Recommendations on Buying a Laptop

Ramblings
1

I’ve got a budget of $1000 maximum to purchase a laptop.
Any suggestions-
Any good online stores
Brands that are good, brands to stay away from
What type of processor?- Pentium, Celeron, Centrio

I’m looking for something for personal use. I’m not real tech savvy so I really use the basics. Word, PP, Excel mainly.

Any help would be appreciated

2

Don’t let anyone talk you into a Mac. i have one and they’re a pain in the ass. I say get a Compaq or a Dell with a celeron. Nice and cheap, and if you aren’t going to be doing any gaming or video editing or anything like that, the celeron will perform nicely.

3

Ask the associate if you can give it a durability test.

If he says yes

Throw it on the floor and see if it breaks. If it doesn’t break, you may want to consider buying the same model at a different store.

4
[i]Originally posted by mineshaft[/i]@Apr 20 2005, 10:33 PM [b] I've got a budget of $1000 maximum to purchase a laptop. Any suggestions- Any good online stores Brands that are good, brands to stay away from What type of processor?- Pentium, Celeron, Centrio

I’m looking for something for personal use. I’m not real tech savvy so I really use the basics. Word, PP, Excel mainly.

Any help would be appreciated [/b]


Ok, here’s a brand most people won’t mention… Averatec. They make the best laptop for the money and have several flavors. The main thing is to decide what you want before buying. You can get nice laptops with like 12 inch screens in the 4 pound category. These generaly have a cd drive even with their small size. Then there are teh 15.4" wide screens that weigh in the 6.5-7 pound area. And then you have teh desktop replacements that weigh in teh 9 pound range. Those are the only laptops you’ll be able to real nice 3d gaming on. Generally they are the only ones that come with decent video cards…

So what does that boil down to… If you want to do video editing or lots of 3d gaming, you pretty much need the desktop replacement. For anything else any laptop you could buy today would suffice, just get at least 512mb of ram to keep it running smoothly.

It really just boils down to form factor. I prefer the smaller laptops as they are more portable. I have an Averatec that is more than two years old that I still use around the house for wireless surfing.

For more info on Averatec, try www.averatec.com and www.averatecforums.com. If you look around, you’ll generally find their 4 pound laptops on sale for the $800 range as well as their other models. I think they generally come with dvd burners now as well…