Looking to buy a nice student laptop, should I wait for Black Friday at this point?

[moopdog]

I'm afraid I missed the back to school deals on computers, but I'm seeing decent sales now for Labor Day. I don't want to spend more than $500-600, but want it to be a nice laptop that has Microsoft office on it, and can run fairly quickly. I'd like to stick with known brands (sony, dell, Toshiba would all be ok..not sure about HP). This will be for my son's bday in December & will primarily be used for school work, not so much for gaming. I have time to wait if BF sales will be the best for a laptop. But if there are deals right now that I should be considering, please let me know.

Can someone help a girl out? TIA!!

 

[HM]

Most computers won't come with Microsoft Office. They make you buy it separately. The good news is, if this is for a college student, their school can probably sell them a really inexpensive version of the software.

I bought my HP computer from Groupon.com last fall for less than $400.

 

[pandamom]

I was disappointed with the Black Friday laptops offerings last year. Lots of low price laptops but they were also low performance. I was looking for a decent but affordable one to give my dd for Christmas. I did a lot of research (cpu benchmarks, ssd, ram, display quality, etc.) and found a great deal on a refurbished HP from woot's computer department. dd loves it and we've had no problems. We get office free from my dd's high school (good on 5 devices.) My older dd also gets office free from her university.

 

[Deb & Bill]

Check out Dell online. They have a big sale starting on Monday. I've seen some of their laptops around $200.

 

[SMD]

You know that Sony stopped making laptops 2 years ago, right? There are other factors in buying a laptop, like the feel of the keyboard and trackpad. I'd consider letting your son research and choose his laptop within a price range.

 

[MillauFr]

I would avoid any laptop Black Friday deals. Seems like they are usually old models that aren't really the discount that they seem.

 

[cheerky]

I bought my daughter an HP Chromebook last year. It is super fast and is great for school because almost everything she needs to access is via Google docs. Note: the chromebooks need wifi to function.

 

[gottalovepluto]

My HP is absolutely equivalent and indeed surpassed equivalent Dells & Toshibas when I was looking. My particular laptop is out of your price range though so I don't recommend it for you, just saying I wouldn't hesitate to include HP in the brands you are looking at. Now Acer I would nix in case you are wondering, that is more cheaply made than the quality you are looking for.

 

[rantnnravin]

I bought my daughter an HP Chromebook last year. It is super fast and is great for school because almost everything she needs to access is via Google docs. Note: the chromebooks need wifi to function.

Chromebooks are not laptops - they are glorified tablets. They are designed only to access the internet and run limited apps via google. You cannot install software and, therefore, cannot run MS Windows/Office on them.

 

[NinaBella]

I have been looking at the Microsoft Surface Pro for my kids. They are allowed to take a laptop or tablet to class to edit their papers in class, take notes, etc. My kids also take online classes through the Florida Virtual School. I almost bought one the first week of school but decided to hold off a bit. I was looking at the surface pro because his backpack is heavy enough.

Now I am looking at getting the MacBook Air because their next online class will be a photography class and the MacBook has a better photo editing software. I have a really old iMAC it would also replace. The only downside is I wouldn't let them take it to school because it too expensive to be a teenager's travel computer to/from school. LOL. It would be more my laptop (since my is old) than theirs. We are also planning some overseas trips so the photography class will then turn into the kids taking pictures on our vacations to Ireland, Korea, etc.

I might end up with both.

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

Look into what discounts your son can get through his school or student discounts.

 

[Ranger111]

Laptop prices have been crazy cheap lately.

As others have said, I would avoid the Black Friday deals.

However, check out everyday, the deal sites. Fatwallet.com and slickdeals.com have alerts on sales and coupon codes as well as forums full of folks who will tell you if the deal being offered is good, or not.

My son is in college and needed a new laptop (a full grande latte spilled across the old laptop sorta of decided that).

Wife and I let him stew without one since December, but in late July, Fatwallet posted about a one-day only 50 percent off sale on Dell Laptops. I managed to get him a decent enough laptop for indeed, half price. It has 500 something bytes of whatever and 4 something bytes of RAM, which is plenty decent for school work, which at this point is all I am going to fund.

If he were a grad student in some strange major that required all sorts of computing power, the one we got him might not be enough, but for the average student it is plenty of power. And he has had it a month-plus and has no complaints.

I checked the price history of it and it was a REAL half-price sale, not one of those hokey sales. Even today, it is 50 percent more than I paid for it.

Anyway, Windows 10 laptop Dell, for just under $200. He got the whole 2016 Office suite for free from his college (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, OneNote, Access and a few other things I never heard of). I actually installed Office for him, it took like 3 minutes. Not the cloud version, the real installed on computer version of Office thanks to his college's arrangement with Microsoft. Of course, he is going to college in Washington, a stone's throw from the MS campus....

So, again, avoid black Friday, haunt fatwallet, slickdeals.