Laptop question.

[Tom Schindler]

My brother needs to buy his daughter a laptop for college. They have narrowed it down to two machines. One is a Toshiba and the other is a Compaq. I don't know the exact model of either one. I do know one is an AMD chip and the other is an Intel. One has 512 MB of RAm and a 120 GB HDD while the other has 1 GB of RAM and a 80 GB HDD.



Besides the RAM and HDD differences, which doesn't make that big of a deal, what would you recommend? I prefer the AMD chip, but that is just me.



I ultimately want to know your thoughts of the build quality of either. Is Compaq making good machines or not, quality wise? Better, not as good, or as good as a Toshiba? Any other brands he should look at? He would like to stay under $1,000.00 as the two he is looking at is around $800.00.



I think my niece like the keyboard on the Compaq better then the Toshiba. Since she will be doing alot of typing on it, I figure that is important to consider.





Tom

 

[Mike Wilson]

Most people I know at work lately, are going with the Toshiba, at least for the laptops.

Just make sure you don't have a Sony Li-Ion battery, as those have just been recalled

due to laptops overheating and catching on fire! (Just the Battery Packs, not the

Laptops, themselves)!:unsure:

 

[Patrick Bajtka]

That's a tough question, Caymen! Everybody seems to have their own opinion on computers and you know what they say about opinions! But, seeing as you asked, here's my opinion:



I've had the following computers (all laptops): a very expensive ($4,000) Sony Vaio, a medium expensive ($2,000) Dell Inspiron, and a relatively inexpensive ($1,000) Toshiba Satellite. My wife has a Hewlett-Packard (not sure of price or model, but it is a laptop).



Out of all of them , the Toshiba is BY FAR the best! Least amount of trouble, fastest, most forgiving etc. I will be buying a new computer in 2007. It WILL be a Toshiba.



Good luck!

 

[Casey B]

Everyone will have a difference of oppinion. I have a Toshiba and my model does have it's own problems. It will overheat and shutdown. The power connector breaks and the battery will not charge. At the same time it will not run off of the wall adapter. Out of warranty and not much they will do other than tell me where I can pay someone to fix it. I just keep soldering it myself and it lasts 3-4 months.



I prefer AMD. The toshiba I have has a pentium 4 and I am not impressed. All computers I have built I use AMD and have been satisfied.



Look at this laptop, I think it is very affordable and ideal for a college student.

 

[Gavin Allan]

A few years ago I worked in a manufacturing plant where we used Toshiba laptops for programming PLCs, motion controllers, etc. We had several of these tough laptops riding around on hot, dirty equipment that ran 24/7, got dropped once in a while, sprayed with hydraulic fluid, etc. and only had one failure that I could recall (which certainly could be abuse!).



Where I work now (clean office environment) we have several Gateway laptops that fail--mostly the video goes out.



I don't know about the chip, but I would get at least a gig of memory.

 

[Rodney Carnes]

I too have used several different laptops at work for PLC programming and such and have had the most success with the Toshibas. I like them well enough that I bought me and my wife one each when they were on sale at Best Buy a couple of years ago for $699. They are still going strong after 2 years of daily service, and we are both very happy with them.

 

[user 58826]

Several years ago, PC Magazine (I believe it was them) tested the AMD and Intel processors in side by side tests. The AMD processor performs best when running Office applications. The Intel processor performs best when running games. Since your niece is going to be typing quite a bit on her laptop, get the AMD one.



Alan

 

[Andy G]

All laptops are built by 1 of 3 people....Everyone else just throws their own brand name on it. So as far s I am concerned, the name brand of a laptop is unimportant. I believe Westronics builds something like 60% of all laptops anyways. Spending more for a brand is not a wise thing to do with laptops.



Chips, AMD is the way to go as far as I am concerned. Intels new Core chip is very impressive however, but they are not too available yet.



Alan, AMD has been smoking Intel on games too, for a couple of years. Again, the new Core chip looks like it may change that.



If you are going to buy a laptop, look for an AMD Turion CPU, or an Intel Pentium D. Do not buy a Pentium 4. They have terrible battery life, and run pretty damn hot.



cheers,

 

[Mark S 3]

Since it is going to be a laptop for college, I'd recommend concentrating on the physical size/weight and the battery life as opposed to processor power, graphics card, memory and what not.



In my college years I had both a 12" iBook and a 15" Powerbook. Of the two, the 12" was by far the more suitable machine as it gave much better battery life and was a lot lighter to carry around. The 15" was twice as fast, had a bigger hard drive, larger screen and more memory but was just a pain to carry around compared to the 12" machine.

 

[Tom Schindler]

Mark,



I mentioned that to him too. The AMD has about 3.5 hrs of battery life while the Intel is 4 hours. Essentially, it is a wash.





Tom

 

[J Piroth]

Are you sold on it being a PC? Apple's laptops are more affordable than ever, and for everything else in college life (music, movies, photos, etc.) they're great as well.



If you go with one of the new duo core options, you can even run Windows on them as well.



Check out the refurbished Macs on Apple.com for some nice deals.

 

[Tom Schindler]

Are you sold on it being a PC?

Yup. Take a stroll to a computer store. PC has everything. Apple stuff, well, they have some.





Tom

 

[TomT]

Comes down to what she will use it for. If she's just using it for email, web surfing and playing DVD's, I'd get her the cheapest laptop you can get and then replace it in a year or two. If she's going to be doing design work then get something better. I recently bought my college daughter a new MacBook and as a long time windows enthusiast, I must admit that I was very impressed. It cost $1500 but has features you won't find on a Dell or Compaq. It won't be obsolete in a year like a pc notebook either.

 

[Chops]

I just bought a Compaq (an HP company), most bang for the buck. Make sure it has plenty of graphics ram due to many college software programs require a lot of memory.



Two years it's outdated anyway.

 

[Deleted deleted]

I like how a Apple supporter mentions "you can even run Windows on them as well". In that case why even bother with a Apple at all? Get a PC.... 95% of ALL businesses use Windows PC's. My employer uses nothing but PC's for desktop use. Only a few graphic arts companies and some publishing companies use Macs.



Are you sure she can't use a desktop PC instead? My daughter wanted a laptop for college, but I told her they are too easily misplaced, stolen, damaged, etc. I bought her a very nice Dell desktop PC with a 2.6ghz processor, 1gb ram, 160gb hard drive, 19" Digital LCD flat panel for $700. You can't come even close to those specs with a laptop.



If you check, many college professors have banned laptops from the classrooms as they are a distraction and many kids just play games on them instead of listening to the lecture.

 

[Mark S 3]

In that case why even bother with a Apple at all?

Because they are throwing in a free iPod right now if you buy one?



I've got to thank my ex for convincing me to at least try a Mac. I used to come home and she'd say "I got a really strange e-mail, so I opened it and now the computer is acting funny". After reminding her yet again why she shouldn't do that on Windows XP I'd dutifuly go make sure the virus checker didn't find anything, run a spyware check and check the web for windows updates and day 0 attack news.



Eventually I got tired of all that so bought her a mac. She'd still open all the weird e-mails, but now instead of me worrying that my computer was infected I'd just answer "That's nice dear" and enjoy my supper.

 

[Fudged Undies]

Skp the compaq.

 

[Jenn D]

Based on experiences with both, Toshibas will far outlast Compaq.

 

[2]

What Jenn D said

 

[Fer Echegaray]

If it comes to only those 2 choices, I'd go with Toshiba...