Reply With QuoteMacBook.
Your Fridge's Worst Nightmare
I'm starting to shop around for a laptop for school next year, and I'm not sure what I should be looking for. Could someone fill me in as to which brand(s) are decent to buy, so I can start looking? Preferably I'd want to buy something which comes with widows XP as virgin as possible. (side note: my mother bought a compaq a few years ago and it probably ran at half of the default speed just because of all the bullshit adware and stuff it came with)
I'm ideally looking for something under $1000, with a good battery life.
Originally Posted by dakidski
or bust.
MacBook.
-Kyo
I have a Thinkpad and that's really what I think most people should buy. You can buy a basic setup and upgrade it yourself much cheaper than IBM would do it. It's taken a lot of hits and still works great.
Dells are decent laptops. I've only seen my g/f's laptop fuck up once and that was the DVD-ROM drive. A new one was sent to her house the next day. If you can decipher thick Indian accents than you'll have no problems with customer service. They also have a lot of deals so you can get one on the cheap and upgrade it later if neccessary.
Count up your sins
Seriously, I would love to own one of those in place of my annoying laptop. It has good specs, but it has the loudest fan in the world and I can never seem to get the wifi working even in a strong area.
How much do MacBooks go for anyways?
Over $1k for the basic one, IIRC.
Count up your sins
Cool, that's not so bad.
.
MacBooks are nice, but if you're only interested in running XP, you may as well buy an Acer or Lenovo(formerly IBM) system.
The main things to look for are obviously a decent CPU (Pentium M and Turion64 are decent, Core and Core2 are better, Sempron and Celeron are to be avoided) and at least 1GB of RAM.
You also want to future-proof your purchase as much as possible, because with the exception of memory, notebooks can be a bitch to upgrade, both technically and costwise.
Avoid integrated video if possible, because it's a drain on both memory and CPU cycles, and make sure to get a decent sized hard drive.
As far as displays go, glossy screens tend to be brighter and easier to clean, but they have way too much glare IMO.
Bluetooth and wi-fi are standard now, so you shouldn't have to worry about wireless at all.
Oh yeah, and get a DVD burner. You'll need it, whether you think you do or not.
Your Fridge's Worst Nightmare
Absolutely. What laptop componants are easy to upgrade yourself? I built my PC, but I have no prior experience with laptops.
My biggest concerns are the mousepad (for when I don't have a mouse or space for one) and pre-installed bloatware on the system.
Components that are easy to upgrade? With a standard laptop, only the memory is particularly easy (and even then, sometimes it isn't). If you have built your own PC, then you should be familiar enough to format the HD on the laptop and start from scratch anyways.
Neomegaman
For under a grand, I would probably look for an Acer off newegg.com, paying attention to the models with a good battery life. I'm sure you can find one with a 3 hour life, and you can just add some more RAM.
FYI, there's an ASUS model on newegg that I've been selling a lot of. Features 1GB of RAM, Geforce GO Video I think, and 4 hours battery life. Believe it ran somewhere around $1099 on sale. Check it out.
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