Tips needed: Shopping for a Laptop Computer

[Mudflap]

A coworker has asked me to help her find a good laptop for $400 to $450. She's not opposed to buying a used laptop. Here's what she'll mainly be doing with it:

• watching movies (no streaming, just dvd's)
• web surfing with a USB aircard
• playing mp3's
• games (silly free games. nothing too demanding on a GPU)
• e-mail

That's pretty much it. She's not tech-savvy, nor does she have any close friends who are. The only reason she has asked me to help her find a lappy is because she saw me hooking up an external hard drive to my laptop to watch some movies, so she figures I know what I'm doing. (I really don't )

So... where do I look? What do I look for? What are the red flags when I find a deal that seems to good to be true?

Oh yeah, I got the hook up on Operating Systems and software, so that isn't relevant to this particular hunt for a good value.

Thanks in advance!

 

[devilock76]

With the exception of the DVD thing most any netbook will do all of those things, and you can add an external (usb) dvd drive to most nebooks, new that should cost less than $300 if not less than $200 if you hit a sale.

Most any laptop you would want to buy used or new is going to have WIFI built in so the USB Aircard is not needed.

Used, I like the following brands if they were taken care of:

Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, Sony, Alienware (if you found a used one on a deal), E-machines (have had good luck with every one I have had, so don't laugh), Fujitsu (again if you can find a deal), and of course a used mac that had some flavor of OSx installed on it.

Ken

 

[Mudflap]

Thanks Ken. Good tips. I also need help knowing where to look.

eBay?
Craigslist?

Any other good sources that I probably don't know about?

 

[devilock76]

eBay or as my uncle calls it, FleaBay is really not where I go for deals anymore.

CL, Craigslist,on the other hand I scour many times a day looking for deals.

Ken

 

[Nixsdaddy]

With the exception of the DVD thing most any netbook will do all of those things, and you can add an external (usb) dvd drive to most nebooks, new that should cost less than $300 if not less than $200 if you hit a sale.

Most any laptop you would want to buy used or new is going to have WIFI built in so the USB Aircard is not needed.

Used, I like the following brands if they were taken care of:

Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, Sony, Alienware (if you found a used one on a deal), E-machines (have had good luck with every one I have had, so don't laugh), Fujitsu (again if you can find a deal), and of course a used mac that had some flavor of OSx installed on it.

Ken

I somewhat agree with you devil, Netbooks are ok. The Intel Atom processor that the netbooks have are great for power saving, but not much else. They run at about 600Mhz-2.13Ghz depending on how much you want to shell out, so it's not bad, but.... Would I buy another one? Definitely not. Loading times for most programs is completely horrendous, especially in the model I have which is the N270 @ 1.6Ghz. Playing avi videos/movies on the N270 works, but depending on the compression rates of the actual video, there are possible slowdowns. One of the only saving features is the size and portability of the machine itself.

I would go with a normal sized laptop with at least 2Gb of memory. If it runs Vista or Win7 as the OS, go 3-4GB memory. Vista is quite the memory hog. Anything E-Machine stinks in my book. I have had too many of my customers bring me dead ones (laptop and desktop), barely out of warranty with battery/power supply issues. And I have been a computer tech for over 20 years. The 2 brands of laptops I have had great success with are HP and Toshiba.

Here's a decent one for $399... http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6759733&sku=H24-15188&cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot%2004-_-CatId_17_H24-15188

 

[Mudflap]

Thanks Nixsdaddy! That does look like a good deal. Then again, I'm out of my depth here, hence the thread asking for help.

Btw, I'm from NC too.

 

[Nixsdaddy]

I have been doing this sort of stuff what seems like forever! It's all second nature for me. Self-taught and finally going to college to get that piece of paper that says I can do what I say I can... lmao

I am originally from Noble, Oklahoma but moved out here to NC about 13 years ago.

 

[Mudflap]

I have been doing this sort of stuff what seems like forever! It's all second nature for me. Self-taught and finally going to college to get that piece of paper that says I can do what I say I can... lmao

I am originally from Noble, Oklahoma but moved out here to NC about 13 years ago.

