Best Laptop under 800$?

V

Vanilla Coke

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 12, 2005
Messages
134
My friend needs laptop for college and her aunt is buying it. She insists on buying it IN STORE. Any recommendations would be helpful. thank you!
 
hey,


I would recommend you taking a look at some thinkpads as they have a very good rep and can help you with the budget you have. Take a look. Enjoy
 
While the DV6000s are ok, the Thinkpads are better. You might find a low end T61 for that price or a half-decent R60. Fact of the matter is that $800 still puts you in the budget sector.


That being said, unless you have a need for gaming, I'd skip the Turions. Their biggest strong point is that their integrated video (GeForce or Radeon) is more powerful than the intel integrated...but my old R60 Core Duo will get 4+ hours of battery life where my wife's Acer Turion X2 gets 2.5. No, it's not a fair comparison as I'm comparing a Thinkpad w/ an Aspire, but generally speaking, intel will give you better battery life.

It's not that Turions are bad. The one my wife runs was originally mine. Back in 2005 I bought a Turion instead of a Pentium M based notebook. But...they're just not as good as what intel has to offer. A Turion TL60 may beat a T5250 or whatever else would come in most notebooks at that price range in some aspects, but just about any T7 series, let alone the Prescott T8 or T9, will perform better.

I don't know how someone could hate the Core 2 Duo. I would venture to say that I had more power in my 2.0ghz Core 2 Duo than I did my dual Opteron 254. Really, the processors have always been good. Took a while to get 64 bit support, but they've always run neck & neck or ahead of the AMD competition. The old complaints of wireless cards (2200BG) don't really ring true any more as the 3945ABG and 4965AGN are very good cards. I'd certainly take them over the Broadcomm cards that come in the AMD based HPs...hell, I'd only give up an intel for an Atheros, but even then that's questionable due to intel's better support in Linux.



But, to get back to the question rather than the comment, I'd suggest avoiding Toshiba's A215 series, as we had a batch of bad systems (4 in a week) that simply died while I was working as a Firedog Technician. It's the reason I'm running a T61p now instead of my old T60: I gave my dad the reliable laptop instead of the Toshibas that failed (he went through 2 in the span of 3 weeks before we gave up).

Retail could make finding Thinkpads harder, but if you do, they're typically worth it. If it's a store, you may want to ask about floor models, as they're typically reduced by a decent amount, still hold full manufacturer warranty, and are supposed to be reformatted and checked by a technician before they go out.

HP's DV6000s have seemed to be pretty good. 2000s and 9000s as well.

Sony's overpriced, you'd be wasting money.

Acer could be an excellent option as well. I typically recommended either HP due to Circuit City being an authorized repair center for them or Acer because you got more bang for your buck.
 
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