Lap Top Advice

[Muddytaco]

I got my macbook NIB for $799 at mirco center, not a refurb or anything like that either.

I would atleast go and look at one before you make up your mind. I was set on getting a pc but quickly changed my mind after playing with macbook for awhile.

Things that macbook had over pc of similar price:
-Easily double the battery life
-Nice OS with ability to run windows 7 also
-Trackpad, the hand movements to control everything make it so nice to use. Love it for browsing the net, couple examples is just put two fingers down to scroll, makes it so much easier then going to side bar everytime. Then you can use pinch motion to zoom in and out.
-Screen looks so much better then PC's I was looking at. Even the 1K+ laptops looked like crap next to macbook.
-Weight is really nice. Its really light, my dad has a 10" ultra compact for work travel and my 13.3" macbook is probably half the weight.

[Hob Hayward]

True, your MB's batt life is probably double most pc's. My dell that I got used last year ($450 lol) got me 8+ hours in it's prime though, probably half of that now, but it's been through hundreds of charge cycles.

Don't mean to be hating on apple, I like to consider myself OS agnostic, my dell runs osx10.5, winxp and ubuntu.

Really though, a lot of windows bad rep comes from ****ty OEM's. Granted if microsoft made it's own hardware, the situation might not be any better. HP, Dell, etc. all make a ton of ****ty laptops and clearly lack completely in industrial design. That's the key area apple has them beat.. They have excellent industrial design. They also do a great job of integrating everything and making a good package. One has to be wary with PC OEMs because they lack common sense, also the random trials for **** they put on new computers is annoying as ****.

Anyways enough ranting....... I would suggest mainly not to get a 17" behemoth with 30 minutes of battery life. If you're ever going to take it anywhere, look no bigger than 15" and probably smaller is better. Don't opt for the shiniest looking cheap HP, usually they're not built very well and they lack in hardware. Specs to look for would be a decent core i3, and depending on whether or not you play games a 5000 series radeon card, or a 400 series nvidia card.

[TheDarkShadow]

i'm really looking in the $500 range, that's all the cash i got from graduation, and i need a new cd player for my car and i need extra $$$ for college spending. i'm pretty much staying away from HP.

[bigred76]

Netbook. Toshiba 300 series is a decent one for ~$400.

[Hob Hayward]

Oh right, do you play games? If so, what games..

[TheDarkShadow]

i dont really game much, i dont really have time to. i'll probably just be on the internet, download some music, and use microsoft office mostly

EDIT: i also have realized that i would like a CD DVD drive

[bigred76]

You can get external drives for like $20 if you get a netbook. That way if you don't need it, it can sit in it's box. If you need it, it's there. Netbooks offer almost everything you're looking for: long battery life, ability to do your intarwebz and music downloading, and fully capable of running Office.

[Hob Hayward]

screens lacking real estate though. He didn't specify he wanted batt life either. Just something basic.

Idk, maybe go with like a cheap 14" dell? If you're in no rush I would just watch slickdeals and techbargains and wait for a good deal to show up.

[TheDarkShadow]

i may be able to get discounts on dells through purdue but i'll have to wait and see

[TheDarkShadow]

i've decided to get either a dell inspiron 14 or 15 i'm not sure which to get though, the 14 is $10 cheaper with the discounts and has a bigger hard drive.


i'm not sure if this will work