Looking for a Laptop

[HuskerShark]

Bump. In the market for a laptop. Seen these posts are a little dated. Want to stay under $1000

I'm not a master when it comes to what laptop to buy, but I would second what Dave has said above.

My advice to you is this: Unless you want the laptop for a lot of gaming, don't spend more than $500. It will be out of date in 3-4 years anyways, so no use going overboard.

 

[Blackshirts007]

Bump. In the market for a laptop. Seen these posts are a little dated. Want to stay under $1000

MacBook. I bought mine about 6 months ago and love it. I have had 0, I repeat 0 problems this far. It is very user friendly. I had a toshiba for about a year before it acquired a virus so massive I would have had to get it restored. It was a $300 laptop so I wasn't going to spend a lot to repair so I decided to buy a Mac. Best buy will usually have models from last quarter or a floor model that they will sell cheaper. When I went in they had brand new models and their ones from a month ago went clearance. I bought the $1300 one for $950. And it was literally the same thing as the new one besides a tiny bit of speed which didn't matter, it still hauls a$$

 

[HuskerShark]

In my experiences with laptops, as long as you don't stray into some questionable websites, you are fine. If you don't browse a ton of porn sites and open emails from people you don't know, your chances of getting a virus are very slim. I've never owned or used a Macbook, and I'm sure they are great, but if you aren't looking to spend a lot of money, like I said, just buy a computer with the fastest processor, biggest hard drive, and biggest RAM that you can for $500 and go with it.

 

[HuskerThor]

Processor should be i5 or i7 not any of the other processors.

I just bougy my granddaughter a Samsung with a 2nd generation i3, 4gb ram, 500gb hd. Came with a mouse, case and flash drive, for $350. Black Friday prices. If you have a grand to spend on a laptop, you should be able to get something fairly awesome.

Best Buy, Newegg.com are two places I would start.

 

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

Bump. In the market for a laptop. Seen these posts are a little dated. Want to stay under $1000

My personal preference is Toshiba. We've had good luck with them and if you're not looking for something extravagant, you can get a nice laptop for under $500. The only problem we've run into is the screen will just quitting coming on. You can plug a stand alone monitor into it and see everything on that screen but not on the laptop screen. By the time this happens though, we've more than gotten our monies worth out of it. We currently have 3 of them in the house (me, wife, son) and none of them were over $400. Just my $.02

 

[strigori]

Stay away from the iCult. You get massively less for your money, for a grand you will be getting about the same as a $600 PC. And if you ever have to have service done, or replace something like a power cord, you will pay with your first born for it.

Like Thor said, get an i5 or i7 cor the CPU. AMD makes crap for mobile CPUs, and the other CPUs from Intel are garbage really. You wouldn't be happy.

At least 4gigs of RAM, there is no such thing as too much.

Get Windows 7 if you can. Do not get Windows 8.

If you are going to play any games on it, make sure you have an nVidia video card, and not just the integrated Intel chip. Hell, if you are really going to use it for games, think about shopping something like an Alienware that will be built for it.

You might think about brand by how their customer service ranks. There are precious little differences in most of the hardware between brands.

 

[krill]

I think brand name does matter!

It really does not matter on sub-$1000 consumer laptops. Take the badge off and they are all designed and assembled by the same ODM's, the parts are all sourced from the same manufactures. The only major plus Apple has is better than average customer support. The only brand I personally put any faith in above other is the Lenovo Thinkpad line, because the build quality and keyboards ergonomics are still way above average. They have good resale value too if you like to stay current, rather than using something until it goes to the dumpster.

My advice is to anyone buying a laptop, or consumer electronics in general, is to keep checking fatwallet and slickdeals for a good deal. When one pops up, google the model number and check sites like newegg, amazon, and bestbuy for user reviews...don't put too much stock in them, just check for a propensity of negative responses or problems.