Dad wants a laptop

[shadowpr]

He's looking for a basic laptop. All it would be used for is to watch dvds, and use MS Office.

He would like windows on it, preferably xp.

Tying to spend no more then about $500 to $550.

Battery life isn't a major concern.

I think he saw a dell for about $550, so I just wanted to see what the laptop experts could tell me.

[12twelve12]

For that budget then I think Dell is indeed your best option. I have a Gateway notebook and it has served me well for a couple years now but I don't think they can quite match Dell's low end values.

Dell's starting @ $499

[shadowpr]

That looks like a nice one. I think I get a whole $10 off with a student discount. Woohoo.

I also found these today:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=10008888

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=10009012

Any opinions on those?

[Masaki 7-11]

Originally Posted by shadowpr That looks like a nice one. I think I get a whole $10 off with a student discount. Woohoo. I also found these today: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=10008888 http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=10009012 Any opinions on those?

I would go with the less expensive Acer laptop, it's specs are similar to that of a HP laptop I had recently which used vista and was great for office and videos. I've worked on a few Acer laptops so far, and from my experience they are very reliable (I had to do some work involving reinstalling the OS, so no hardware problems). One of the schools I went to had a lab of Acer laptops and hasn't had to fix or replace any of them in the three years they've had them.

[shadowpr]

How's this one look: http://www.dell.com/content/products...b_1000_anav1~~

[glc]

$498 with 1 gig ram and the XP downgrade. AMD, lousy battery life, and a Sempron is a single core.

For $648 you can get a Vostro 1510 with a Core 2 Duo and 2 gigs of ram and the XP downgrade.

[shadowpr]

Hmm.

He's trying to keep the cost down.

Would be nice to have a dual core and 2gb of ram.

I thought that a single core would be ok if all he does is some office work (minimal) and will watch a dvd once in a while.

I think vista basic will work for him, instead of paying another $90 for xp. Not like he would really notice much anyway.

[glc]

How's $615 minus a $50 instant hit ya? They just put some discounts on.

Vostro 1510
T5670
XP downgrade
2gb ram
DVD/CDRW combo
160gb hard drive

You gotta get it over $599 to get the $50 instant.

[shadowpr]

Ended up getting this: http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0291482

[Masaki 7-11]

Originally Posted by shadowpr Ended up getting this: http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0291482

Did you get it with the discount? $379.99 is a great price for that laptop.

[shadowpr]

Yes I did.

Only reason I bough it was because of that sale.

Found a good sale on a better dell the next day, but since I already had this, I'm good.

I cleaned off all the stuff I didn't want on it, and have him set to go.

Now I just have to figure out if I'll make him wait till his birthday before he can use it...lol

[thefultonhow]

Please, PLEASE burn recovery DVDs ASAP. I just went through a nightmare trying to get recovery DVDs for a client's Acer with a dead hard drive. It was Spanish XP MCE 2005 and their answer was to go back to the ctore in Spain where she bought the computer, which was impossible because she was in Massachusetts and not Spain, and because when she visited her hometown a year ago, the store had already gone out of business. Yes, kind of a weird situation, but Acer support, despite being based in the US, was pretty much atrocious. They actually lied to me a couple of times to get me off the phone.

Anyway, burn recovery DVDs! Also, 1 GB of RAM is pretty low for Vista, even for Home Basic. I would recommend an upgrade.

[shadowpr]

I made the recovery dvds. I hope that's what I did.

Either way, I'm confident with it.

And you know me better then to think I would just leave it with 1gb of ram. First thing I did, before turning it on, was open it up and installed another gb of ram. It has 2gb now.