I'm finally getting a laptop! (Help, please?)

Since I'm graduating high school in a couple of months, I just found out that I'm getting a laptop for college.

Anyway, I know nothing about laptops, so I thought it would be a good idea to ask all of you computer geniuses what I should get. I know what I WANT, but I don't know exactly what it is.

Anyway, I'm looking for:

• A decent processor and video card, nothing way over-the-top is necessary
• A battery that lasts a decent amount of time
• Windows XP
• A fairly large hard drive
• Wireless capabilities
• Oh, and one that can play DVDs too. I don't know if that's standard issue nowadays or not. x_x

Basically, whatever makes it last a while is good. Also, I don't know much about hardware, but something that won't overheat is nice too.

As for price range, I was told that it would be best to make sure it's under $1000, but I'm sure I could go over if I promise to pay back however much I went over.

Anyway, I'm sorry I don't know what to ask for, and what I'm asking for isn't very specific, but I'm hoping I could get some recommendations here. Thanks in advance!

Well, I'm not going to be much help since you said both Windows XP and around $1000, and I'm an Apple whore, but you may want to specify what you mean by a "fairly large" hard drive. That being said, from what I understand if you can find a good computer that fits everything else, external hard drives are fairly inexpensive, so you may want to look into that.

I'm almost certain that you'd have a hard time finding a laptop that doesn't have wireless and at least DVD playing capabilities.

Get a Dell or HP. 3 year warrantee and it will do what you need it to do.

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Originally Posted by Kes

Well, I'm not going to be much help since you said both Windows XP and around $1000, and I'm an Apple whore, but you may want to specify what you mean by a "fairly large" hard drive. That being said, from what I understand if you can find a good computer that fits everything else, external hard drives are fairly inexpensive, so you may want to look into that.

I'm almost certain that you'd have a hard time finding a laptop that doesn't have wireless and at least DVD playing capabilities.

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A lot of the programs I run don't work on Apple computers, they're Windows-only.

As for hard drive space, what is good nowadays? This old cinderblock I'm using only has 2 40GB hard drives. I'm assuming that's rather poor to today's standards.

Also, I'd like to know what video cards, processors, drivers, etc. I should get.

For a longer battery life, get a smaller screen. A 15.4" screen is likely to have reasonably good battery life these days. Any larger and you'll probably haemorrhage battery time.

For the CPU, I'd get a dual-core. I'm loyal to AMD's processors, but I hate to admit that Intel's dual-cores are very competitive in price and performance. I would never buy an Intel single core, ever.

For a not-too-over-the-top graphics card, have a look at lower-end 8-series, or higher-end 7-series nVidia cards. I wouldn't buy anything from AMD/ATI in the GPU department just yet. If you plan to play games on it, don't get less than 256MB, and if you can squeeze it out of your budget, a card with a "GT" (or GTS/GTX :p) on the end is the way to go.

A note on hard drives - you'll pay a lot more for an external drive than for an internal drive of the same capacity. I would go for the largest internal drive capacity you can afford.

Wireless and DVD burners are pretty standard these days. :p

Personally I wouldn't spend my money on XP, and there isn't a thing they can do about that. Read into that however you will. :p

I have a external hard drive of 500 gigs(USB) for 100 dollars.. i dont think it would be so cheap to put one of those in your laptop.

another thing on battery life.. dont kid yourself thinking it will last for four hours.. normally you can find plugs anywhere anyway, so i wouldnt worry about it.. and besides, your laptop cant run on full power without an AC source.. at least not long.

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Originally Posted by o_O

For a longer battery life, get a smaller screen. A 15.4" screen is likely to have reasonably good battery life these days. Any larger and you'll probably haemorrhage battery time.

For the CPU, I'd get a dual-core. I'm loyal to AMD's processors, but I hate to admit that Intel's dual-cores are very competitive in price and performance. I would never buy an Intel single core, ever.

For a not-too-over-the-top graphics card, have a look at lower-end 8-series, or higher-end 7-series nVidia cards. I wouldn't buy anything from AMD/ATI in the GPU department just yet. If you plan to play games on it, don't get less than 256MB, and if you can squeeze it out of your budget, a card with a "GT" (or GTS/GTX :p) on the end is the way to go.

A note on hard drives - you'll pay a lot more for an external drive than for an internal drive of the same capacity. I would go for the largest internal drive capacity you can afford.

