I am shopping for a new computer,and haven't had to buy one for over 10 years. Needless to say,I am out of the loop. I don't want to spend a god awful amount of money,but I do want performance. I am considering a laptop,but will probably end up settling for a tower since everything else on my old computer has been updated in the last year(monitor,keyboard,mouse). A laptop would be nice,but they seem expensive for the amount of memory you get. How hard is it to get printers and such to work off of a laptop? I don't play many games,but I do watch quite a few videos. How much memory should I be looking for? Any other suggestion are welcome!!

 

Memory wise anything over 2g with the current operating system would suffice, the more the better. Laptops aren't as expensive as a lot of people seem to think. More expensive than modern day towers, yeah, but for the power laptops pack these days, and the ease of use, I don't even touch my desktop anymore with 3 laptops around the house. I just bought a Dell XPS 17 and absolutely freaking love that machine. Plus with Dell financing, 0% for the first year, it's easy to get paid off with 0% financed. I watch streaming movies via Netflix with wifi all day long, plus I bought a printer that has wifi installed, I can print from anywhere in my house, plus my neighbors house (when I let them once for a book report) easily. Dell has good prices, and any newer model laptop, as long as you keep it clutter free and have a good anti virus, shouldn't have any issues at all playing movies or videos at all. The one I got was 1399, but that's with all the bells and whistles.

 

If you don't need the portability of a laptop then I recommend not getting one..

You won't get 10 years out of a laptop.. In fact The life of a laptop is more like 3 years..
I have seen laptop motherboards die after a year of use...

I also recommend staying away from the small case computers.. When something goes wrong you are forced to get the part from the manufacturer, because it has to fit in that case.. You can't buy a generic part from best buy.

Best Buy carries a Lenovo pc for $499 with an i3 processor, 8 gb of memory and 1 Tb hard drive..

They are a decent machine for the price

 

I just bought a dell R15 laptop & a wireless printer. The laptop has a much larger hard drive & more memory than my old desktops. The wireless printer works great & the lack of wires is nice. I only bought the programs I need this time. My wife let the salesman load our old desktops with every thing they had. I never used most of it. We got the stuff through her work. It gave us a 25% cut in price. I like this laptop. I can use it all around my house & at work. It is worlds ahead of my old ones. Buy a new unit. You will be glad you did.

 

I got a HP Pavilion g4 laptop a while back. $400 out the door. 4 gigs ram, AMD vision processor. 500 gig hard drive. Been very good so far. FWIW, Ive had bad experiences with Acer and Toshiba.

 

wow,didn't realize laptops life expectancy isn't very long something to think about for sure.

 

Newer laptops don't have this issue, and a very LARGE part of it comes from heat dissipation. I've have an old, piece of crap Compaq (HP) laptop for 6 years. If it's not sitting on a hard flat surface, I keep a cooler under it. The only thing I've had to do is reinstall the operating system a few times due to my kids, but it's their internet/school work toy, and with most laptops you get a partition on the hard drive for re-installing to factory settings, so within 20 minutes you're back to how the laptop was when it arrived at your door. It also helps to get the laptop cleaned out every once in a while. Any PC shop will crack it open and blow it out for cheap usually, I just do it myself. It's literally no different from a desktop when it comes to how long it will last. A 10 year old desktop, not taken care of, is a pile of junk, to put nicely. A lot of old school thought was that if you don't need the portability of a laptop, get a desktop. Now, the modern thought is, if you don't need the graphics power and processing power plus huge storage capabilities of a desktop, you get a laptop. But, especially with Dells XPS 3d graphics engines and cheaper portable storage options, eventually desktops will be an office only application.

 

Pick a budget.
Then shop the major online stores
Newegg, Tiger Direct and bargain hunting sites like Ben's Bargains.

Quad cores with 4gb of memory and 1tb HDD are available for less than $300.00
You still need an OS.
Windows 7 is out there for less than $100.00
Linux is free.


Right now over on Woot there is a HP laptop; Woot® : One Day, One Deal

HP Pavilion i3 Dual-Core Notebook with 17.3” BrightView LED Display
$399.99

+ $5 shipping

Condition:
Refurbished
Product:
1 HP Pavilion G7-1150US, 17.3” BrightView LED, Core i3-370M 2.4GHz Dual-Core, 4GB, 640GB,802.11n,W7HP


I buy refurbished products as the quality control for them is more stringent than for new factory production.

 

I like Dells over all else,imho
For my son an Alienware which is great for games

 

For this price I would buy two;

Woot® : One Day, One Deal
HP Pavilion P7 Quad-Core Desktop
$329.99

+ $5 shipping

Condition:
Refurbished
Product:
1 HP Pavilion P7-1010 Desktop, AMD Athlon II 3.1GHz Quad-Core, 6GB, 1TB, ATI 4200, 802.11n, W7HP



This is a sell out chance!
When they are gone there are no more.

 

Acer's have been one killer dependable computer system. I have 3 acer laptops and 3 desktops and they have been working flawlessly. Now, if money wasnt an object, then I would so go for the IMac 27 or a macbook pro! My wife actually loves the Imac and well the pro, enough said hehe.