New laptop for my wife

[hitchface]

Hey folks!

I'm looking to get my wife a new laptop as a late Valentine's Day present. She has been needing one since last September, and I decided to get her one instead of a new guitar amp for myself.

I'm trying to shoot for 800 CDN, and the laptop doesn't need any really fancy bells and whistles, but it DOES need to be dual core. It will be used mainly for work (processing .csv files, sorting of raw data and spreadsheets), and I am looking for a 120 gig HDD. 80 is fine, especially at the price I am looking at, but if I can grab a 120, I'd be fairly stoked.

Normally I'd just go search it up, but I can't say that I am very well versed in mobile technology and I really want to do this quickly. Thanks for the help guys!

EDIT: Oh, and the laptop will be traveling wherever she goes, so durability is also a bonus.

[glc]

You are a little light on the cost for a quality laptop. You can get a dual core T2060 Dell Inspiron 640m with 1gb ram and a 160gb hard drive and DVD burner for $899 CDN. It's got Vista Home Premium. It's reasonably durable and quite lightweight.

[hitchface]

I could likely chop that cost if it were with XP though couldn't I? I don't really want to put her through the hassle of a new OS, and XP Home would work just as well.

And I know the price is quite low...I won't likely hold to it, but I am trying to really cut costs here while keeping only the functionality that she will need.

EDIT: What do you think of this guy? Friends of mine have had some very good experiences with Toshiba before. http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10084377&catid=22495&logon=&langid=EN

It has Vista, but man is it ever the right price.

[glc]

The only Dell laptops that are still available with XP are Latitudes on the small business site, and the only one in that price range is single core Celeron-M. Dual cores are over a grand.

[hitchface]

What about the one I just posted? It's got the same CPU as the Dell you listed. Smaller HDD, gig of RAM.

[Panama Red]

How bout this Dell E1505, C2D w/XP Home, 120Gb SATA, 1Gb ram, DVD burner for $789. It's a refurb at the Outlet store. Better act fast cuz it'll be gone.

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

Drat! can't link directly to it. Stk # OGVCAX57

[glc]

I've seen a lot of quality issues with Toshiba lately, and their support is pretty bad these days. That's got Vista too.

PR, he's in CANADA.

[Panama Red]

PR, he's in CANADA.

:o Well, ain't that a stick in the eye!:eek:

[hitchface]

What kind of issues have been happening with Toshiba?

My other choice was going to be an Acer, because every one of them that I have seen has just taken a beating.

[glc]

Acer is okay, but they partition their drives into 3 chunks - main, second, and recovery - all FAT32 - and load an ungodly amount of crap on them, all running at startup. No reinstall media available, you have to burn your own DVD.

[hitchface]

Oi....and the issues with Toshiba?

[glc]

Mostly overheating and spontaneous shutdowns - and their warranty department goes out of their way to deny claims.

[hitchface]

Yeah, that will deter a customer or two. So is Dell my only real choice here?

[glc]

Dell and Acer are the only cheapies I really trust.

[trulad]

I have an Acer that I am very happy with. I installed a fresh copy of XP oem and made 1 partition with NTFS. Works great.
trulad

[glc]

Were you able to get all the drivers and utilities you needed?

[trulad]

all the drivers were on Acer's web site. I downloaded them all and saved them in a folder on my C drive and also on one of my external drives.
trulad