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Rose Medlin

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Thinking about getting Rue a laptop for his birthday or Christmas. Want to find one @500$ range. He would use it for the net and maybe some LIGHT wordprocessing. Some music stuff too. We get a discount with Dell, so what would be your thoughts on which way to go. Thanks
 
I really like the prices of the Acer's lately, and TigerDirect is a good e-tailer (just be careful if getting anything with a rebate from them, via one of their rebates, because you wait a LONG time).



Here is a pretty decked out Acer Aspire for $399
 
I'm having good luck with my Toshiba. I got it from Newegg.com a few months back. 3Gb RAM, Vista Home Premium 32 bit (you may want to go with 64 bit), Dual CPU, DVD-RW, multi-card reader, for $499.99, no tax, free shipping. The model I have is Satellite L305



I recently read an online article that compared tech support from various computer companies and Dell did not fare well. Toshiba was rated very high (although I have not had to use them). Acer also did very well in the ratings.

 
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Wal-mart had one for 298.00 it was a basic compaq...my neighbor bought one for his college bound son, after I told him about it.
 
I've been buying all my stuff thru Tiger Direct.com.



In that price range, you should be able to get a new Duo Core 1.6 speed with 160gig HD and 3gig of Memory. You didn't say what size, 12" screen, 15" screen or bigger.



Tiger has a Acer just like this for 399 right now.



I've had great luck with HP and Sony laptops plus heard good things with Acer.



 
Check out the Dell website and provide email for deals. I am in the service biz and for the buck this is a good as it gets. Many deals to be had... I just bought an amazing system for my kid for college and ran $700... and it beat most deals that cost near $1000.... check it out.
 
Rose, Not to throw another into the mix, but i have had good luck with purchases from Microcenter. I have one locally, but they ship product everywhere.



Here is an Acer, 15.6" screen, 4G ram, 250G HD, Pentium dual core, vista home premium 64bit. for $499.00
 
i'm using an acer aspire 5570z now, and have had it for 18 mos, trouble free, I expanded the RAMM myself, and it sped it up a little bit, does my email, web surfing, pics, xcel, outlook 2007 with no problems, small enough to sit on your lap comfortably, not too big and not too small, but a 15" screen.
 
Rose,

If this is going to be used for a music collection you are going to want something with a large hard drive. Is he going to be carrying it around a lot? Since you get a discount through Dell does this mean you want to stay with a Dell--I like Dell's myself but just asking.



George
 
George, he won't be doing too much with music,,,, or moving it around.... his IPOD still has 70% of space left and it's 4 years old. It will mostly be for cruising and email. I worked with Dell for 5 years at my IT job, have had 2 Dell desktops over the past 10 years and the one I bought in 2002 is going strong. So with Rose's discount we may just stay with Dell,,, but money talks. I had an Acer 5050 , powersupply went out in 14 months. Not cost effective to fix it. But, I like Dell..........
 
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Biggest thing with laptop these days...



1. Warranty - where does it get fixed? locally or ship away.

2. Do you like it (comes with the features you want)



There really isn't much that sets apart manufacturers any more as everyone is crunching for better pricing. Sure you can go into more expensive units for durability, but for the most part, if you like it, like the price and it can serviced you are fine.



Acers are nice, and are very popular in Europe, Dell units are nice, HP/Compaq are good units, however phone support isn't always smooth, Toshiba units are good, but useally don't come with as much "extra" stuff as other models do.
 
Rose,

I just pickeup up a Toshiba L305-S5955 for $330 at Best Buy. For exactly the same uses. It has 2gb of memory & 150gb of hard drive plus a built in wireless card.



I found that it is capable of much more. I play games like Doom & Quake and run apps like Quickbooks & Visual Basic. The upside is you get a lot of laptop for the price of a netbook, the downside is is comes preinstalled with Windows Vista like most every laptop now will. ( I installed Windows XP)
 
I bought one of the walmart toshiba's L355-S7915, 3 gb of ramm, 250 gb HD, wireless card installed, using it now, it's BIG in your lap @ 17", a bit heavy at ~7 lbs as well but seems ok so far, won't win any speed contests but the reviews rated it a good buy, so has to be better than the HP I have ( this replaces the HP POS) as soon as i can get files xfer'd over.
 
Walmart has stepped up big time as of 3 weeks ago to become a player in the computer world. As a result, they are selling them VERY affordable for some decent product.
 
debating whether to upgrade the free 60 day trial on MS office programs, its only $99 to upgrade, and am familiar with all the functions of, but have the business version on another laptop, so still debating it.. Anyone got a product key for the MS office Home and Student version they would provide ??????
 

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