Ok so my mom told me to go buy a laptop soon, seeing as how they're cheap for the holidays. My issue is, which one? the most i'd spend is $1,000. Everyone and their mothers keep telling me to go with an HP (which was a personal preference as well) but what am I supposed to look for when I go shopping for one?
Oh, and i was thinking to buy it online seeing as how I have more options there, rather than Best Buy... thanks

 

what u need for?

 

I too say HP or the new dell studio 17 laptop. We just got my mom the dell a few months back, (came to right around $1100) and the thing is pretty quick, so far no problems, looks great, and has plenty of options to it that let you more or less make it to fit your needs.

 

Ok cool! That's what a few ppl have told me...


And I'd need it for school stuff and maybe one or two games.

 

HP or Dell would be what I'd say to get. I use to work in computers as a supervisor at Best Buy and we always have our best luck out of dell or hp. The only bad thing I have to say is that with Dell it's hard to find parts if it ever messes up because Dell does not subsidize their parts, in other words they will be who you will have to go through for parts. I would say go as light as you possibly would. The bigger screens are better for movies and games yeah, but if you have to carry it around it kills you. For instance, I have a 17" Alienware that I'd rather throw in a lake than carry around school weighing in at almost 10 lbs. The lightweight makes so much more of a factor than anything else.

As I'm sure you already know I'd get one with 4 gigs of ram, since all you're going to get is Vista which uses more memory than anything I've ever seen. Also, get one with a nice graphics card if you can, preferably an NVIDIA graphics card if you're going to be playing games and I'd say anything over an 8800 would be suffice. ATI graphics cards are good as well, they just usually don't perform as well on games unless you get a real high-end one.

Hope that helps though man, hopefully you'll find one that you like.

 

very true. If you upgrade nothing else on a computer upgrade those. Pick a reasonable processor speed(at least 2.0ghz on a laptop is my preference with the dual cores) a video card of 256mb or greater, at least 3 or 4gb of ram and it will last you for 4+ years with out problems. Don't worry about picking out fancy giant hard drives. External hard drives for storing all your extra pics, videos or what not are cheap and easy to come by, make sure the components that mater come first when buying a new comp. A blue-ray drive may be something you want to consider as alot of movies are now coming out on blue-ray, not sure I would spend the extra ~$300 or so they run, but you may want to.

 

whoa...okay, i think i got most of it. Atleast now, I know what Im to look for.
So I'll def. be going with an HP and will browse their site for such a laptop. They are customizable, right?

thanks guys

 

I have a HP for my home computer and its pretty good.

I have a Dell Latitude D530 for work, and its pretty good as well. Nothing fancy but works for all the different programs i have to have on here. Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. T7250 @ 2 GHZ
778 MHZ, 2 GB Ram.

 

cool! i just want something thatll get the job done quickly when I need it to and, wont break down on me during college. =/

 

I've got a HP that i have had for 5 years and it has lasted very well. It is jsut stating to give me issue. And +1 to the small size thing. I have a 17 inch screen and full keyboard and number pad. It is great rigght now but the more I travel with it and take it to school the more I realize I will be getting a much smaller one for college.

 

so in this case, smaller is better?

 

It does appear so....

 

but how much smaller? iwas looking at 17" too but maybe i should drop down to 16"? maybe more?

how are those new "mini" computers?

 

Not sure on the "mini" ones but it's more of a weight issue, I know the apple computers are much lighter. It doesn't help that I have the "extended" battery.

 

The mini computers are great unless you play games. The mini computers don't feature a graphics card, but instead use the motherboard chipset which sucks ***. However, for normal work purposes they're amazing.

Four hours of solid use, generally more, of battery life. Relatively no heat output. Weigh only 4 to 4.5 pounds. They're essential for your normal user. But, as I stated they don't have graphics cards, and many of them don't incorporate a disk-drive at all...

As for the size I'd say look more for a 13" to 14". Those generally weigh around five pounds compared to your seventeens weighing in at eight to nine pounds, which doesn't sound like much but it is a big difference.

 

I'd also say an HP, either that or a Toshiba. Dell does make decent computers, but you can't fix them once they break without buying Dell products. Pick the one with the fastest processor and graphics card you can get, everything else can be upgraded easily. You can pick up 4gb of RAM for about $70 on Newegg, and external hard drives are cheap too. As for the size factor, most ppl like the 15.4 in screen size. It's a good compromise between size and weight.

 

The 4gb of ram on new egg sucks. You have to look at the bus speed on ram to determine the true speed, you can't just buy 4gbs of ram and think it's going to be just as bad *** as a $1200 computer with 4gbs. Processors in laptops don't mean **** unless you go into heavy gaming. They all run around 2.0ghz and are all dual cores so no difference there. Any laptop is going to pretty much require you to buy replacement parts from the manufacturer, minus a hard drive, because they all want their money.

 

very true however,i believe hp and dell both allow you to choose the speed of your processor, so not only 2.0ghz but also weather it is running at 800Mhz or what not. They also let you choose that on your ram upgrade as well sometimes. Also not all laptop processors are the same, they vary from 1.6ghz up to 2.8 is the highest I think i have seen offered from either company. So there is some choice out there.

 

i have a 2.6ghz Core 2 Duo with 4Gigs of Ram (btw you must have a 64 bit processor and OS to use 4gigz) 32 bit only recognizes like 3.2 or something