My price range is $650 and below, what laptop should i buy?

[augustburnsred]

Hi, i'm looking to buy a new laptop and i'm ordering it so it has to be off of a major store, circuitcity,best buy, staples , walmart etc...or microsoft...my price range is $650 and below if you have any suggestions please tell.

I'm looking for the best i can get for my money.

[augustburnsred]

If anyone has any suggestions please reply

[shadowpr]

You need to be a little patient. People will reply with some time, but this isn't a chat room.


Have you looked at dells?

[David M]

I saw a great sale on Lenovo's (ex IBM) right before Christmas. The price of one I saw got down to your price point. I know this will not help you now but I would be willing to bet there will be more sales. At that price it only offered 1 gig of RAM. You definitely want to upgrade the RAM to two gigs unless you have lots of patience. You can save money by buying another retailers RAM.

[augustburnsred]

alrighty..I won't be doing any upgrades on it hardware wise, so it needs to be as best as I can get factory default.

[David M]

Your choice...how much patience do you have? For another 40 bucks (roughly), you can upgrade to two gigs. RAM is relatively dirt cheap these days. Just don't buy any beer this month.

[augustburnsred]

I might be able to go up to $700 but I don't know how to install new parts lol...so what I need is factory default

[David M]

Originally Posted by augustburnsred I might be able to go up to $700 but I don't know how to install new parts lol...so what I need is factory default

RAM is REALLY easy to install on a laptop. In fact, the directions for your laptop will show you how to install RAM. If you order two gigs it will already be in there from the factory. Come to think about it, get the factory RAM. You cant order a laptop with no RAM. The price difference, shipping cost, tax and hassle between one or two gigs makes it not worth getting the aftermarket RAM. Plus the manufacturer can't blame any problems on your aftermarket RAM.

[augustburnsred]

ok tyvm, so which laptop would you reccomend?

[David M]

Read through the forums on laptops. HP is having major quality control and customer service problems so avoid them. (The cost cutting accountants are running HP)

What do you need to do with your laptop? That is a question you need to answer before buying. You will be able to run any of the apps in Microsoft Office Suite and check your emails, but you will not be able to run at playable speeds graphics intensive new games with any $650 laptop. Figure on about $1500 and up for doing that....depending mostly upon the graphics card.

Have you looked on EBAY for used laptops?

If I were to buy an inexpensive new laptop today it would be a Lenovo. Thats based on information I have read in this forum and a number of computer magazines.

[augustburnsred]

I won't be playing any new games , maybe some online games like runescape but that does not take much speed to play. What i DO like to do is use webcam and instant message so i need a computer that can do that fast.

[augustburnsred]

is this a good laptop?? http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshi...oductDetail.do

[David M]

It's better than the HP you had linked to in your other thread.

[Masaki 7-11]

These are two good laptops available from BestBuy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1196469485969
$499.99

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1195598868093
$599.99
The performance difference between the two is minimal, but the first one can only be bought in store since they are sold out online. The first one is actually better overall since it comes with extras and is cheaper.

[glc]

Dell Inspiron 1520 configured with XP. $619 plus tax. The basic configuration (1gb ram, 80gb hard drive) will run XP very well, but will be doggy with Vista.

[Masaki 7-11]

The two laptops I posted above are better since they have double the ram and hard drive as well as good integrated graphics. Overall good laptops for the price, especially the $499 acer laptop which also has extras like better speakers and a built in webcam.

[thefultonhow]

Those are both Turions though, and one of them is a Compaq (yuck). You will get much better battery life with a Core 2 Duo system like the Dell Inspiron 1520. They also come with Vista, which is more of a resource hog; the 2 GB of RAM is not necessary on XP. The Vostro 1500, which is identical to the Inspiron 1520, is available from Dell Small Business for $20 less with the Core 2 Duo upgrade (but make sure to upgrade from the base Celeron M).

[Masaki 7-11]

From a performance point of view, the AMD laptops are better, if battery life is more important, then the Intel laptops are better. Intel processors are generally better, but AMD has the best all around package at the moment.

[thefultonhow]

AMD and Intel have similar performance. Just as on the desktop side, AMD is better in some benchmarks, Intel is better in others. Either way, you will get fine performance from either side -- the dual-core architecture is more important than raw speed, and even so, both manufacturers have plenty of raw speed, too.

And the ATI chipsets may have better graphics, but they're still integrated, so you'll still get better performance if you pony up the money for a discrete system. Furthermore, ATI chipsets have some stability issues that Intel ones generally don't (although luckily, they are nowhere near as bad as VIA).

[Masaki 7-11]

ATI drivers are updated much more frequently than Intel drivers, so generally you have less problems with ATI drivers than with Intel. The other problem is that the price range is $650, so it's not very easy to get a computer with integrated graphics at that point. At $500 it's hard to go wrong with the listed specs and the quality of Acer (not the best but then again not many problems).

Lastly VIA does have problems with windows, but you aren't going to find a company which has better driver support for linux than VIA.

[thefultonhow]

Frequency of driver updates is less important than coding stable drivers in the first place, and for that matter having good quality control on the hardware design and production side.

In terms of graphics, yes, it's hard to get discrete graphics in this price range, but luckily augustburnsred does not do a lot of things that are graphics-intensive, so the Intel X3100 should work fine for his purposes.

[Masaki 7-11]

Driver frequency is very important for graphics cards, most games can take advantage of your graphics card only if the drivers are updated. How else would you get 10-20% increases in new games simply by updating video card drivers. Based off his stated requirements, the acer laptop should run great, has decent battery life, a good price and a built in webcam. Why bother getting a faster processor at a more expensive price and lesser specs (ram, hard drive and video card) when everything you want is available in a nice package at a good price?

[thefultonhow]

It's not a faster processor, it's one with better battery life. And we're talking about chipset drivers here, not video card drivers. The Acer is also sold out online, and since it's the low-priced laptop of the week, there's a good chance it's sold out in stores too. And even though Acer has decent reliability and support, I'd still rather have a Dell, since their support is excellent.

[Masaki 7-11]

The AMD laptops usually have at least 3 hour battery life, if you need more than that at a time, then the Intel one should be better, but it depends on what kind of features you want as well, the acer laptops are easy enough to find at most stores and come with good configurations, and useful extras like a webcam.

[glc]

The 1520 comes with a webcam too if I'm not mistaken - and I highly doubt you can find an Acer with XP any more - which just about mandates 2gb of ram for Vista.

[Masaki 7-11]

For advanced computer users that use many programs, xp is best, but most people that I've built a computer for and was used mostly for email, IM, internet, webcam, and office applications were very happy with vista generally had less problems with it than xp. Acer computers now generally come with 2GB of ram, so there shouldn't be a problem regarding memory. I'm running my laptop with 1GB Ram and Vista Premium with no aero interface and it works great.