I am on the market around tax time for a laptop. My price range is between $600-and $900. I am looking for a name brand, nothing cheaply made. I use my computer for internet use 90% of the time. I run broadband internet. I will also be using it for word, excel, and music. Not really much into the gaming scene. What laptops you recommend? Just remember the price range, useage, and I want something stylish, and NOT slow.HAHA

Was looking at Dell XPS M1530 for 999, but Im not sure if I need that model. Im dumb when it comes to laptops and all computer stuff insides.

What memory should I look at Im thinking 1 or 2GB. Im not sure what I should look at for the hard drive speed, or a processor.

Give me your opinions and price and stylish, are the main things.

 

For the money Dell seems to be one of the better deals out there.

 

circuit city, whatever is the $500 special of the week. ITs hard to go wrong if you go HP or toshiba.

 

I have a Dell Laitude D610 and have a 40 gig hard drive with 1 gig memory. It came out in 05 but got it for $150 from a surplus store. The state of wyoming sell off all their old ones and buy new ones. So I got a heck of a deal. But the laptop only came with 512mb of memory. So I had to put a little money into it. The memory card only cost $40 to up grade. Then this year I had to buy a bigger hard drive, I bought a external(spell?) one and that cost $80. I have had no problems with it. I would not trade it for anything. So you might want to check into getting a used one that is in good shape.

 

I don't think everyone read what he said:

"Just remember the price range, usage, and I want something stylish, and NOT slow.HAHA"

I think he's shooting for more computer than some of you folks are recommending. Said his budget was $600 - $900. 1 GB of RAM would crawl with the applications I run. 2GB with Vista is acceptable. An 40 GB... a fourth of it would be just loading Vista on it. I've never regretted buying too much computing power because it lasts me a lot longer. I have regretted not buying enough computing power.

My experience with laptops (and I've owned several) is that every single Compaq I've had either had a problem or the customer support was non-existent. My best experience so far has been Acer, but it was a $2500 high end laptop. Toshiba and Dell both make very good machines. For $600 - $900 you're looking at a 200 GB or greater hard-drive (and not a cheap slow one like you find in the sub-$500 range), rewriteable DVD probably dual layer, nice 17" screen, a dual core 64-bit processor, 2GB RAM minium, wireless, plenty of USB ports, firewire, 2nd monitor port, memory card slot, and possibly a fingerprint reader. Something like that will load Word in about 1-2 seconds, verses 20 seconds. I know because the guy who I helped upgrade last week when from an older Compaq laptop similar to the Dell described in the post above to his current Dell laptop --- gobs faster.

Now, if you decide on Dell (a very good choice these days) do this: find the model you want on their web site. Write down all the specs. Go to your local Best Buy and find the same model (double-check the specks). Right now Best Buy has Dell on sale. Friend of mine just bought a laptop listed on Dell.com for $750 for a much lower $599 at Best Buy.

Personally if it were me and that was my price range I'd be looking at Acer, but its harder to find places that sell them.

 

[quote=FTE Ken;6638555

Personally if it were me and that was my price range I'd be looking at Acer, but its harder to find places that sell them.[/quote]

I have also had good luck with acer, and you could order direct from them. Sometimes getting direct from manuf gets you a better price with more upgrades. In that price range you could find something with 4 gb ram memory and over 160 gb hard drive, with even high def. out put, in 17 in or larger screen. If you go dell, they have flyers that have promo codes that you will not find on their web site that get you a better price. It is hard to suggest brand, because they all use the same types of processors. Just go out, or on the web and compare what you get for price.

 

Ken I think you pretty much summed up the Dell I just customized on there website. Here are the specs on how I customized it. Tell me what you think, if not enough just enough or to much.

SYSTEM COLOR Midnight Blue
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5750 (2.00GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1
DISPLAY Glossy widescreen 17.0 inch display (1440x900)
MEMORY 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2
HARD DRIVE Size: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
VIDEO CARD 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3650
OPTICAL DRIVE 8X Slot Load CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Dell 1397 Wireless-G Card
INTEGRATED WEBCAM Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
BATTERY OPTIONS 56 Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
SOUND OPTIONS Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™ Advanced HD Software Edition
KEYBOARD Back-lit Keyboard
FINGER PRINT READER Integrated Finger Print Reader


Yea I went over my $900 limit only by $49

 

I don't know what your hard drive requirements are, mine would be about 200 GB, but I store most of my stuff on a network drive (have a little over 1TB of storage on the home network server).

For wireless, see if they have a dual frequency card (one that handles 5 GHz as well). Its not a neccessity because 95% of networks are 2.4 GHz, but if you ever have interference problems (neighbors with routers, wireless phones, microwave ovens) being able to use the clear 5 GHz channel is a nice option. The 5Ghz standard is "A". 2.4 is B/G

Also, I'd stick with the base memory and order extra memory from Newegg.com (prefer them for pretty much all my hardware addons, very good service with them over the past 7 years). You'll save quite a bit buying memory from someone other than Dell.

 

I also would recommend dropping the slot load to the regular load.(been there and dun that) The slot loading will not accept the smaller cd's or dvd's. If you ever get a camcorder, or want to put someones mini dvd from one in, it will not go. Where as the regular drive you could still clip the smaller dvd on to the tray. I would also check if the memory is interchangable. I have run into lots of things that will not go into certain branded laptops unless it is their brand.

 

Let me play the devils advocate here..

Do you really need a laptop or just want one??

You will get more bang for the buck buying a desktop versus a laptop. Also repair costs are less...

I find most people buy laptops and just keep them on a desk and never move them..

Ken pretty mush summed up everything I would recommend..

Dell's are good and very good price...

I would also recommend an extended warranty.. Laptop are easy to break by knocking them on the floor..

 

I had a compac and it gave trouble.......Have an HP now and its much better

 

SEcond that, laptops, evne the good ones, break more than desktops. Its the heat.

My toshiba is over 3 years old now, used for business and still ticks. And even with my super secret, ultra stingy govt supplied security software it is STILL slowing down 'cuz windoze by its nature lets the bad guys install cpu wasting services. Got my kid an acer and necked it down to visit very few websites, and all he does is play doom and duke nuken on it and it runs.

other than that HP rules. Once they got rid of the excessive 'light your lap and the airplane on fire' heating problem, they are like the desktops - bulletproof.

why a fingerprint reader? security reasons? (the one I have issued by uncle sam has a reader for the rfid chip in our badges, but the fingerprint info is encoded on the rfid chip)

 

Fingerprint reader:

I change my password often. Its at least 16 characters long and random numbers/letters. Should I ever forget it, or my wife needs access, we can get in with a swipe of the finger. We both have 2 fingers from each hand registered in the software.