Need a laptop...

histronic

Hey,
I'm somewhat new to the world of laptops, but as a sophomore in college I've decided its time I get one so I have something to type papers on in between classes. My computer is dying at the moment, too (its getting old), so this laptop will likely be replacing my desktop as well. However, I really don't know what I should get. A few requirements I would like out of it are:
1. The smaller the better. I want to be able to carry this thing around with relative ease. Preferably nothing over a 15.4" screen, but smaller than that would be great.
2. The specs don't have to be amazing, but since its replacing my desktop I'd like for them to be reasonable. I'm not going to be doing any hardcore gaming on it, but I want to be able to run various applications for school quickly.
3. As a poor college student, of course I'm on a budget. Between $400 and $700 would be ideal, though I'm willing to accept ideas for laptops that are more expensive. I'm really looking for the best bang for my buck, basically.

With those things in mind, anyone have any good websites or specific laptops they could share with me? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

TL;DR I'm looking for a somewhat cheap, small, but efficient laptop.

Scrublet

Apple laptops are the best things on the market right now. They're using good intel hardware and they don't include the massive amount of ads/trial programs that PC laptops are sold with. However, you pay a bit more for them. I would start by looking at the student price for current macbooks, and see if that's a possibility. If it's not, I've always liked the Sony Vaio laptops. I think the cheapest are dell, but I don't trust computer hardware coming out of that company.

Chances are you will be on Vista. That means you need 2GB of RAM. I would also recommend grabbing a Core 2 Duo laptop rather than an AMD, but if you're really tight on cash AMD is cheaper.

Thanatos

Scrublet wrote: »

Apple laptops are the best things on the market right now. They're using good intel hardware and they don't include the massive amount of ads/trial programs that PC laptops are sold with.

Dude, I don't get how mac users say this, when the laptop forces you to take a picture of yourself before you can use it.

Mai-Kero

Get a Dell Vostro 1400/1500/1700, depending on screen size preference (1500 is more than enough for me, I kinda find myself wanting a smaller screen on occasion). It has awesome hard-ware, you can pick XP or Vista, and it's hella-cheap. Plus it looks professional and has a neat logo. And it's durable as fuck. Plus: awesome-feeling keyboard that's easy to remove and clean if you need to, which I haven't so far, but knowing that is reassuring.

grungebox

Dell and some of the Lenovo lappies are good and cheap. Apple, Sony, and even Fujitsu are not cheap. HP is sort of in the middle, though my dad is very happy with his new HP laptop. Apple isn't terribly overpriced, but it is not in your price range, even with the student discount on Apple (10%). The Dell Inspirons are serviceable enough. The cheapest XPS laptop might be out of your range, but keep in mind Dell gives student discounts too (12% over $1500, I think 10% for under $1500).

For your needs, I think you should go with a 13.3" screen. Laptops with that size are usually at most 4 lbs, which is not that bad to carry at all.

ihmmy

just make sure it's something that you can get XP, or put XP onto. Don't get a radeon card if you can avoid it - they seem to hate XP with a passion (I got a laptop back in Nov and it came with a radeon xpress card and Vista, I put XP on it over xmas break because vista is a whore but the video on it is screwing up so badly I have to get vista onto it again, bleh. That was the dell inspiron 1501, though you may have more options with it now for cards n' such)
I'd aim for 2gb ram and a decent hard drive just because laptops are a pain to upgrade, might as well sink a little money now and get something you're going to be happy with for years
My last Dell laptop lasted me 4.5 years, which is pretty impressive for a laptop. Admittedly I replaced the RAM and the hard drive in it over time, but still.

enderwiggin13

I just picked up a Dell Inspiron last November. I love it. Granted I had a little bigger budget ($1200) and wanted something relatively big that I could play some older games on, but I'd still recommend them.

What you need to do is keep an eye on bargain/coupon aggregators (xpbargains.com dealsdigger.com) and watch for Dell coupons. I ended up with a $425 off Inspiron laptops priced $1399 and up - so I configured one for $1420 and paid $995 for it. There was also a simultaneous deal offering 6 months w/ no interest if I used a Dell credit account and got the 3 year warranty. So I got the warranty and 6 months to pay off the computer. I've been paying it off $200 a month rather than digging into my savings.

Being patient is your best friend, if you can stand to wait a couple months for the right deal to come around, you're golden.

*edit* Probably not relevant, but I've had no problems with Vista, both my desktop and my laptop run them. Also should note that I got the lowest amount of RAM available and bought an extra stick through newegg for like $50 because Dell wanted way too much for memory.

Mai-Kero

My Vostro is awesome because in addition to what I said before, it has a six hour battery life, and can play everything up to Crysis.

It's a little bit on the heavy side, but not as much as I would have suspected. I kinda wish I would have gone with the other screen type though, this one is very reflective outside, even if it looks great indoors.

histronic

The Vostro sounds pretty nice, I'll start looking into those. One thing I've seen so far that I really like are the HP Pavilions. Macbooks are too expensive and I'm not a big fan of the mac OS.

Munacra

We've been creaming over this for a while now in the technology thread.

It's not a desktop replacement, but it sure is everything else you're looking for.

Brodo Faggins

Refurb Apple laptops are just as good as getting one new, and you can find them for around 800. Check dealmac.com, Apple usually throws them up daily.

Ruckus

histronic wrote: »

The Vostro sounds pretty nice, I'll start looking into those. One thing I've seen so far that I really like are the HP Pavilions. Macbooks are too expensive and I'm not a big fan of the mac OS.

I have a HP DV6627, dualcore AMD 2GB/160GB/DVDRW/WirelessNIC/Bluetooth.

The only thing I don't like is that for some reason they only made it's wired ethernet 100Mbit, as opposed to 1Gbit, and the VRAM is shared with RAM.

But on the plus side it comes with a small media center remote that fits in the PCMCIA slot.

It does take a rediculously long time to start for the first time though, like an hour when all it's doing is creating it's image for restoring from, should you ever need it.

The HP Page for it Ignore the video part though, it doesn't actually have an 8400GS video chipset. I think it's actually a 7150M.