This past week one of my parent's co-workers offered to sell their daughter's laptop to me for college. Now let me note that I'm a Mac user, my family has always had Macs, so my experience with Windows and PC hardware is rather limited. Ideally, I would prefer a Macbook, but budget-wise that just isn't in the picture, so I just wanted to know if this laptop I've been offered is worth the price.
The laptop is a Sony Vaio PCG-FRV26, 2.8 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB DDR RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive. The asking price is $300-400. I've been using it the past couple days and it's in fine condition. I just wanted to know if this would be a good option or if you could recommend me something better for under $500.
Thanks for your time, any advice is very much appreciated.
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Macbooks are way more reliable and stable than most laptops, but as you note they are pricey.
If you are doing grahic design, then you might want to buy a high-priced laptop. Otherwise, all you'll be doing with it is watching movies, surfing and typing. You definately don't need more than what that comp has for that.
I'm a PC gamer, not a console gamer. My approach has been this:
1) buy the cheapest laptop i can find for note-taking, classwork in the library, whatever.
2) drop $1000 or on newegg for a sweet gaming computer
3) pay $X, where X is whatever you can afford, on a nice LCD.
I find that to be a more efficient use of $$.
But going from Mac -> Windows is probably going to be a less than joyous experience for you. If you are well versed in maintaining windows machines for shit such as spyware and virii then you wouldn't have to worry about it. Since most Mac users aren't you should probably learn a bit before using it. Since it's also used I'm assuming it's old and has no warranty, also no support for you to call when you need help. Yes you are going to college and could probably find someone to help you. Speaking from experience as one of those people, that shit gets real old, really fucking fast.
I can rant and rave about the differences but if you're use to OS X I'd say stick with OS X.
If you do end up buying this machine push the price down as far as you can. If you get them to knock down the price that is more money you can use to upgrade the RAM and possibly the hard drive. 40gigs is pretty small but not terrible for a laptop. 512mb of RAM is decent but you'll be much happier with a gig of RAM. One of the biggest concerns with laptops is the condition of the battery. After a period of time (especially time of misuse) batteries loose their charge. If this battery is lasting only an hour or so this thing is not much more useful than a desktop, so you should consider this too.
Also apple has an educational discount program to allow students to purchase machines at a discount.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-780-5009/WebObjects/EducationIndividual?type=higherEd
Linux is not that hard to learn how to use. Sure sometimes installing stuff can be a PITA if something isnt right but otherwise it isn't that bad. There is also a crapload of free software you learn about when using a linux system. It is also the closer to mac than windows.
I personally like AMD Better than Intel, but I play a lot of games on it.
Intel isn't bad for a wrokhorse computer, and I'd say it's a pretty good deal, though you may want to upgrade your ram (cheap and easy, if you need help doing it I can walk you though in like 1 post (sorry not sure how good with computers you are :-/ ) and some laptops (most?) come with an expansion slot that you can plug an extra HDD into so you don't have to worry about carrying around an external one and the cord.
also, I have Ubuntu but i'm not sure if I should dual boot this comp, cause it's aweful. I might just wait till I get a new one
Since you're trying to keep the budget low, I'm guessing you're not looking for an investment for the future. A G3/G4 Mac laptop would probably be more than enough to do what you need/want to do...and you'd probably enjoy it more than a newer Windows PC.
On the other hand, you'll definitely be a lot happier with an Apple laptop, even an older model G4. The quality of most PC laptops comes nowhere close to Apple's in terms of design, durability and lengevity, and XP really does have nothing on OS X except software compatibility. But you're probably already finding that out. For my own personal use, I would never consider buying a PC laptop no matter much "bang for the buck" I could get. Apple's cost a barrel, but there's just no substitute for the user experience, and with less bullshit to deal with it'll be easier to get work done.
Linux has been recommended in this thread, but I wouldn't recommend it. It can be a royal pain to set up, it's really impossible to accomplish anything meaningful without the command line, and Open Source software frequently takes the infuriating approach of trying to offer as many options as possible which usually backfires specularly, making it too stressful to use. KDE is particularly guilty of this. It's okay, but for your purposes there's nothing it can do that XP or OS X can't do a lot better and faster with less hassle.
And seriously, you'll probably be happier with a used G4 than any Windows XP computer, especially since you're already a Mac user. It's worth the couple hundred extra (I've seen G4 iBooks for as low as $400-$500.
And get something small. If you're buying a laptop, you might as well get something you can actually carry around campus. I love my 12" Powerbook for just this reason. You couldn't give a 15" or 17" laptop.
Well, you probably could. But I'd still lug this to the library instead. It's nice too, because after adding an external keyboard/mouse and raising the laptop itself so the monitor is at eye level, it's perfectly comfortable to use on the desk as well.
this is highly debate-able and should probably be ignored. there are many, many advantages to OS X and I am a PC user exclusively.
besides, everyone knows that the Commodore 64 is better, they don't need to make silly commercials saying why the Commodore 64 is better.
It didn't even break reliably, so we couldn't justify replacing it, things would just work one day then not the next, and then work again later that week.
I mean, at least with Dell, when it breaks, it's broke, and you can get a part ordered.
I currently use a Compaq at home, Acers and HP around the office, and my sister has a Gateway that she's midway through her second year of University with.
Warranty wise I've found Dell, HP/Compaq, and Acer to be about even, never had a chance with the Sony, and I know Gateway's warranties are somewhat limited.
80 gig hd
1 gig of ram
2.0 processor amd turion MKII
It rides like a dream and is amazing.
For some reason they still list the 12" and 15" PowerBook categories, and the extended warranties they want to sell in those categories, even though they don't actually have an 12" or 15" refurb'ed PowerBooks to sell at the current time. I would so buy a 12" PowerBook for $349, but it's just too good to be true. Used 12" PowerBooks on Ebay are going for almost twice that, and I can't imagine Apple selling refurbished units for less than the Ebay rate.