New laptop recommendations

[jazzkrow]

Just got $700 from the inlaws for a new laptop.

I'd like to limit total budget to $850 for everything-including a power cord.

Thought about a Pentium M with 512 RAM, 60 gb Hard Drive, CD/DVD burner.

My wife needs MS Word and Excel legal install so she can get some marketable computer skills.

I'd like to save a get a decent (5gb+) MP3 player and a future digital SLR down the road.

15" screen would be OK?

We are NOT gamers-and will watch few DVDs on the laptop.

Portability and weight not super important-we'd seldom take it out of town.

I'm not real computer savvy and dealing with craigslist sellers can be dicey-who do you trust?

Will need firewall, and virus protection. Also wireless-but they all appear to offer that now.

I've heard good things about Toshiba, and Fujitsu-but they seem too expensive as does IBM think Pad.

Been told to stay away from Celeron units. Know little about quality of HP units/ and Athlon chips.

Local computer outfits that build to order systems won't give me the time of day-and I wonder about their after market service..

Warrantee and service also an issue.

I've heard good and bad on Dell-especially mediocre customer service.

It seems as though I'm at least $150 short on budget for what I want, right?

Any/help advice out there-in layman terms much appreciated.

I can throw in a burn of an OOP Mosaic set-with booklet copied-as extra help/enticement.

Can you folks help out a fellow jazzophile with NO computer savvy skills?

[Jim Alfredson]

For laptops, I would go with name brands. Toshiba, HP, IBM, etc. Sony's are way overpriced. Compaqs seem cheaply made to me. I just bought a HP zv6130 (with the AMD 64bit processor) and I love it! It runs like a dream and is very powerful. But I needed a powerful machine to do multitrack audio recording.

I would stay away from Celerons as well. They are just underpowered, even for simple things. That's why they are so inexpensive. For what you want to do, staying "behind the curve" is your best bet, since you don't need the latest and greatest. My sis has a Toshiba that is very nice (I do not remember the model unfortunately). It's a Pentium IV based machine.

Something else... wait until a few days after Christmas. You'd be surprised at how many people return things and you can get some super deals at the major stores. My aforementioned sister's boyfriend got her exact machine, which she paid upwards of $1k for, for $500 at Best Buy as a return.

[jazzkrow]

Thanks, Jim!

That's some good advice!

Never thought about post Christmas returns.

Wonder if the computer has to be open-out of the box, before they offer such a steep discount!

[Tom in RI]

My brother has made his living in the computer world for close to 15 years and he swears by Toshiba. I am on my third one as a result and have been happy with them (have had 3 Satelite models). If I have a good year next year I'll be upgrading (my current machine is 3 years old).

[Kalo]

My next computer will be a laptop.

Just looking for that warm feeling in my lap!

Seriously, I'd trust the Organissimo members's recommendations for just about anything at this point.

There's a $#!*load of knowledge here.

Edited December 25, 2005 by Kalo

[Use3D]

My brother has made his living in the computer world for close to 15 years and he swears by Toshiba. I am on my third one as a result and have been happy with them (have had 3 Satelite models). If I have a good year next year I'll be upgrading (my current machine is 3 years old).

I also work with a pair of older, but reliable toshiba laptops. I'd consider them.

[Guest]

I have worked in the tech industry for years and have very strong opinions on laptops. Most of them, it seems are crap. Desktops are much easier to make well, it seems. I've been, professionally, through Dells, Compaqs, NECs, Thinkpads and more other things than I can remember.

I can't warn you away from Dells strongly enough. The failure rate of motherboards is staggerinly high. They will replace them and once you've got a good one they are fine, but back up your data and don't be surprised if you have a total failure in the first year. In short, I will say that all of the ones I have tried have been problematic except Thinkpads. I hear good things about Toshiba from people who I trust on such matters, but have never owned one.

This year however, I bought my first personal laptop and went in with a budget similar to yours. Could not get an adeqate Thinkpad or Toshiba for my budget and did something that I've always thought impracticle. I bought a MAC.

