Purchasing a Laptop

Wank

Hey guys, buying my first laptop ever. Key things I am looking for:

-Wireless internet that does well with watching Youtube (Youtube Fuck Yeah) and movies online

-Capacity for Photoshop or Painter programs

-Word processing (Process the shit outta words)

-Durability (For traveling and such, I will not necessarily play football with it)

-Not ridiculously expensive

What should I be looking at, H/A?

saltiness

MacBook.

Wank

Photos, video editing, and music are not high priority. Is the MacBook still a good bet?

saltiness

You mentioned photoshop which requires a bit of power so a MacBook would be good for that. I've had a few PC laptops before and I was never impressed with them as far as durability and I've just grown tired of Microsoft's inability to make an OS worth ditching XP for. I bought a MacBook two years ago figuring I would give OSX a shot and I love the thing. It's been rock solid for me. Only had one problem with the wrist rest developing a small crack on the edge that didn't really affect anything but I took it to the Apple store and they swapped it out in a day.

Wank

But, does it stray toward ridiculously expensive? Keep in mind that I am a poor college student as of next year.

saltiness

Wank wrote: »

But, does it stray toward ridiculously expensive? Keep in mind that I am a poor college student as of next year.

Ridiculously expensive is not a defined value so you'll have to be more specific. The base model MacBook is $950 with your student discount.

RenegadeSilence

Well you can afford a laptop near the same specs as a macbook pro for the price of that macbook.
I got a Dell XPS m1530 with 3 yr warranty for around $1000 and was slightly better spec'd than the pro that was available at the time.

Right now is the time to buy a laptop because manufacturer's are trying to phase out their stock for newer models.

Post your needs here http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=16 they should be able to help you.

underdonk

I'm a big fan of the Dell Latitude line. It's their business-class laptop. All of the testing I've done from a professional standpoint with the hardware has proven that it's top notch. It's utilitarian design, so don't expect any illuminated pulsating corporate logos. It gets the job done, though, which is what is really important.

http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/notebooks/latitude/ct.aspx?refid=latit&s=bsd&cs=04&ref=lthp

Honestly, though, I run GIMP on my netbook (Eee PC 1000HE modded w/ a faster hard drive) and the performance is completely acceptable. Granted, I'm not doing anything complicated, but it works and it cheap ($300) and (obviously) ultra portable.

dlinfiniti

saltiness wrote: »

I've just grown tired of Microsoft's inability to make an OS worth ditching XP for.

windows 7 is that OS
and on the plus side, any new windows laptop you buy now will come with a free windows 7 upgrde when it oes come out in oct 22

Janson

I wanted a durable and cheap laptop and went and bought one of the cheapest in the store, and honestly it runs photoshop fine for all purposes I've so far thrown at it (I've probably had 5-6 large files open at once?). Your $350-400 laptops are pretty powerful these days. Plus, I won't feel too bad if I break this.

kuhlmeye

Well, I can't speak to the photoshop and whatnot, but my eeepc can process some bad ass words, use the internet, is cheap and durable.

Eat_Fire

If your gonna take it around, do not get a big laptop. The 17-19in screens look nice at the store, but they are bulky, heavy, and drain their batteries alot faster.

The macs are well made albeit expensive compared to PC's with similar specs. Dell is a good bet as mentioned earlier. I might also recommend a laptop with bluetooth (add it on at Dell's online store) so you can do stuff with your phone and other peoples phones as well (file sharing etc).

As far as PC's go, the Vista 64bit versions are the way to go with whats available now. The short way to explain is that if you get a version of Vista that is 32bit it will only make use of 3gbs of ram. Since most laptops come with more than that now and you would probably upgrade past 3gbs of ram eventually anyway later on.

Give us a price range and a screen size you like and I can make some individual suggestions.

underdonk

Eat_Fire wrote: »

If your gonna take it around, do not get a big laptop. The 17-19in screens look nice at the store, but they are bulky, heavy, and drain their batteries alot faster.

Wank

Eat_Fire wrote: »

Give us a price range and a screen size you like and I can make some individual suggestions.

I was thinking 13 or 14 inch screen, nice and portable but large enough for watching movies and such. As for price range, capping out at around 1000 dollars I'd say.

underdonk

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop_latitude_e6500?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

Search for coupon codes.

Improvolone

Wank wrote: »

Eat_Fire wrote: »

Give us a price range and a screen size you like and I can make some individual suggestions.

I was thinking 13 or 14 inch screen, nice and portable but large enough for watching movies and such. As for price range, capping out at around 1000 dollars I'd say.

At that size it is still going to be a pain in the ass to carry around. Doesn't mean you won't, but that is still pretty big for portable.

Legionnaired

Improvolone wrote: »

Wank wrote: »

Eat_Fire wrote: »

Give us a price range and a screen size you like and I can make some individual suggestions.

I was thinking 13 or 14 inch screen, nice and portable but large enough for watching movies and such. As for price range, capping out at around 1000 dollars I'd say.

At that size it is still going to be a pain in the ass to carry around. Doesn't mean you won't, but that is still pretty big for portable.

Get a good laptop bag, and you'll not even notice the 13 inch after a week. I actually feel naked without my macbook on my back anymore.

Wank

What I am liking the look of right now:

Dell Inspiron 13 Laptop

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-13?c=us&l=en&s=dhs

Acer Aspire Laptop

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&MSCSProfile=3C79F0C7EA3162B21FF208C41AAB815B5927D7348D576784B7CEDCB40A2438BEBB5ADDC48803903AA311147FB8CE6F60753F5F13B5366BAA87F155F6F9AD569B8377E459CDD48AC5673E17BFD0C977522EBB8AEC464629A2D53B2DF59FFA5A42EF3B5FAB28ECE8927DE8D316133C55D61BAC0E6180E6B0E4&sku_id=0926INGFS10124072&catid=20354&test_cookie=1

Anyone with personal experience using these? Any opinions?