Wireless and DVD burners are pretty standard these days. :p

Personally I wouldn't spend my money on XP, and there isn't a thing they can do about that. Read into that however you will. :p

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All right, so overall, what do you suggest? Only this time, exactly what should I get, and how much should that cost? I'm sorry, I'm not sure what I'm talking about here...

Take either a Intel dual core.. or a AMD chip.

Take the video card he suggested(or something in that region), just stay away from intergrated.

Try to get as much internal memory as possible.

15.4 inch screen is large enough, 17' is awsome though.

An IBM laptop would be in the range of 1500-2000 dollars(they are expensive but impossible to break)
A dell laptop would then ring up to about 1200-1500 dollar.(they are just expensive.. i wouldnt go for the service.. because there is none)
A different company laptop would be 1000-1200 dollars(too many companies to reflect on.)

these are rough estimates.. we only talked about the stuff inside of it because that is what you get to choose.. just go to a website or something and browse.. youll get an idea of the prices.

It is possible to get laptops in the range of 600-800.. sometimes even with a dual core.. but the video card would always be intergrated.. and i dont think you can change those.. all very confusing in a laptop.

Advice for college: go for portability over power. You should still try to get a Core 2 Duo, I'd say, but go for a small screen (maybe 14") and the lightest model you can find. I have a workhorse, and I never take it anywhere because it's too heavy and just a bother to carry. My roommate's 3 lb. Vaio, on the other hand, goes anywhere.

I'd definitely shell out the cash to get a sleek unit, if I were to do it over again.

Also, keep your eyes open for student discounts and any sort of sale. Just about everyone I know who doesn't have an Apple has the same Dell because they had this crazy good sale last year in the middle of the summer.

Well, the one I have my eye on is a Dell, actually. I'm pretty sure it's what I'm going to get; it has everything I want and more for a decent price. I don't really care if everyone else has the same one. xD

Unless you're gonna get a Dell XPS, I'd strongly advise against a Dell. :p

Azar gives good advice too. I stopped taking mine anywhere because it's a 17" screen and consequently, the battery life sucks and it weighs a ton. Not that I bought it for taking to university, but I did for a while, before I got sick of it. :p

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Originally Posted by o_O

Unless you're gonna get a Dell XPS, I'd strongly advise against a Dell. :p

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Why? o.O

Because Dells are monstrosities. I'm sure Face will give you a more detailed reason.

My suggestion is to look to see what deals your school might offer. I bought my MacBook Pro through my University and got it for $300 less with my student discount. It also landed me a free 8GB Video Nano iPod. If your school offers student deals, you might do well to take advantage of them.

Sager are definitely the notebook of choice. They have cheap and expensive options and they are just pure awesome laptops -- they use the Asus chassis, a lot more customisable as to what you want put in, and the customer service is great.

custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks -Official site
Custom Laptops by PowerNotebooks.com™ - Discount Custom Notebooks & Cheap Laptop Computers -Do great deals
Sager, sager notebooks, sager laptops, sager computers, sager electronics, sager np8890 -Bit more expensive last time I checked

As face said, don't go near Dell unless you have enough to spend on a really decent XPS. Every single person I talk to who has bought a mid-range notebook or desktop from Dell have always been extremely disappointed.

But yeah, you'd want Core 2 Duo, late 7's/early 8's nVidia, a decent chunk of RAM (you'd probably get by with 2GB RAM on your budget, maybe...), and an internal HDD that is 7,200RPM (I notice last time I checked at notebooks that a lot of them were 5,400RPM which is just bleh).

You should get an external HDD later down the track to store stuff on, but I wouldn't say it's completely necessary with your budget currently.

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

Because Dells are monstrosities. I'm sure Face will give you a more detailed reason.

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That pretty much covers it. :p
Seriously though, I owned a Dell desktop machine and used a Dell laptop from work, and both gave me the worst computing experience I've ever had. The main reason I advised against Dell is that their customer support is notoriously bad - just Google "Dude, you got a dell" for some entertaining stories. If you ever need your Dell fixed, you might as well do it yourself because apparently they don't believe in warranties. :p

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Originally Posted by Pureghetto

Get a Dell or HP.

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Or better yet, never ever ever get a Dell or an HP as long as you live since they're two of the worst brands in the world. Seriously, I had my HP for like two years, maybe two and a half, and it was pure garbage. I honestly couldn't name a single part of it that wasn't giving me trouble. Screen? Check. Touch pad mouse? Check. Cooling? Check. Hard drive? Check. DVD drive? Check. Battery? Check. Power supply? I was on my third one and it was barely functioning when it met with an not-too-unfortunate end at the hands of my husband.