A 12" iBook to be specific for $999, a slight stretch on my budget. It is a great machine and I will never be withut an Apple laptop again. I bought MS Office for Mac and it works fine. For buisness use, I might still lean slightly towards Thinkpad, especially on someone else's dime, but for personal use, I'm a convert.

Just my opinion, of course.

Troy

[Quincy]

Thomas Fitzgerald has a review of sub-$1000 notebooks in the New York Times.

I've had a 12 inch iBook for 3 years now and love it. It handles some MS compatibility issues better than my PC. You can subtract the cost of virus software from its price when comparing vs. a PC.

[jazzkrow]

I was an Apple user for years (and was a reluctant convert to VHS from Beta) so you can see where I was coming from. I always was behind the curve buying refurbs or used Macs, which usually became troublesome with costly reapirs and lack of compatability with programs only available on PC.

I use a Dell Latitude D600 as a work computer but it won't let me add many software programs due to security issues. So I need a family computer and my wife wants a laptop for convenience of taking it to work.

I've gotten used to Windows and now prefer it since I use it everyday.

My wife has been told to learn MS Word and Excel to make her marketable after being out of the work world for years.

So, for all these reasons, I'll go with PC for the first time.

Strictly, due to economics and for what I need-see my first posting-I'll start the process this week of looking for a Toshiba.

Many people have advised to go with a Pentium M instead of a Celeron. Is that about right?

Any advice about purchasing used-say a 2-6 mos old model? Or am I just buying someone else's problem?

I do have a tech guy that I've found who will check out whatever used model I am looking at for a reasonable service fee. Can a half hour check-out be sufficient to weed out a lemon?

What do you guys think about buying a used laptop after the Xmas rush?

[Guest]

A Toshiba is probably not a bad way to go. When I was looking that way, I was looking at Toshiba direct on-line.

Just to belabor the point a little, though, MS Word and Excel work fine on mac's OSX now and I think OSX is a far cry from earlier Mac operating systems. I've used Windows for most of the last however many years since Windows 3.1 and i spend a few years on Linux, which has it's merits but is no where near taking the place of Windows for a user friendly home computing environment, but the new Mac stuff has been an easy switch for me and my wife, who is not technical at all.

Depends on what you want. I've heard only good things about the Toshibas and that's probably a safe way to go. I wouldn't personally buy a used laptop. There are just too many problems. Desktops are different, but laptops are fragile and tempermental as a rule.

Let us know where you land and how it's going.

Troyh

[Jim Alfredson]

I love Macs, but for $999 you get a dinky 12" screen, which is why I didn't buy one. For the very same bread, I got a 17" screen, twice the RAM, twice the harddrive, and a 64bit AMD. Like I said, I wanted a machine for portable recording, so screen realestate is very important. I gotta have enough room to see the tracks and the virtual mixer on the same screen.

I'm very impressed with this HP. I was impressed with my sister's Toshiba as well. I seem to remember it is a Toshiba A75 series, like this one.

[ejp626]

I've got a ThinkPad that was top of the line about two years ago. It is very nice and outperforms most desktops. However, ThinkPad is probably outside your price range, unless there is a great post-Christmas sale. Never tried Toshiba. I've stopped dealing with Dell after some bad experiences.

[Jim Dye]

I have also heard very good things about the Toshibas. I have a Dell Latitude that they gave me at work and it has been excellent.

You might want to wait a week or two until Macworld on or around January 6th. The rumors going around are that Apple will release it's first intel processor based iBook, with a 13.3 inch screen. You possibly will be able to dual boot both Windows and OS X.

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0511intelibook.html

[spinlps]

Have used Toshiba's in the past with much satisfaction, but haven't touched one in five+ years b/c no longer a standard platform with the companay. Today, I'm using a Thinkpad T42 as primary and a Dell C610 as the backup business laptop. Between the two, I prefer the IBM for daily use but Dell has the better service and support. With Levano's purchase of IBM, the support has tanked in the last 6 months or so.

In terms of personal laptops, I'm currently using an Acer Ferrari 4000. Not sure I'd ever buy one for the asthetic, but it's a review unit that the magazine let me keep so I'm not complaining.