I moved out, you moved in. NC traded up! heh heh.

Thanks again.

 

[Nixsdaddy]

LMAO! Hit me up if you need anything else.

 

[frequentj]

I got a Toshiba laptop back in September from Best Buy online and I LOVE it. It was $400-450 and it has a Pentium 3 processor, 400!!!G hard drive, dvd burner, really all the bells and whistles. It has been great right out of the box and I use it all the time and it's never locked up or crashed on me. I bought this one because it had great reviews on the BB website, and I agree!

OK, this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Pentium%26%23174%3B+Processor+/+15.6%22+Display+/+3GB+Memory+/+320GB+Hard+Drive+-+Helios+Black/1271351.p?id=1218245811462&skuId=1271351&st=toshiba%20laptop&cp=1&lp=2 is the one I got. It is $500, so it's $50 off, but it has 3G memory and even though it says 320G hard drive, mine came with 400. I really think for an extra $50, she would be really happy with this one.

 

[maureengill]

I just wanted to add that looks like a good machine at a decent price....just wanted to add my 2 cents

 

[devilock76]

I somewhat agree with you devil, Netbooks are ok. The Intel Atom processor that the netbooks have are great for power saving, but not much else. They run at about 600Mhz-2.13Ghz depending on how much you want to shell out, so it's not bad, but.... Would I buy another one? Definitely not. Loading times for most programs is completely horrendous, especially in the model I have which is the N270 @ 1.6Ghz. Playing avi videos/movies on the N270 works, but depending on the compression rates of the actual video, there are possible slowdowns. One of the only saving features is the size and portability of the machine itself.

I would go with a normal sized laptop with at least 2Gb of memory. If it runs Vista or Win7 as the OS, go 3-4GB memory. Vista is quite the memory hog. Anything E-Machine stinks in my book. I have had too many of my customers bring me dead ones (laptop and desktop), barely out of warranty with battery/power supply issues. And I have been a computer tech for over 20 years. The 2 brands of laptops I have had great success with are HP and Toshiba.

Here's a decent one for $399... HP 625 XT960UT Notebook PC - AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P340 2.2GHz, 3GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, DVDRW, 15.6 Display, Windows 7 Home Premium, Gray at TigerDirect.com

I have had good luck with the netbooks, however keep in mind most of the time I set them (like all my machines) as dual boot with Linux. And I am usually running Linux. The only gripe I have had with them is using GIMP (photoshop equivalent) for working on flyers and stuff from remote. Otherwise mostly pleased.

I am playing the netbook game till I can convince myself to go for the iPad. I don't need a big horsepower laptop, I need portability and battery life, a quick boot time is nice too.

Ken

 

[skri11a]

I have had good luck with the netbooks, however keep in mind most of the time I set them (like all my machines) as dual boot with Linux. And I am usually running Linux. The only gripe I have had with them is using GIMP (photoshop equivalent) for working on flyers and stuff from remote. Otherwise mostly pleased.

I am playing the netbook game till I can convince myself to go for the iPad. I don't need a big horsepower laptop, I need portability and battery life, a quick boot time is nice too.

Ken

Android tablets... CES should be announcing some good competition for the iPad in the next day... /waves hand* These are the droids you're looking for.

 

[frequentj]

Android tablets... CES should be announcing some good competition for the iPad in the next day... /waves hand* These are the droids you're looking for.

I heard the android tablets don't have much battery life. True? I love my droid phone, so I'm looking forward to the day android crushes apple

 

[devilock76]

Android tablets... CES should be announcing some good competition for the iPad in the next day... /waves hand* These are the droids you're looking for.

Part of my use for a laptop is mobile audio production and the app availability and quality is much higher on the IOS platform right now. Granted that could change in the future but if I was to look at Linux in this same arena, despite many good linux audio production apps, the "paid" os options are still of much better quality.

The big thing android has that iPhone lacks that bugs me is Amazon MP3 purchasing. I despise iTunes and really like Amazon VOD and MP3 purchasing services. That is not available at present on the iPhone and I don't see it happening soon. Granted there is probably a solution for a jail break iphone to do it but I have tried to not go that route.