Never used a HP laptop, but I've used two HP desktops - currently using one at the moment - and have never had any trouble with them at all. On the whole everything has ran smoothly on them, the hardware has been fine and I've never had to see about any repairs or anything for it.

I used my hp desktop from 2001 to 2007? :D

My friend bought a Dell screen.. he got one with a dead pixel or three.. so he send it back and he got a second hand screen.. because his screen was second hand too now -_-

Dell suck balls.. and cant even do that properly

Also, do not under any circumstance by a notebook from Voodoo. They may look pretty, but they are so over priced and last I heard had a lot of overheating issues because they tried to shove so much into small chassis notebooks.

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Originally Posted by Aerith's Knight

Take either a Intel dual core.. or a AMD chip.

Take the video card he suggested(or something in that region), just stay away from intergrated.

Try to get as much internal memory as possible.

15.4 inch screen is large enough, 17' is awsome though.

An IBM laptop would be in the range of 1500-2000 dollars(they are expensive but impossible to break)
A dell laptop would then ring up to about 1200-1500 dollar.(they are just expensive.. i wouldnt go for the service.. because there is none)
A different company laptop would be 1000-1200 dollars(too many companies to reflect on.)

these are rough estimates.. we only talked about the stuff inside of it because that is what you get to choose.. just go to a website or something and browse.. youll get an idea of the prices.

It is possible to get laptops in the range of 600-800.. sometimes even with a dual core.. but the video card would always be intergrated.. and i dont think you can change those.. all very confusing in a laptop.

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^Knows what he's talking about (lol)

Dell's service is pretty good, and laptops without integrated GPUs are *very* rare. I've repaired about 6 laptops a day for almost two months now, and I've only worked on two which doesn't have an integrated video card.

IBM laptops are no longer in production either. A Chinese company called 'Lenovo' bought IBM's Thinkpad brand of laptops. A shame, really, cause the IBM logo is really cool.

In laptops, I would definitely go for Intel, as they have a better developed mobile platform than AMD. Though, I would probably go for Intel in desktops too now in these Core 2 days.

Also: Also, refurbishing of computer parts is done by all manufacturers. Every other motherboard I change has been used before.

Anyway...

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* A decent processor and video card, nothing way over-the-top is necessary
* A battery that lasts a decent amount of time
* Windows XP
* A fairly large hard drive
* Wireless capabilities
* Oh, and one that can play DVDs too. I don't know if that's standard issue nowadays or not. x_x

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1. I think any Core 2 Duo will be sufficient for you, to be honest :p. Any Geforce 7xxx or 8xxx (these are still integrated!) will most likely be sufficient for your needs too, unless you like to play all the newest games on highest quality settings. In which case, you want a new desktop computer, not laptop :p.

2. Look for something with at least 4000 mAh of power capacity (Asking about this will probably melt the brain of the sales clerk). Maybe even 6000, but that'll probably be a bit costy. As Face said, a smaller screen will help battery life, because the screen uses a huge amount of power alone. When I close my lid and use an external monitor while on batteries. That's just for an example of how much power the monitor uses though, I don't expect you to get a laptop and carry an external monitor with you :p.

3. Few laptops are shipped with XP these days. Download your own WinXP Pro Corporate edition and install it. You're likely to be able to find the drivers you need. Failing that, just go with Vista, but turn off all the new features. It'll look the same and probably be a little bit more efficient.

4. 160GB or more will do. If you need more, get an external drive. That said, I just ordered a 250GB internal drive for my 3 year old laptop xD, but then again, i only have 60 GB in it.

5. This is standard, you'll have to go out of your way to find one that doesn't have it.

6. See 5.

Other things to note would be to get a laptop's that got 2 GBs of RAM or more, just cause RAM is incredibly cheap these days. Also look for one with eSATA for a future external drive, because it's much faster than USB2. When it comes to that display again, be sure to check the actual max resolution of it. Most cheaper models have lower resolution displays to save production costs. 1280x800 is a typical low-end resolution on 15" laptops. My 3 year old laptop's got that, and they're still selling lots of laptops with that a low res. You might want to check for yourself if you think a higher resolution display is worth the few extra hundred bucks.

Furthermore, don't bother with a 7200rpm hard internal disk. The reason laptops usually use 5400 isn't just cause it's cheaper. but because it requires less power to operate too, meaning longer battery life.

Well, this is the one I'm most interested in, and the one I'm most likely to get. PG showed me this one.

