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Okay, computer gurus...I am in the process of looking to buy a laptop computer. I only have a certain amount of money to spend on it and I need some help. I have a Gateway desktop right now and I don't really know what brands are the best or is there anything different that I need to look at in a notebook computer or what? Any advice/input would be greatly appreciated!
All you need is an ounce of hope…a measure of faith…a touch of glory…and a taste of grace
I am a fan of the Dell notebooks. I'm not so giddy about HP, Compaq, E-Machine, or Gateway. I work on puters for a buisness here in town, and I really dont remember seeing any dell puters coming in with hardware problems. You should be able to get a descent deal on a Dell as well.
My visiting daughter-in-law, who has a laptop, says that Dell and HP are great, but that she recently saw a Toshiba laptop for sale for about $500 at Best Buy. She says that she thought that was a great buy for a powerful laptop.
I checked Best Buy after the last post, and I did not find any laptop in the $500 range. Went on Ebay and found several in that range, but they are remanufactured or reconditioned units. However, the ones that I check carry a warranty of about 90 days.
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I am like all of you and like Dell but I can't find one in my price range but I am going to keep looking. I am going to take a look at the outlet place they have on their website and maybe I can find something there.
All you need is an ounce of hope…a measure of faith…a touch of glory…and a taste of grace
I like Dell, I used to love Dell, but I've had two.
Every laptop has its quirks, but Dell tech's are a joke. My original Inspiron 8000 had a problem where I would type and my mouse cursor would go completely nuts jumping about and clicking, obviously screwing up anything I typed. I found a workaround by trial and error, Dell's official fix for it was to turn off the trackpoint and touchpad and use a mouse. This was the official fix on my brand new top of the line laptop. Currently, if you buy a Dell, fork up the extra $100 or so, buy it as a small business for the business tech support, otherwise you will speak to their outsourced techs, which know less about your laptop than you do.
Of the systems I've worked on (pretty much all of them in the past two years), Toshiba and IBM seem to have the least of the quirks and driver oddities, although the cheapest Toshiba I can remember is about $1200, a good, solid unit. When it comes down to it, there are only 4 notebook manufacturers, everyone else sends a list of specifications to them and they build it as such. Quite often, the Centrino laptops are all based on the same core parts, sometimes offering a different LCD and palmrest, but 90% are essentially identical, right down to the motherboard.
The early bird gets the worm...
but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I have a Dell Laptop and it is awesome, I love it.
I have a Sager Laptop and it is pretty good.
I have a IBM Thinkpad and it is pretty good.
I have a Compaq, it is a piece of crap.
I had a Sony Viao, it was ok.
If you buy a laptop from Ebay usually they are cheaper because they have no OS installed in them.
Last edited by Ranger; 12-27-2004 at 11:08 AM.
I had to stop and ask self,"Do I really need to be here", and self says,"Only in the cover of darkness."
