Buying a laptop/notebook

[~Jackie~ 30]

I am purchasing a laptop tommorrow and I have been doing a little research on what is available. Do you have a favorite brand? What features should I be looking for?

Jackie

[kirk and Jenny 0]

Ouch, Can't give you much help. But, those people who build computers say buy something from someone who builds (this could be self serving). What are you looking for. Both Dell and Gateway will give you a cheap basic and then cut off and arm and a leg to build it into something more complicated. If you do not need to go beyond basic, they are okay.

[CarolineM 0]

Dell.

Dell

Dell

They RULE. You can totally build exactly what you want. The service is great and they last and last.

i've never had a complaint and i've owned 3 dell laptops

[Mirorgate 0]

What are you looking to do?School? leisure? work?

what would you like to do with it??

[nayalamb 0]

mmm.... i have a dell laptop that works pretty well... i haven't broken it yet so that's always a good sign.

features depend on what you are using it for. writing, games, graphics/photo editing, internet surfing, etc.... and if its gonna stay at home as a desktop replacement, or travel with you... and of course, what your budget is.

i am not a tech guru, so i would recommend checking out CNET for their reviews and recommendations, as well as epinions, or zdnet.

good luck!

[~Jackie~ 30]

I want to be on VJ 24/7 Seriously, I want to get the wireless broadband thingy so I can go online anywhere. I will just be using it for emails and ebay.

Oh and for work I will be using it for flooring programs and diagrams. Nothing fancy. Do I want a 15 in or 17 inch screen?

Thanks for the replies

Jackie

[Fandango 1,439]

I like my toshiba

it's red

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

If you buy from Dell, you can save a lot of money going through their outlet store.

[Mirorgate 0]

if doing math heavy work (3D graphics, worksheets, etc) stay away from celeron chips. if you can swing the price of a wide screen go for it... otherwise.. HP is about the same as Dell. Gateway also is nice at times, but cheaply made IMO. other than that... not a major difference.. price for value is in chipset and HD space along with ram... if you can afford it.. get about 1gig of ram.

[YuAndDan 153]

I tend to use IBM think pads, I purchased them on Ebay 1 was new from IBM but was a close out lasted me a good 3 years, my current one is a used A31p model, it is ruggedly built and a good work horse.

Now if I were to replace the thinkpad I may just go for one of the new Apple notebooks, I could run both Windows and OS X on it, and probably do most things in OS X, and things that absolutely need Windows, I could just boot the apple into Windows, i am doing that now with a Mac Mini.

The Mac OS is a very elegant and easy one to get used to, this coming from a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, me.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I tend to use IBM think pads, I purchased them on Ebay 1 was new from IBM but was a close out lasted me a good 3 years, my current one is a used A31p model, it is ruggedly built and a good work horse.

Now if I were to replace the thinkpad I may just go for one of the new Apple notebooks, I could run both Windows and OS X on it, and probably do most things in OS X, and things that absolutely need Windows, I could just boot the apple into Windows, i am doing that now with a Mac Mini.

The Mac OS is a very elegant and easy one to get used to, this coming from a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, me.

T40 - T43 series models are quite nice.

[Caladan 19]

I have owned an Apple iBook for three years now, and I've been very happy with it.

Quite a lot depends on what you want to do with it. If you're into computer games, don't bother with an Apple as there aren't as many games and they never come down in price. But if you just do e-mail, word processing, and Internet, Apple is great. The wireless adapter is very easy to use (comes in every laptop.) And the new Apple laptops can run Windows or OSX, and you can switch.

A number of my friends have Dells, and while they're affordable, most all of them have needed major repair work at some point. Dell has pretty decent customer service, but for a while it seemed like they needed good customer service as their machines fried all the time.

[Not Available 0]

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000... love it!

[sparkofcreation 0]

We have a Gateway CX2620 which is a widescreen tablet (you can write on the screen with a stylus, and flip it around so it's flat and the keyboard is hidden). I really wanted a tablet, we had the extra money, and that one was cheap and so far we love it.

My last Gateway laptop was dirt-cheap in early 2000 and still runs reasonably well and can surf the internet and do word processing (Office 95). Granted the eraserhead mouse stopped working a year or so ago, but still. We mainly replaced it because the graphics card wasn't dealing too well with super-graphics-tastic web pages.

[Welshcookie 17]

I like my toshiba

it's red

ROTFL!

I have a Gateway, 17in widescreen....that's all I know....and it works...good

Edited September 22, 2006 by welshcookie