Cheap, but good laptop?

[blabbermouth]

Anyone have any recommendations for brands etc. for a cheap (but good-ish) laptop? I'm pretty clueless about computers (even though I use one every day!)

Thanks!

 

[JediMaster]

I got a Lenovo Thinkpad R60 laptop from the Lenovo Outlet. Lenovo's are IBM laptops and are very well built with great features. They are catered to business people and are very user friendly. They run Very cool and dont heat up like some laptops do. Good luck

link to Lenovo Outlet:

http://stores.channeladvisor.com/lenovooutlet

 

[tiggr33]

I'm an Acer user and fan.

 

[zumbergc]

A friend just bought this laptop, last weekend it has a rebate going on right now too. Its a Hewlett Packard Presario A945US, on sale for $599 after rebate., with a 17" monitor, 3gB of ram, and 160gig hard drive.

She is master student in teaching, so its not super fancy, loaded up.

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0292096

 

[Mic]

We have owned both Dell and Compaq/HP laptops, and found them to be similar in value. Our first laptops were Dells, and we still have them. My nephew(6) plays on one when he comes over, and I let school-age children in my daycare use them to play Webkinz once a week and run jumpstart games. The specs on the Dells(both are Inspirons) make them obsolete now, and they are not upgradeable, but they still perform as well as they did the day we opened them on Christmas morning in 2004. We have purchased three Compaqs in the last two years: one each for my two college-age daughters, and one for myself. We've been pleased so far with HP's customer service. Apparently, some HP and Compaq models sold last summer had issues with the internal network adapter, and we took my daughter's laptop back to Staples because I had purchased a 2-year service plan for the laptop. Of course they did not fix it, but told me to contact HP because it was still under the manufacturer's 1-year warranty. HP sent me the shipping label and box, and had fixed it and returned to me within a week! I don't think there is a lot of difference in the quality of most entry-level laptops. Most weeks, Staples,Circuit City, Office Depot, Office Max, and Best Buy has a sale on a $500 laptop. I recently saw a Compaq for $429 in one of the sales flyers(Staples, I think). Most laptops in this category have 2 or 3 Gigs of RAM, and at least a 160-GB hard drive. Microsoft's newest operating system(Vista) requires more RAM than the older operating system(XP) did, so make sure you get one with at least 2 GB if the OS is Vista. Most low-end laptops also have at least 2 USB ports(most have 3) and a 5-in-1 memory card reader, but you may pay a little more for one that has a built-in webcam and/or bluetooth capabilities. I picked up our latest Compaq 2 weeks ago for $449 total(tax-free weekend), and it has 3 GB of RAM and a 200-GB hard drive, as well as three USB ports(important for teenagers to "charge" their stuff). It also has the digital media reader(for digital picture viewing) and a DVD player and writer. I added the Office 2007 program ($100) so my daughter would have the same computer her college offers to students for $1300. You should have no trouble finding a good deal on a laptop right now.

 

[Mic]

We have owned both Dell and Compaq/HP laptops, and found them to be similar in value. Our first laptops were Dells, and we still have them. My nephew(6) plays on one when he comes over, and I let school-age children in my daycare use them to play Webkinz once a week and run jumpstart games. The specs on the Dells(both are Inspirons) make them obsolete now, and they are not upgradeable, but they still perform as well as they did the day we opened them on Christmas morning in 2004. We have purchased three Compaqs in the last two years: one each for my two college-age daughters, and one for myself. We've been pleased so far with HP's customer service. Apparently, some HP and Compaq models sold last summer had issues with the internal network adapter, and we took my daughter's laptop back to Staples because I had purchased a 2-year service plan for the laptop. Of course they did not fix it, but told me to contact HP because it was still under the manufacturer's 1-year warranty. HP sent me the shipping label and box, and had fixed it and returned to me within a week! I don't think there is a lot of difference in the quality of most entry-level laptops. Most weeks, Staples,Circuit City, Office Depot, Office Max, and Best Buy has a sale on a $500 laptop. I recently saw a Compaq for $429 in one of the sales flyers(Staples, I think). Most laptops in this category have 2 or 3 Gigs of RAM, and at least a 160-GB hard drive. Microsoft's newest operating system(Vista) requires more RAM than the older operating system(XP) did, so make sure you get one with at least 2 GB if the OS is Vista. Most low-end laptops also have at least 2 USB ports(most have 3) and a 5-in-1 memory card reader, but you may pay a little more for one that has a built-in webcam and/or bluetooth capabilities. I picked up our latest Compaq 2 weeks ago for $449 total(tax-free weekend), and it has 3 GB of RAM and a 200-GB hard drive, as well as three USB ports(important for teenagers to "charge" their stuff). It also has the digital media reader(for digital picture viewing) and a DVD player and writer. I added the Office 2007 program ($100) so my daughter would have the same computer her college offers to students for $1300. You should have no trouble finding a good deal on a laptop right now.

 

[glitzybabes]

If you can wait until the day after thanksgiving to buy one, you can get a good deal. Santa got my DD9 the one that best buy had, Toshiba with a all-in-one Canon Printer for only $229.00 but We were in line at 10am Thanksgiving day. It works good enough for her and me,