Dell Inspiron 1420 Laptop Product Details

Yes yes, it's a Dell, but I think that will be just fine. I looked over the internal stuff (the 'best' option by the way) and it seems that this will be perfect for me. According to all the information I've gathered from this thread, it seems to fit all of the standards, other than the fact that it's a Dell. It has the smaller screen (14.1 inches), the Intel Core 2 Duo T5550, Vista (probably going to try it, and if I don't like it, I'll go to XP, no big deal), 2GB RAM, 320GB(!) hard drive, and a 128MB GeForce8400M video card (suitable, as I don't really play any graphically-advanced games).

What really attracts me to this is not only the rather large hard drive (put it this way, I have 2 desktops, one at my mom's, one at my dad's. 320GB is bigger than both of those combined), but the features for media and such. It has a high definition screen, and a DVD burner, something I've wanted for a while (both of my desktops are rather old, so neither have them).

5lbs probably means you will hardly ever take it to class, but that looks like it should serve you pretty well :)

Specification wise, that's a pretty good deal. I could have gone for it too if I was in need of a new laptop. The native resolution of the 'best' deal is good for the size of the display, so things are gonna look smooth and nice. The screen is smaller than my current, but has a better resolution :p. Too bad they're using watt-hours instead of ampere hours, makes it hard to compare :p.

And the in-home service is pretty hardcore. As far as I know, they actually come home to you to fix eventual problems.

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Originally Posted by Rubah Lapah

5lbs probably means you will hardly ever take it to class, but that looks like it should serve you pretty well :)

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Five pounds is nothing compared to the many many books I carried to class in high school (which was easily close to around 15 pounds). I think I'll manage. ;)

Also, while building it (still haven't ordered it yet, but I've got the page all set up), I noticed it comes with a printer (but no USB cable to connect it to the laptop). I have no need for a printer, as I can just as easily send my documents and such to my email account and print them off on the desktops. So, I unchecked the printer, and it took about 50 dollars off of the original cost. I replaced that with a RAM upgrade (3GB instead of 2GB). Sounds like a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. <3

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Originally Posted by Momiji

I have no need for a printer, as I can just as easily send my documents and such to my email account and print them off on the desktops.

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Or, you know, use the local area network set up printer sharing...

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Originally Posted by Momiji

Five pounds is nothing compared to the many many books I carried to class in high school (which was easily close to around 15 pounds). I think I'll manage. ;)

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well, I typically take 0 lbs of books to classes, so.

Saying you want a computer with a DVD burner is like saying you want a computer with a mouse or a car with a radio or something. :P

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Originally Posted by Roto13

Saying you want a computer with a DVD burner is like saying you want a computer with a mouse or a car with a radio or something. :P

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I'm stuck in the past, where such things were optional and more expensive. ;)

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Originally Posted by Mirage

^Knows what he's talking about (lol)

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You know just as well that i was talking about Intel graphic cards and that they sure as hell try to sell laptops with those to people that dont understand it.

no need to act so arrogant just because you repair them a lot.

That wasn't the only thing i was talking about :p. Besides, even if you knew what you meant, there are plenty of people who could misunderstand it, not to mention the sales clerks too, who could say that you'd need to buy the leetest model available to get a non-integrated graphics card like some guys on the internet said you didn't want. Furthermore, calling them non-integrated could make the customer think it's upgradable, which isn't the case.

That's why I clarified it.

But yeah, I like being arrogant now and then, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm right ;).

(the smiley at the end means you have to take this in a light-hearted manner and can't get mad at me :p)

Is the Inspiron upgradeable? I don't think I'll ever need to in the near or relatively distant future, but maybe someday, if the need arises, is it possible?

With the graphics card being integrated, you can't really upgrade that part. However, it is very likely that the CPU is upgradable, but the question is if it'll still be able to get your hands on a significantly better Core 2 Duo processor by the time you feel that you need an upgrade, considering Intel will probably start to phase out Core 2 early next year, when they introduce their new line of CPUs.

On top of that, it's usually much harder to get to the CPU than the RAM in a laptop, which is an issue because you'll most likely have to do this yourself, unless you know a person who can do it for you. Computer workshops will probably charge you way too much to do it for you.

Upgrading your RAM is really easy though, because almost all laptops have a separate cover just for their RAM sticks. Loosening the RAM is as easy as pulling two plastic taps to each side, and then you pull it out and push in the new sticks you bought.

Yeah, I know a few people who can help me around here. And if not, I'm sure I can always learn how to do it myself. I just couldn't now, because I obviously have no clue how to do such a thing.