have wireless internet.

We're not looking to spend much money and don't care if it is re-furbished or used. Neither of us are real tech savvy so we don't really know what we need.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

buy an apple macbook !
you wil not be dissapointed. use iTunes for the music and iPhoto/iDVD to burn DVDs with your pics. Everything's really easy with a mac.
And you won't have to care about viruses anymore

Julien

ledvedderman wrote:

Yeah, I think a MAC is a bit out of my price range. If I would use it like crazy, I would have no problem spending that type of money. Since I don't plan on using it that much...no need in spending big bucks.

You just need to sell one of those laptops know1...

a MAC is a bit more expensive than a dell or whatever but it's better quality and never gets used. in thre years, your mac will still be like a new one.

DeLukin

Julien wrote:

a MAC is a bit more expensive than a dell or whatever but it's better quality and never gets used. in thre years, your mac will still be like a new one.

And it should be pointed out that Macs are only more expensive than LOW END Windows machines... fact of the matter is when you compare apples to apples (no pun intended), Macs are actually a better value:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4258725.html

Julien

DeLukin wrote:

And it should be pointed out that Macs are only more expensive than LOW END Windows machines... fact of the matter is when you compare apples to apples (no pun intended), Macs are actually a better value:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4258725.html

yes, right.
A colleague of mine bought a smal sony vaio (13"). It costs twice the price of my macbook, and it's not better...