There are essentially two types of laptops: notebooks (the true portables) and the desktop replacements (the heavy, gigantic laptops at 10+ lbs). You'll need to determine which you really need... at that point you've at least eliminated half the options... At that point, screen size will probably be the next limiting factor to meet most price points. Figure out what you need vs. want and go from there. RAM, HD, Video, Proc, etc... all add to the bottom line, but not like LCD real estate.

Check out www.techdeals.net for coupons, discounts, and first dibs on limited techie sales. I tipped some buddies off to an unadvertised Dell coupon last summer for loaded Inspiron's for $500 or so.

Good luck!

[jazzkrow]

HEY, GUYS:

I checked with 4 stores last night-Circuit City, Comp USA, Best Buy, Office Max. also Costco and Office Depot today. Not one of them indicated that they take more than $50 off any returned laptop when they put it out for resale.

So there goes the theory of a major price break after the Holidays.

I did see several Toshibas with Celeron M and 1.5 gz processors with 40-60 gb HD and 512 RAM for around $700-800 and 14 or 15.4 in screens. The Pentium M units were at least $250-400 more with similar HD and RAM.

How much am I losing with a Celeron-when I will be doing no gaming and probably not more than 1-2 projects going at any one time?

Is the extra $250-400 worth the extra $ for the Pentium M. That extra $ is a stretch for me-unless it is really a necessity to stay ahead of the curve.

Advice?

Thanks in advance!

Edited December 28, 2005 by jazzkrow

[Chuck Nessa]

I think a Celeron is fine for your needs, especially since you don't play a lot of complicated games.

[Quincy]

I think a Celeron is fine for your needs, especially since you don't play a lot of complicated games.

I'll second this too (and back off the Kool Aid as I type on my iBook .) Especially as you mentioned Word & Excel being the main apps.

I'm not sure the next MS OS (Vista/Longhorn) will run so hot on it, but I don't think that's a big concern as learning the apps is more important than learning OS details as far as your wife gaining some skills.

[ejp626]

The general situation seems to be that you will eventually find some application you "need" that goes over whatever your current computer can handle, but certainly for MS Word/Excel I agree that you can start out with Celeron.

Same goes with memory. I managed to max out a 250 Gig external hard drive in a matter of months.

[Claude]

RAM is more important than CPU power. Some budget laptops with Celeron processor come with only 256MB RAM. Be sure you can get it upgraded to 512MB.

How much hard drive space you need depends entirely on what you use the laptop for. Low price laptops usually come with 30-40GB drives, which should be enough unless you download lots of music (or worse, movies) or use it as a recording machine.

[jazzkrow]

I lucked out after lots of leg work (and phone time).

I found a Toshiba M45-S2653 with a Pentium M chip, (1.6 GB processor)

80 GB Hard drive, 512 RAM

DVD/CD dual layer burner

15.4" wide screen monitor

Centrino

Price was $749.99 for a new machine

($300 off list price)

Just about the price of a Celeron machine.

I hope I did good-I had to drive 100 miles to find the last one that they had-and they fought me tooth and nail (Best Buy) since the store price was $1049 and their web site was sold out.

Now how much will I need to spend on Virus/spyware protection?

Any free downloads out there?

I think I DID manage to find a good deal??

[Jim Alfredson]

Very good! Well done!

First thing to do... it probably has some sort of Norton Anti-Virus on there (they all seem to these days). Either that or McAfee. Take that shit off there. Norton especially is a resource hog. Go to Control Panel ----> Add or Remove Software and find it in the list (there will probably be multiple Norton programs... start with the biggest).

Once that is gone from your machine, go get AVG Free from Grisoft. It is free anti-virus software that is compact (unlike Norton), effective, and totally free (including updates... unlike Norton). I've been using it for at least five years on numerous computers and it works great. No more paying for virus definition updates!

For spyware, I used to use Ad-Aware from Lavasoft. I think it is still free as well. I say "used to" because I don't really worry about spyware anymore, thanks to using Firefox as my browser.

Hope that helps!!!