Laptop? What do you recommend?

[shortbun]

I'm asking for a laptop for my birthday in September. We got our son a good Dell this past March-lots of memory, good audio/video features, large screen and upgraded keyboard yet still smallish. It was around $650. I just need something to surf the net/pay the bills/check emails. It needs to have a decent keyboard as I HATE tiny keyboards but otherwise could be fairly small. Battery life is really important to me; even my son's good Dell has a sucky battery and he swears he does all he's supposed to to maintain the battery.
What do you have and do you like/love it?

 

[njprincess601]

I just bought a 15.5" Sony Vaio. I LOVE it. the keyboard is great, it's supposed to have a 5 hour battery life, however I have not had time to test it out, lots of memory, it's super fast, and it looks pretty.

 

[descovy]

If you are still looking in the $650 range, we got the Toshiba A505 at Best Buy 2 weeks ago for $649. It has a 12 cell battery that lasts up to 7hours (as advertised) and lives up to it's name. In fact we put it in sleep mode when done, and have gone a week without charging.

Other stats T6500 processor, 4 Memory, 320GB Hard Drive, 64Bit windows...

Otherwise, if choosing another computer (or your son's) could you buy a 12 cell battery as an accessory?

 

[hemispheredancer]

I have 3 Dells. The oldest is the one I am on at the moment. It is about 7 years old. It runs a little slow..it has 512 RAM!! Bought DD a Dell for Christmas and she loves it. No problems with that one. I just got a pink Dell for my birthday 2 weeks ago. It has 4 mb of RAM and it has the better battery. I believe it can go for almost 5 hours. I think it was maybe an extra $40. A friend of mine's son got a Toshiba at Best Buy around CHristmas and it has been nothing but problems. Had to send it back twice since the hard drive took a dump. I guess you get what you pay for! I will buy only Dell.

 

[shortbun]

If you are still looking in the $650 range, we got the Toshiba A505 at Best Buy 2 weeks ago for $649. It has a 12 cell battery that lasts up to 7hours (as advertised) and lives up to it's name. In fact we put it in sleep mode when done, and have gone a week without charging.

Other stats T6500 processor, 4 Memory, 320GB Hard Drive, 64Bit windows...

Otherwise, if choosing another computer (or your son's) could you buy a 12 cell battery as an accessory?

I'm not very saavy about batteries but I'm putting this suggestion on my list of great ideas. I think we need to take my son's laptop in for a look as it's lost sound now too. We bought the extra warranty, he just hates the idea of losing it for a couple weeks while it's sent away. Guess we need another as back up. We have a REALLY old one that belongs to DH, maybe we can limp by until my birthday.

 

[hemispheredancer]

The one time that my "old" Dell had to get sent in was brief. I think I sent it in on Tuesday and it was back in my hands on Friday. That was awesome. I have heard nightmareish stories about their customer service but I have nothing but good things to say. Also, the new Dell I got has Vista HP and as soon as they release Windows 7, I am eligible for a free upgrade.

 

[shortbun]

The one time that my "old" Dell had to get sent in was brief. I think I sent it in on Tuesday and it was back in my hands on Friday. That was awesome. I have heard nightmareish stories about their customer service but I have nothing but good things to say. Also, the new Dell I got has Vista HP and as soon as they release Windows 7, I am eligible for a free upgrade.

That's good to hear, the short turn around time. thanks, makes me a little more comfortable to send it. I wonder if DS's laptop would be eligible for this upgrade? How do you know you can get it? We just bought his this year.

 

[FireDancer]

I don't have any specific model to recommend but want to make sure you know that most retailers are offering a future upgrade to Windows 7 if you purchase a compute with Vista now. I would HIGHLY recommend you take advantage of the upgrade, even if a small fee is involved.

Windows 7 is a much better OS than Vista, though most of Vista's problems weren't really Vista problems at all, but that is a subject for a different thread.

Also, make sure no to over or under buy for size. I know a lot of people who buy the 17" widescreen laptop only to find it is not as portable as they would like. Same goes if you purchase something with a very small screen because that translates into a small keyboard and if you are typing a lot or have larger hands that can cause an issue.

 

[jsmith]

what is "good" or "bad" in a PC tends to be a matter of experience or perspective-at least amoung the major brands-i personally would NEVER purchase any HP product based on a number of bad experiences-and i could say the same about Dells-but-i use those brands alot (alot alot-im a simulations analyst for the military and work with literally 100s of these) but i think toshiba makes an awesome laptop-based on several good experiences. Look for the hard ware and memory packages that you want. Operating systems make a difference too-Vista is not the devil-i rather like it-but prefer the unix based systems. Most people like windows. get what you will be comfortable with hard ware and os wise-dont look so much at the brand.

 

[disfan07]

I agree with a PP that a good laptop is based on preferences.
We have a dell, mac and HP

The dell is probably at least 4 or 5 yrs old i think and overall it is not a bad computer it is just slllooooooowww. I almost got a dell to replace my mac but it was about $200 more than the HP.

My mac was a gift from my grandparents when i started college 2 yrs ago. I loved it at first but now i absolutely and completely HATE it. It freezes constantly, it won't download things that windows will. It was all around a PITA. And it cost more than $1,000....its insane.

I now have a HP Pavillion. My mac got so bad that one day i almost threw it against the wall and that is when i decided to buy a new one. I got my HP (which was brand new model last yr) for about $750. I'e had it for almost a year and no problems so far. It is amazingly fast and the keyboard is not that small.

So my preferences from best to worst in my experience is HP, Dell and Mac is the worst

 

[browneyes106]

My friend recently bought a HP laptop from Best Buy that was close to $700. She said that the battery life is around 5 hours.

 

[diskids2]

I have 3 Dells. The oldest is the one I am on at the moment. It is about 7 years old. It runs a little slow..it has 512 RAM!! Bought DD a Dell for Christmas and she loves it. No problems with that one. I just got a pink Dell for my birthday 2 weeks ago. It has 4 mb of RAM and it has the better battery. I believe it can go for almost 5 hours. I think it was maybe an extra $40. A friend of mine's son got a Toshiba at Best Buy around CHristmas and it has been nothing but problems. Had to send it back twice since the hard drive took a dump. I guess you get what you pay for! I will buy only Dell.

I'm searching Dells right now to get my college bound DD a laptop and she wants a pink one too. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but the prices are (before tax) alittle over $900.

 

[maelstrom]

Macbook.

 

[geffric]

Just bought college bound son a Toshiba.. 4 gb ram and 500 gig hard drive..free upgrade to Windows 7.. paid $600 for it..he loves it.. bought the best buy maintenance plan as it covers spills.. plus he can get to a BB in Cedar Rapids within 20 minutes to get it fixed.. also bought him an 8 gig flash drive to back up papers and such.. just in case..

 

[brp]

If you intend to travel with it at all, I recommend one of the various netbooks. Yes, the keyboard is smaller than a standard laptop,but I've not found that to be a problem, and the small size, light weight and very long battery life far outweigh the disadvantages.

I have the Acer Aspire One, and love it. I also have a 3G wireless USB plug in, an international WiFi access data plan with a good rate and a USB GPS, and software, for road trips.

Cheers.