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I'm in the market for a new laptop, but its been about 4 years since I've bought one and I'm not sure how the market's changed/who the big players are now. I'm looking at an i5, 4GB ram, not going to be doing any serious gaming. Anybody have any recommendations?
A Price range would help.
Oops. Maxing out at about $700 would probably be ideal.
Just poking around on newegg I found this Acer AS5740-6491:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-804-_-Product
No reviews kind of worries me, but the specs look solid for the price.
I hate Acer. But that is just me.
My list of laptop makers.
1. Toshiba
2. Dell
3. Hp and forget their Compaq variants
Might want to check the local ads. That is how I found my laptops.
I 2nd Toshiba. Bought mine when the last few models had Vista Home Prem. on them.
I have A215-7437 model with 200gig HD, 15 1/2 Inch screen. I upped the ram a bit and it does great. Might be able to find a Bargin on Ebay or on Craigslist for about $200.00
I really like the 17 inch screens Laptops, but bags are a "Pain" and I just use my Desktop and 21" LCD for Photos and such. Laptop is what I take to work to Wifi with and misc. things....
A505D series with 4GB of ram and a 500GB harddrive.
I travel a lot so use it for taken pictures off of my cameras and email and some browsing of forums and the like while traveling.
Thanks for the replies. It seems like Dell and HP aren't nearly as competitive on prices as they were 4 years ago. Any reason why you hate Acer? I don't have any experience with them
Dells are very nice and usually very reliable.
I also second Toshiba. I have a Satellite 1415-S105 from about 2002 ... can't kill it. It was sluggish, but adding more RAM to 512MB and a nice speedy 7200RPM drive (120GB) (to replace a filled up 20GB 5400RPM unit) made a huge change in boot and operating speeds.Only problem with it now seems to be high temps. I think the cpu fan is either dead or almost dead. It runs anywhere from 49C to 56C and I think it really should run around 35C or so. But I don't feel like taking it all apart to swap the fan just yet (part is $60) But it has had no failures of any kind (yet)
Acer offers a fair deal, imho. I know more than a few people who find them reliable for a budget NB. That model is reviewed 60x at Tiger,
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...y=REVIEWS#tabs
I hardly think you will find many i5 NB's at the $700 price point. Do your research and be sure to budget in a extended warranty.
Found this at toshiba direct, upgrade to an i5 430m puts it at 619. Prolly buy the ram upgrade separately to save a few bones.
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/...to?poid=467352
Nice find!Quote:
Originally Posted by His Eaziness
i5-430M and the 4 GM of ram brings it to $689.00
Not too bad, but it needs some customizing. Such as which CPU and hard drive size. 2GB RAM is probably ok to start, but if you go 64 bit os, I would do 4GB RAM And there are all sorts of options you may / may not need / want. So it could easily come in close to $1000 ... also that hard drive is slow at 5400RPM
I recommend Lenovos. I work on 10-20 laptops a day and Lenovos are definitely the most dependably made of the highest quality parts. HPs are around the middle and Dells are slapped together with the cheapest parts in the shoddiest way in the jungles of Malaysia by people who cant read or write.
Thread is 4 days shy of being a year old. I think you're a tad late.