Anyone have an suggestions on a laptop

[halter91]

my friend is looking for a laptop and she has about 700 bucks to spend, any suggestions? Good reviews? Ones to stay away from? :silly:

[tryfuhl]

mostly for internet, word processing, etc?

[Smoot Point Really]

PC or Mac?

Leopard, Vista, XP or Ubuntu?

I happen to like Dell... I know others don't, but I do. I "window shop" their continuously. Love their website.

[Bliz]

my friend is looking for a laptop and she has about 700 bucks to spend, any suggestions? Good reviews? Ones to stay away from? :silly:

One of the biggest impacts on what she can get is whether she needs it to come pre-loaded with Office, or if she can get it from work or use a copy she already has. Office adds hundreds to the price.

Without office, you can get a sweet laptop for under $700. I just got a Toshiba Satellite a305-s6872 on sale at Best Buy (post xmas) for $550, and I'm extremely happy with it. They are solid machines that I took a look at after the tech guy at work recommended them based on his prior experience. CNET is a good place to start for reviews.

Do some research at Circuit City online, Best Buy online, etc. and figure out what screen size you want, what speed you want, then see the prices on the different models. Lots of models will have the specs you want, and the differences between them are probably pretty minimal

[tryfuhl]

probably something from the dell inspiron series.. one of the 1525 builds

Lenovo IdeaPad Y530

HP Pavilion dv6985se

[tryfuhl]

One of the biggest impacts on what she can get is whether she needs it to come pre-loaded with Office, or if she can get it from work or use a copy she already has. Office adds hundreds to the price.

Without office, you can get a sweet laptop for under $700. I just got a Toshiba Satellite a305-s6872 on sale at Best Buy (post xmas) for $550, and I'm extremely happy with it. They are solid machines that I took a look at after the tech guy at work recommended them based on his prior experience. CNET is a good place to start for reviews.

Do some research at Circuit City online, Best Buy online, etc. and figure out what screen size you want, what speed you want, then see the prices on the different models. Lots of models will have the specs you want, and the differences between them are probably pretty minimal

www.openoffice.org

[Destino]

I like Dell's business line of laptops. The Latitude series has worked out nicely for me. I have a D630 which you can probably get on ebay at this point as it's a few years old and I love it. It's survived all sorts of accidents and spills. The warranty I have enables me to schedule techs to meet me on site to fix it (coffee spill).

[dfitzo53]

I'd also keep tabs on sites like slickdeals.net and bensbargains.net.

[SkinsBry]

Stay away from Gateway, I was quite unhappy with it. Hard drive crashed after just a few months and connecting to wireless was a pain in the ass.

[halter91]

Just the basics, i have office so she doesn't need that. She plans on using it for surfing the internets, downloading some music and storing pics.

[Elessar78]

There's a $385 Acer laptop on sale at Wal-Mart when i went this weekend. Seems like it would do the trick for what you're describing.

You could probably also score a used MacBook for that amount of money.

[tryfuhl]

Just the basics, i have office so she doesn't need that. She plans on using it for surfing the internets, downloading some music and storing pics.
she could get away with a more basic netbook if that's all that she needs and save a few hundred on top of that, if she doesn't mind a smaller screen that is

I still say compare the ones I listed up and pick one

any questions lemme know

[tryfuhl]

Stay away from Gateway, I was quite unhappy with it. Hard drive crashed after just a few months and connecting to wireless was a pain in the ass.
+1 on this

[madanomem]

i bought a acer aspire one for $350. it is very small (8.9 inch screen) and it only weighs like 2 lbs. it is a great deal for what you get with it also. it has a 120 gig hard drive, and 1 gig of ram. i would recommend this computer. it has served me well for the 5 months i have had it.