Need help finding a Windows laptop for stupid cheap

Magic Pink

A handicapped friend of mine on social security has to get a new laptop. She'd like one that could possibly play the Sims 3 as well but that's the least of her needs. I don't want to try Ebay or Craigslist because they scare the hell out of me. She has about 300-700 to spend which isn't much, I know.

Any ideas where to go to find something that may work?

edit: Also, I'd actually like her to get a gaming quality laptop and am planning to give her the extra cash for it since she can never leave her house so anywhere that I can get something like that for 1000$ or so would be good too. I don't know laptops at all so advice on brands etc would help as well.

edit2: Something like this seems good, yes? http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Dell-Inspiron-17R-N7110-2.4GHz-640GB-17.3-inch-Laptop-Refurbished/6669153/product.html

AgentBryant

I've bought both my laptops from Newegg, both Acer. The last one was just under $500 for an AMD quad-core, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive, 17" display, and an actual video card as opposed to integrated. The system requirements for the Sims 3 don't seem to be very high either, so something like that would be more than enough. You can probably even cut the price down to around $400 for something decent. Just be prepared to uninstall all the crap that comes bundled with laptops.

Magic Pink

Yeah, finding one with an actual card seems to be the challenge and the Sims definitely needs a full graphics card these days. The one I linked looks awesome but I'm pretty sure that's an on board graphics chip.

kuhlmeye

Keep a look out on Woot.com. They are selling laptops just about every couple days, and they are usually pretty good deals.

Magic Pink

kuhlmeye wrote: »

Keep a look out on Woot.com. They are selling laptops just about every couple days, and they are usually pretty good deals.

That's no help; I need it to be somewhere I can order from not something I have to order from right now. She has no idea when she'll have the money for this. Not to mention that site is horrible put together.

Djeet

Woot can have some killer deals, but you have to wait for it. You can also get some great deals on laptops at deal aggregators like dealnews or fatwallet (particularly the forums there).

I think you'll need to determine if her gaming requirements can be fulfilled by onboard graphics, the Intel HD 4000 (found on mobile ivybridge i5/i7) and the AMD HD 6550D (found on AMD A8 APU machines) are good for light gaming, but the comparison sheet I've seen for Sims 3 w/r/to GPUs didn't have them listed (I think the list is out of date).

I think this guy has a fairly solid discrete GPU.

TychoCelchuuu

I know you're terrified of eBay and Craigslist but they are probably the best source for deals, money-wise. I don't know why you'd be scared of them but that's a fear you should probably get over.

wmelon

I've got the previous generation of this one Asus at Best Buy.. It's treated me pretty well over the last couple of years and plays a lot of games reasonably.

Lasgar

Since you said you would be willing to go up to 1k to help her out, this laptop should be good. It has I believe the newest gen of mobile i7 procs(Intel Core i7-3610QM 2.3GHz), plenty of RAM, and a very nice(for a laptop) real graphics card the GTX 660M. newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246628&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL072612&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL072612-_-EMC-072612-Index-_-LaptopsNotebooks-_-34246628-L012C

Based on the system requirements on the Sims 3 page this thing is probably way overkill, but you can look at some benchmarks for the card here. There are none for the Sims 3 but maybe you can get an idea comparing to other games. notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-660M.71859.0.html

AgentBryant

Spending $1000 on a laptop for the sims 3 is grossly unnecessary. Like I said, the system requirements aren't that steep. Why don't we take a look, actually. These are the minimum requirements for Vista (Win7 not listed, but close enough)


2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
1.5 GB RAM
128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1
At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games

This represents an average computer circa 2004. While these are the bare minimum requirements, a laptop $400-$500 today will blow that out of the water, no problem.

Lasgar

AgentBryant wrote: »

Spending $1000 on a laptop for the sims 3 is grossly unnecessary. Like I said, the system requirements aren't that steep. Why don't we take a look, actually. These are the minimum requirements for Vista (Win7 not listed, but close enough)


2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
1.5 GB RAM
128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1
At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games

This represents an average computer circa 2004. While these are the bare minimum requirements, a laptop $400-$500 today will blow that out of the water, no problem.

AgentBryant is right, I should have been more specific in my post. If this laptop is only for Sims 3 playing then it is far beyond what you need. I only recommended it based on the edit about wanting a quality gaming laptop with up to a 1k budget limit.

Magic Pink

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

I know you're terrified of eBay and Craigslist but they are probably the best source for deals, money-wise. I don't know why you'd be scared of them but that's a fear you should probably get over.

No. It's a terrible website where terrible people rip off other terrible people. Fuck them.


I'm also going to make damn sure she gets it from someplace with a warranty and the ability to return it if something goes wrong. Craigslist and Ebay may be good for some things but only an idiot would get any kind of PC from those places.

Magic Pink

AgentBryant wrote: »

Spending $1000 on a laptop for the sims 3 is grossly unnecessary.

Happily, no one in this thread is doing that.

Noizlanif

I never get why anyone wants to go a refurbished route, when the same item new or similar can be the same price, or just a tad bit more. So with that in mind, I looked a bit, and found this, a bit on the low end, but would probably suit their needs..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1367373&sku=H24-15239

Or maybe even this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230240

Just saying, your options are open, look around for a bit, and there are some great deals out there.

Essee

Noizlanif wrote: »

I never get why anyone wants to go a refurbished route, when the same item new or similar can be the same price, or just a tad bit more.

With open-box/factory refurbished laptops, this isn't usually the case at all in my experience. I've gotten both my laptops at pretty much half off (or a couple hundred dollars less at least) just because somebody opened them and returned them. And I've helped several people find similar deals. Granted, maybe this is the case on the low end of laptops, which is indeed what we're looking at for this thread, but as a general rule you really save a TON getting something that's either effectively new or literally new but was returned for some reason (one of my laptops did have a busted latch, but nowadays they don't even put latches on laptops; the other one was indistinguishable from new). If a similar laptop miraculously goes on sale, then yeah, there isn't much of a difference. That's not always happening though.

Magic Pink wrote: »

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

I know you're terrified of eBay and Craigslist but they are probably the best source for deals, money-wise. I don't know why you'd be scared of them but that's a fear you should probably get over.

No. It's a terrible website where terrible people rip off other terrible people. Fuck them.


I'm also going to make damn sure she gets it from someplace with a warranty and the ability to return it if something goes wrong. Craigslist and Ebay may be good for some things but only an idiot would get any kind of PC from those places.

I'm a very happy idiot then, because my mom got a badass computer off Craigslist for $500 (definitely cheaper than the parts, and the guy bought it for twice that but needed to downsize to travel) like six months ago. Works beautifully. I'm wary of Craigslist too, so I was very careful to inspect the functionality of the computer before we forked over the cash, but seriously, there are lots of legitimate businesspeople on there. A friend of my mom's gets stuff off there all the time, which is why we were looking on Craigslist in the first place to find that deal. You've just got to use plenty of caution, and you can in fact get good things out of it. I mean, I'm probably not going to change your mind about it, and I can understand not wanting to risk it at any rate, but seriously, tons of people buy stuff, even computers, from Craigslist without being scammed.

Horus

I recommend slickdeals.net they have a section where you put your requirements and people share any good deals.
My other URLS:
dealnews.com (check it a lot)
http://www.dealigg.com/

Librarian

I recently bought a laptop from the Asus Republic of Gamers line on sale for 1111 Euros and I love it.
They might offer older models for a cheaper price, you should definitely be able to get one for around 1000$.
The thing that really stands out for me with the Asus is how well the whole thing is designed and the quality of the individual parts.