Laptop shopping

[bigalpha]

My wife is looking to buy a new laptop. Her current HP is a total pile and she doesn't like Dells either. We are looking in the 500-800 price range. Usage will be for web browsing, office apps and the occasional movie.

Looking for something with a lot of RAM and a decent sized HDD (>320). Not sure what the good brands are nowadays, but she's looking at Lenovos - there is a current deal on an Y560p through Lenovo for $700.

Any other scorching deals or better brands out there?

 

[old_man]

I've been running an ASUS I5 for about 8 months now and have zero complaints. I'm an engineer and run some really tough apps on it with no problems. It is blazing fast, 4gb DDR, and 500gb disk. It has built in WiFi and the cellular modem. I only paid about $650 when I bough it, so you should be able to score something similar for the $500 range now.

 

[bigalpha]

Thanks Tom. I'll have her look up some ASUS brands too. It's good to know that you've had good success with yours even running some high demand apps.

 

[Gonepostal]

I work in IT and over see about fifty or so laptops used by staff at a medical facility. We have not stuck to any one brand, but the Lenovos we have seem well built and I have seen absolutely no problems. I would definitely avoid Panasonic their laptops are not user friendly. We also have HP, DELL, and Mac. I am not impressed with the construction of the HP and DELL laptops. Mac is another story.

 

[XJLI]

I've been running an ASUS I5 for about 8 months now and have zero complaints. I'm an engineer and run some really tough apps on it with no problems. It is blazing fast, 4gb DDR, and 500gb disk. It has built in WiFi and the cellular modem. I only paid about $650 when I bough it, so you should be able to score something similar for the $500 range now.

x2

ASUS rocks, great hardware.

 

[Johnnie Walker]

Lenovo = IBM Thinkpads. Good lappys. I prefer Sager Notebook or Clevo, not sure what they offer for lower-priced lappys tho. My mom has an Asus and her only problem is the sound sucks. I would go to your local Costco and look at what they have.

 

[bigalpha]

No Costcos in my area All we have are Sam's and they only sell HPs at mine.

 

[blitzkrieg28]

i have a lenovo for work, its very nice and does pretty well.

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Laptops are a lot like high performance engines. The most restrictive component will limit how fast it will ever be. That being said, don't look at ram, or even processor speed. Buy the laptop with the fastest FSB (front side bus) that you can afford. From there, ram is cheap and easy to replace if you opt not to pay far more than it's worth just to have it off the shelf. Same goes for the processor. I'll also tell you that a solid state hard drive is well worth the cost. If not for how much faster they are, than certainly for how much more rugged and dependable they are (I've lost count of how many hard drive's I've lost to mechanical failure :banghead.

But for the way you're planning to use it, you could easily get by with the cheapest bottom of the line laptop. But buying more than you need is completely up to you.

Also, many people vastly underestimate the importance of the operating system on how "fast" your computer is. I hate most new operating systems. It takes years for them to work out the bugs and by then, there are five new OS's to replace the old one, all with new bugs! IMHO, XP is now one of the most stable OS's you can run (aside from Linux and proprietary systems). Case in point: My Compaq nc6400 with Windows XP sp3, a Core 2 cpu, 4 gigs of (matching) ram I had laying around, and most of Windows' BS services disabled runs faster than any of my friend's $1000+ laptops. Just food for thought :thumbup:

 

[XJLI]

meh, win 7 is pretty damn stable in my experience. but my primary computer is a macbook so i'm cheating... my OS is in no way a bottleneck

 

[Bdiddy11]

Might be able to snag a pretty good deal on Black Friday or Cyber Monday... laptops are always a huge hit.

We've had a Dell Inspiron... was pretty alright for what it was, the 6000 series. Currently have a HP Pavilion Entertainment PC. Had it for roughly 4+ years and runs Vista =/ It's slowing down... we haven't upgraded RAM or anything because it's been mainly a mild surfing the web and school work PC.

We're looking at getting an iMac or Macbook... going over to the Mac world. The biggest thing I love about Macs, the magnetic strip that holds the power supply cord in. Our laptop right now, you have to position the cord just right for the power to stay on. Major pita =/

 

[bigalpha]

Thanks for all the replies. The woman went ahead and got a Lenovo Thinkpad. I sure hope it lasts longer than her current HP.