Budget Laptops

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 25, 2006
Messages
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My girlfriend wants to get a laptop and were looking in the real budget range.

Price Ceiling is $650~ish, but we're really hoping to find something adequate for around $500 or so.

Primary use would be internet and movie watching, maybe some light pop cap-ish gaming.

Not knowing much about current laptop's I figured I could ask the folks here who might have better insight than myself.

Thanks in advance!
 
You have a ton of options available. What size screen are you looking for? 15"? Bigger? Smaller? What kind of battery life you want? Portability a factor? Brand specific?

Just need a little more detail but you can snag a fairly decent laptop with that budget. Just depends on your specific needs.
 
Screen size is pretty variable, 15" is fine, I figure for what she want's to do though, bigger would be better, but it's not make or break deal

Battery life doesn't have to be outstanding, she'd maybe take it to work and friend's houses, and mostly just use it around the house, not a lot of long treks without access to an outlet, maybe 4-5~ or so.

Portability, like battery life, isn't a huge factor, because she'll mostly be taking this from room to room, and not lugging it around on massive wi-fi hotspot urban adventures.

We have no brand loyalty's.
 
I just got my laptop yesterday and I think it's a pretty decent budget laptop.
It's the Dell Studio 15 (1555) and has pretty decent specs for $599 at best buy.

Core 2 Duo T6500 2.1ghz
4GB DDR2-800
320GB Hard Drive
Intel X4500 Integrated graphics

It's pretty clean and sleek looking as well.
I haven't really had a chance to test the battery life because I haven't
had it unplugged but it seems pretty decent.
 
The GMA 4500M HD is fine for integrated video if she's not playing any demanding games. It supports hardware video decoding of most formats and even for gaming it is faster than the GF6100 or ATI x1200 series integrated graphics.
 
fg1coupe said:
would you rather not buy a used laptop?
Click to expand...

I've scrounged craigslist and found mostly garbage, if I wanted an old laptop I could probably wait a week or so till my work throws out some old ones.

If I could find some decent used, I'd be open to the suggestion, but right now we're focusing on new machines.
 
www.dell.com/outlet and find something you both like, for a helluvalot less money than "new" and with the same warranty. You can get a far far better laptop - with discrete video - at the Outlet than you can buy brand new in a store for the same amount of money. Sometimes you can find nearly $2000 retail priced laptops configured to the max for under a grand, so, if your price range is roughly $500-650, expect to be able to find laptops that are "normally" priced at $1250-1700...

Just gotta put in the time to look at the Outlet for what you want, and as soon as you find something, you need to be ready to snatch it up right then and there - or someone else will, in real-time.
 
Walmart has the Compaq CQ-60 for $298... its a really good deal. (if you can find it in stock)
 
Look at the C|Net editors choice budget laptop reviews, there I know there are some decent machines, but really for the price range that you want the best thing to do would be go to your local walmart and best buy and just check out the machines they have in store and decide from there.
 
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