My parents are planning on getting me a laptop for graduation. The question is...What kind/brand. I"m not a hardcore gamer, but i would like it to be able to play games without skipping or lagging, like command and conqure, or age of the empires and stuff like that. I need microsoft office, like word, powerpoint, excel. I really dont want a big huge main stream brand, just because i want to be different, and want to have something better that nobody has. Anyone know any different brands that are smaller and better? Or is that not possible in the world of laptops? What is a good brand/model? Price range is probalby 1,000$-1500$

 

Dell, Dell, & Dell, Toshiba is good too

 

First, if you want to be better than everyone else then you need to be in the 2,000-3,000 range. Their are a ton of laptops in the 1,000-1,500 range. Laptop prices increase rapidly when adding items.

Second, Smaller and better is not possible, IMHO, usually bigger is better in laptops. The smaller ones usually are missing something to get them small. I know of a guy who bought a small laptop, because it was light and easy to handle. It did not have room for an internal CD-Rom drive.

Are you sure you need a laptop? You can get more machine for the money if you get a desktop.

If you do get a laptop I would recommend getting the longest warranty available. It will pay for itself over time. When laptops break the repair can cost more than what it is worth. LCD screens can run 500 - 1,000 to fix. The problem is you can't just go to your local computer shop to find parts.

I will have to agree with TN. Buy either Dell or Toshiba.

Just my 2 cents

 

Try looking at Acer. My step-son recieved one for graduation.
It looks really nice. A couple of months after he recieved it the hard drive crashed,(seagate I think ) I called their tech support, the guy sounded like english was his first language (not from India) and I had a replacement hard drive in 5 days. I could have had it Fed-Ex'ed and had it much faster... Oh, it shipped out of, and I returned the bad drive to their repair center in Texas.

Tony

 

Dude! get a Dell.

 

While I usually push Dell for a laptop (have 2 myself), I have found myself looking at the Toshibas out on the market today.

Compare the price, hardware, specs, warranty. Speaking of warranty, make sure the warranty is through the manufacturer, and not the place of purchase (no matter brand you select). I'd rather deal with the maker than the seller to get it serviced.

My Dell that I purchased recently has a 2 year field service warranty (run a small business). They will come to my home and fix it here, nothing to ship out. If you can get a warranty like that, worth it. They can do 99.9% of all repairs on your table (had then swap a new motherboard into a laptop a few years ago, 20 minutes).

 

In the past 2 years, I have bought 3 laptops.

The first was a Sony Laptop. I forget model etc but it had something like the 3G Pentium processor, 256M memory, 40 or 60G disk etc. It is a pretty good maching but it is very heavy and has only about 1 hour of battery life. The touch pad is so so in my opinion. THis processor runs very hot and can actually make your lap uncomfortable if that is where you put it. It cost about $2K.

I bought an IBM/Lenovo laptop for my son's XMAS. This is possibly my favorite of the three I currently have around. It has excellent battery life, about 5-6 hours and appears to have adewquate speed for my son who is into DND games and Halo. Cost was around $800. It has a mobile pentium if I recall and the usual memory and disk selections. I am not too good with the mini joystick that IBM uses. Guess it just takes getting used to it. This one is a little less heavy than the Sony and runs much cooler.

Last I just got a a Compac thru staples. They had a pretty good rebate and sale last month. After all was paid for I wound up paying about $500 for the laptop with usual features plus 512M memory. It is a pretty nice machine but seems a bit slow on startup. Not sure of battery life but guessing maybe 2-3 hours. The touch pad on this one is pretty good. THis one is the lightest of the three.

All of them have good graphics and play DVD videos fine. All have built in wireless and seem to work pretty well.

If I had to choose one out of these three brands I would probably buy the IBM but a higher end model.

Jim Henderson

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115223

Here is the Laptop I'm looking at. If I can't get my address issues figured out to get them to validate my billing/shipping address difference, then I'm going to go to Best Buy and work them down on the price of a Toshiba that costs about 150 dollars more.

But I really like that Acer.

 

I have found HP/Compaq to be superior to Dell in reliablilty. For gamers they offer a choice of AMD, not just Intel processors. The big limitation with laptops is in the graphics area, far fewer choices. Sony may be "different" and a little more expensive, but the break more often.

Jim

 

Build your own.

 

We have the company supplied Dell Latitude series laptops and we also have around an extra 8 because of reliabilty issues. Our IT person says there won't be anymore Dells. Mine crashes at least once a week and I am now an old hand at fixing it. It is less than a year old. I had issues with a previous Dell I owned and they are not anything I would ever spend money on again. I found their support to be lacking a bunch as well. Otherwise, I'm not really a computer person- they work or they are crap.

 

I really dont like dell computers. They have them in my college and they were always broken. Maybe because of the user but I like my Toshiba. I havent had any problems. But Dell does have a great reputation.

 

I would have to say Dell from reputation and personally HP from my personal experience. HP from Wally World is the best laptop I have ever owned. It is the 5th one I have had I beleive...maybe 6th....anyways....very veyr good.

 

Here's one i found that i think i like, anyone who knows computers in and out can you tell me what you honestly think? I like what i see, but i'm just wondering about battery life??? Doesnt look very good from what i can see, can anyone give me an idea of what to expect?

 

Computers, regardless of what brand they are all basically use the same hardware. Ive got a Dell Lattitude that Ive had for over a year and thus far its never given me a problem. (knock on wood)
If you want something to play games on I think you would be better off to go with a desktop computer though, they often have a lot more memory than laptops, which is what you need if you want to play games on it with having the computer slow down on you.