Reliable and Fairly Cheap Laptops

[Blackhat]

Anyone have a suggestion for a relatively cheap but good laptop?   Not looking to play vid games or need it for cool graphics.  Just for basic internet usage and papers.

[mu_hilltopper]

Well .. it depends on if you want to go used or new.

Used laptops on eBay can be a great deal.  Funny, I am a pretty heavy laptop user, heavy surfing, Outlook, Thunderbird, FF, IE, Word.  I'm using a HP with a 1.3G Celeron, which is admittedly an old CPU from 3 years ago.  (today, they are about 10x faster.) .. You know what?  The laptop works great.  1 Gig of RAM on XP works wonders. 

Truth is, surfing and word processing just doesn't use a lot of CPU power.

You could pick up my type of laptop on eBay from $100-250, easily.  (I'd make sure Windows was re-installed or do it myself) .. but it would work great for simple purposes.

If you don't want to roll the dice on a used one .. I'd buy the least expensive major brand, HP/Compaq, Dell, etc.   Unfortunately, new laptops/PCs all have Vista, which requires at LEAST 2-3Gigs of ram for it to perform adequately.   You can often find deals around $400-500 in the paper for lappies that would perform just fine for your needs.

One other note .. 6 pounds is about as heavy as you'd want to go. 

With the Christmas season coming .. and a recession .. there'll be some great deals coming up.

And finally .. just remember .. Tomorrow is always a better day to buy a computer.  It'll be cheaper and faster, if you can just wait one more day.  Buy when you have to.

[MU Chi_IL]

You might want to look into getting a netbook, and run some open source os programs rather than MS windows and office (open office or google docs are ok) .  You can usually get netbook for under $400, and either buy an external hard drive or store files on the internet.

[chapman]

Don't know about prices without doing some comparison shopping and looking at eBay.  But of the brands I've worked on and liked, HP, Compaq, and Sony have all worked well.  I also hear Toshibas are nice but haven't used one.  Dell is garbage.

[rocky_warrior]

Anyone have a suggestion for a relatively cheap but good laptop?   Not looking to play vid games or need it for cool graphics.  Just for basic internet usage and papers.

One word:  eeepc

[mu_hilltopper]

Dells are fine.  

Here's PC Mag's 2008 survey:

http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=212926,00.asp

Lenovo, Sony, Dell, Acer, HP, Toshiba, Gateway .. in that order.  But they're all within a couple points of each other.

[Blackhat]

Thanks for the help guys.  What I do probably depends how much money I can scrap together by the spring.   Either $200 used or maybe find a new Dell or Toshiba around $400-$500(never heard of Lenovo. i'll have to look into eeepc too, thanks rocky).  Let me know if you have any other ideas.  Thanks

[rocky_warrior]

never heard of Lenovo. i'll have to look into eeepc too, thanks rocky

Lenovo is the company that bough IBMs laptop unit.  My old IBM laptop was probably one of my favorite computers.  My mom currently has a Lenovo, and it's good too.  however it's a couple years old so I don't know if they've kept the quality up the past few years (I'm not saying they haven't, but it may be worth more research).

The eeepc probably isn't for everyone.  But if you want small, light, and cheap - and are willing to learn a non-Microsoft based operating system, it may be a good option. 

Then again, if you use Google docs as your office software, I suppose the iPod Touch would be a decent portable computer