Looking To Buy A Laptop

I am looking to buy a Laptop, what is good? I would like to stay away from Compaq, Gateway, and HP. What can I get for around $1000, I do a lot of photography, (some) online gaming.

Dell Inspiron 1520. Its a great budget laptop. If you want to make the laptop as close to a gaming laptop as you can, definitely get the 8600M GT. I love my 1520.

I did a review of it (just click on my useful reviews link in my sig)

Tygart said:

I am looking to buy a Laptop, what is good? I would like to stay away from Compaq, Gateway, and HP. What can I get for around $1000, I do a lot of photography, (some) online gaming.

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Check out the lenovo sale going on these days:

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...-category-id=8FA114A7D9FF4F38AE8E19B36EC665A7

Dell still has their M1330 on sale, but that probably won't bring it below 1000...

http://www.dell.com/content/product...b_m1330?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab

I had a good experience with their refurbished systems though, the system in my sig was right around 1000 after upgrades (memory, hdd, bluetooth)...

C.

Edit: I didn't really care about gaming/video card when I bought it, but the thing does 1M Pi in about 23-24 seconds

Thanks Cornel thanks ps2cho

Are the Sonys and Toshibas any good? I wont be doing much gaming so its not a real big thing for me. Mostly I want it to be good enough to edit my images and get onto the wifi.


Since the new laptops have Vista on them, is it true that you need 2GB of RAM?

Will you be traveling alot with this notebook, or will it mainly stay on your desk?

Tygart said:

Thanks Cornel thanks ps2cho

Are the Sonys and Toshibas any good? I wont be doing much gaming so its not a real big thing for me. Mostly I want it to be good enough to edit my images and get onto the wifi.


Since the new laptops have Vista on them, is it true that you need 2GB of RAM?

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Check out the sticky in this section for a comprehensive list of notebook manufacturers and their user ratings: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=364838

IMO
Sony: very nice looking, very well built but on the pricey side
Toshiba: you can get a better "bang for your buck" elsewhere

As far as the memory is concerned, for the longest time Frys had 4GB OCZ DC kit for $60 AR. They still do, actually:
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/52...DHd-VPNSA**.node2?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
I tried to sell a 2GB Kingston DC kit on ebay and didn't even get $20 for it, so if you're not a total stranger to your screwdriver, that shouldn't be a big concern, memory is cheap nowadays, but you def. want to upgrade yourself.

Other than that, it's like Vengance said: you need to figure out what you want to do with that notebook and ask more specific questions...

C.

Well Like I said I will be doing photography with it, so it will be on the road with me. I use Photoshop CS and for that needs 2GBs RAM to run nicely. I will be uploading lage files to the net.

Are most laptops easy to access the memory? I build all my own Desktops so I do know my way around them.

What I am looking of for is to know what is a good stable brand.

I will check out your link

Rob

Tygart said:

Since the new laptops have Vista on them, is it true that you need 2GB of RAM?

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Hell yeh, i got my work pc with only 1GB and vista and it used 800MB+ with no apps running.. it was bit slow when i had a few apps open..

Another Gig of ram and it flyed. unfortunately i had compatibility with IBM Work flow Client
and DB2 Client so i had to format and install XP..

Tygart said:

Well Like I said I will be doing photography with it, so it will be on the road with me. I use Photoshop CS and for that needs 2GBs RAM to run nicely. I will be uploading lage files to the net.

Are most laptops easy to access the memory? I build all my own Desktops so I do know my way around them.

What I am looking of for is to know what is a good stable brand.

I will check out your link

Rob

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It's a fairly easy process for most laptops, but you might wanna google the particular model you are interested in, there's a fat chance somebody did it and posted a tutorial...

I guess I was lucky, Rob, but I never really had any serious stability issues on any of the notebooks I owned in the past 3-4 years (HP, Sager, Averatec, Dell, Lenovo). I did have dead motherboards / video cards, a power issue that would cause my notebook to turn on, off and restart on a random basis but pretty much all of them were covered and repaired under warranty. As soon as something dies, I repair it, sell the laptop and get a new one...

FWIW, here's my experience with the names above: you said you don't want HP and you need to stay away from Averatec: although their machines are a good value, their customer support is something you don't want to deal with... The Sager was a very high performance machine that looked like crap. It was priced right though and their customer service is good. I bought a refurbished Dell XPS because I really liked what I was getting for the money. No stability issues whatsoever, 6months old and still going.

My favorite is still the Lenovo I got for my wife: tough as a tank, stable for the past 5 months or so and that's saying something considering that all kinds of crazy stuff usually happens when she's at the keyboard.... Fairly pricey though...

C.