Ken

 

[devilock76]

I heard the android tablets don't have much battery life. True? I love my droid phone, so I'm looking forward to the day android crushes apple

At present that is true. iPhones tend to outperform droid in that arena. However that is starting to become a closer race as the big reason it was initially like that is that IOS lacked multitasking which despite that being a minus for the platform it actually helped benefit overall responsiveness of the OS and battery life.

Ken

 

[Nixsdaddy]

I have had good luck with the netbooks, however keep in mind most of the time I set them (like all my machines) as dual boot with Linux. And I am usually running Linux. The only gripe I have had with them is using GIMP (photoshop equivalent) for working on flyers and stuff from remote. Otherwise mostly pleased.

I am playing the netbook game till I can convince myself to go for the iPad. I don't need a big horsepower laptop, I need portability and battery life, a quick boot time is nice too.

Ken

The only way to get the netbook doing halfway decent for me was to take my Win XP SP3 install disk, run WinLite over it and take out everything that I never would need... Kinda like TinyXP does. What distro of Linux you using that actually gets all the drivers for the netbook? Last time I checked the closest one was Ubuntu for netbook, but still it was sorta lacking at the time.

 

[frequentj]

At present that is true. iPhones tend to outperform droid in that arena. However that is starting to become a closer race as the big reason it was initially like that is that IOS lacked multitasking which despite that being a minus for the platform it actually helped benefit overall responsiveness of the OS and battery life.

Ken

Ah, that makes sense. I had an iPhone for a few years and apple really aggravates me. Things like no flash player are inexcusable. Also, at the time I had one, to view a MM text, you had to go to a web page and log on with the username and password sent in the text (and it was always some long, random text string). The crappy cell phone I had years ago let me view a pic message without all that, so it blew my mind the iPhone couldn't.

 

[devilock76]

The only way to get the netbook doing halfway decent for me was to take my Win XP SP3 install disk, run WinLite over it and take out everything that I never would need... Kinda like TinyXP does. What distro of Linux you using that actually gets all the drivers for the netbook? Last time I checked the closest one was Ubuntu for netbook, but still it was sorta lacking at the time.

My first netbook (which I still have but plan to sell soon) was an Acer Aspire, the one with the smaller screen before they came out with the 10.1" screen.

Recently I got that Compaq netbook (Q I think) that was $150 for us maniacs who waited in line all night at Best Buy for Black Friday. Of course the BS with the no Home End or Pg UP/Down keys is beyond annoying but for the most part it is better even for Gimp. It was supposed to come with Win 7 but had XP installed. Anyway the Aspire I ran Ubuntu Net book remix and it worked great. Only issues I had with it driver wise is of course the WIFI on off hardware button is not recognized so if you accidentally hit it you gotta go back to windows. The other is the card reader would not pick up hot plugged cards so restarting was necessary to get the card to mount for some reason.

Anyway I am planning on trying Moblin on the new one (Fedora derived). Main reason is Ubuntu distros have been having issues with RDesktop where the caps lock key is not being passed and I am yet to see a simple resolution to that and if I do remote work with the day job it is necessary. That plus I have been using CentOS more as my main server os and as much as I like the deb/Ubuntu world I figured I would see how the RPM world did on a netbook. If I am not happy with that I might go back to being a Slacker or some derivative Slack derived distro for netbooks. I don't really mind compiling from source, it actually helps me keep from having apt-get app overload.

Ken

 

[devilock76]

Ah, that makes sense. I had an iPhone for a few years and apple really aggravates me. Things like no flash player are inexcusable. Also, at the time I had one, to view a MM text, you had to go to a web page and log on with the username and password sent in the text (and it was always some long, random text string). The crappy cell phone I had years ago let me view a pic message without all that, so it blew my mind the iPhone couldn't.

Yeah the flash thing is annoying but truth be told I hate flash so oh well. People really overuse flash in the web world in my opinion and using it for mobile content without an alternate is just poor site planning IMHO.

I adopted the iPhone for my own usage later than you so I never experienced that, but also I have moved to using a Google Voice number for all my texting and the bonus is I know get voice to text mail for free thanks to it.

Ken