laptop

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As usual, you guys are my computer advisors and have served me well in the past, so I'm throwing this up. Wife wants/needs/thinks she needs/got to have a laptop for college for her second career in nursing. Hopefully something below 1K would be nice. Needs to at least have a DVD writer/burner for all those DVD's we make of our daughter to pass around. Any suggestions. I have an account at newegg.
 
I hate to spoil a need for a laptop. I finished nursing school three years ago, I didn't need a laptop
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Personally, I'm partial to toshiba laptops. But I have heard many here recommend dell laptops as they have alot of deals. with a price point under a $1000, you can get a capable laptop.
 
Dell Latitudes are the better quality of their products.

Everything comes with a DVD burner now, you will want at least 2 gb of RAM. 14.1" or 15.4" are the most practical sizes, smaller are easier to pack around but you give up screen and keyboard real estate, as well as paying more, and larger is too hard to pack around and brutal on battery.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/pro...it_d830_anav2~~

What I like the most about them is no trialware which is a major advantage over anything off the shelf, it comes out of the box ready to run rather than spending a day uninstalling all the [censored] that ships with these units.

Oh, and it's $400 cheaper than a Mac and can do more...
 
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My personal recommendation would be something from ASUS, but I don't think they have anything in that price range.....
 
Having had five laptops I can reccommend the Toshiba brand. I just gave away a 15" one that was five years old and it never goofed. My other 15" Toshiba went in the living room as a "guest" laptop and the 17" is my workhorse. The HP & Compaq that I had were both real pieces of work and suffered a horible death beneath my boots after the last straw broke the camel's back.

Of the three remaining Toshibas one has had a repair where the power cord plugs in and that's it. All were less than $1000.
 
Just pick up one of those $400 laptops that come out in the weekly add. If it comes with Vista, later you can install XP and it'll run quick. My cousin picked up a Compaq for that much and it's a sweet laptop. Can't beat it for the price. I also saw a sweet one at Frye's for $400. I coudln't believe the price given all the specs.
 
Go to Dell under Laptop-Small Business just lie and pretend you are a small business. You can get her a Vostro starting at $399 and working up from their. I think their Vostro 1510 is on sale nicely equiped for $539. I have a Vostro 1000 with two high capacity batteries upgraded Wifi card to the best, 2GB or Ram XP all for $585 with shipping and tax's to my door step.It is quite and fast and gets plenty of run time off the batteries! I love it. The only thing my Vostro does not have that some of the more expensive laptops have is a stand alone discrete video card. You can get Vostro's with them but I did not need to have that. They have then 14-17 inch screen size.I recomend the cheaper low galre screen over the true life color version because it works so much better outside in sunlight or bright office etc..... Everything other then the Vostro 1000 line is magnesium cased. They all have spill proof keyboards just like IBM's Think pads. They all come with Zero trail ware or garbage or bloat ware as well. Mine was an XP model but I do not know if XP is still offered if it is I would get it! My Desk Top in Vista and their are so many issues still with software that is not compatiable with it!
 
Webcruzer - No bad advice.

Its important to note that these 400 dollar door buster laptops are nothing close to quality usually having a very low end mobile processor (E2180) and only one gigabyte of system memory, not nearly enough for Windows Vista.

Backwards compatablity can not be assured with any laptop or desktop using Windows Vista because you usually can't find Windows XP drivers for alot of the newer hard-ware. Generally advise against it all together.

If I was going to by a laptop i'd either do a Lenovo T series, or a HP.

HP you can get manufacture repairs at any CC,BB or Staples which is nice. They have a laptop at Staples right now I was looking at for around 800, its the HPDV6930. 64bit Vista, 4gigabytes of memory, 250gb hard-drive, dvd\multidrive, and a 5750 Core Duo.

Not bad for that price at all.
 
Love my Dells (I have a Vostro 1400 loaded, wife has a D530 and daughter has a Vostro 1000) and the past Dells I've owned.

Excellent performance, well built and best of all they just last.

My 1400 has a fast processor, dedicated video card (not needed but got) 2 gig ram, DVD burner, large 9 cell and normal 6 cell batteries (The 9 cell lasts over 6 hours easy when surfing the web) 2 years warranty for close to $600.

My wife is a nurse and all the schools seem to be going to web based lessons and that is why she got her laptop. I was going to sell hers and get her something a little faster (hers has a celron 1.6gig single processor in it with a gig of memory) but she loves the unit. It really is pretty fast for her web stuff and office 2007.

AGREE that if you get one with Vista, a GIG will NOT do. 2 gig is good.
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Take care, bill
 
I've been looking for a laptop for my Dad and I think we are going to pull the trigger on this.

The only thing is the glossy screen, it does have reflections but high contrast for viewing photos that he likes to do.

I have a glossy one on mine, both the wifes and daughters have the matte.

(ignore the Edit on each line)

SYSTEM COLOR Midnight Blue edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Pentium® Dual Core T2390 (1.86GHz/533Mhz FSB/1MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® SP1 Home Basic Edition edit
HD DISPLAY Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800) edit
VIDEO CARD Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 edit
MEMORY 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz edit
HARD DRIVE Size: 250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) edit
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE CD / DVD Writer (DVD+/-RW Drive) edit
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini-Card edit
INTEGRATED WEBCAM No Webcam Option edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 6 cell battery edit
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 edit
My Accessories
ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE No Security edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft Works edit
TV TUNER & REMOTE CONTROL Dell Travel Remote Control, IR edit
My Service
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1Yr Ltd HW WRTY, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis, 24x7 Phone Support edit
DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr edit
DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested edit
ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM
Network Integrated 10/100 Network Card
Modem Integrated Modem
Intel Pentium® Dual-Core Processor



ALL of this for $640 delivered. I've got to look at some other models, but for the price, this is a nice unit. (and you can get it in colors...)
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Take care, Bill
 
My wife was looking at a $599 good deal from the HP website. It was this week only. Two year warranty included, which is much better than Dell's. I have a Toshiba we picked up last Thanksgiving, for around $399 at Best Buy. Pretty basic, but works for me. Wife does more with genealogy programs that require quite a bit of RAM and memory.

Her last two laptops were Dells, and that will be the last, for us. Both required cooling fan replacements, one under warranty and then a second three years later. Her most recent Inspiron has the same problem after 18 months, so we are now out of the Dell market. I do believe in punishing poor performance through the market place.

At work, we use Dell Latitudes, and have had no warranty repairs, so if you go with Dell, get the Latitudes. Our office has about 20 laptops on line at any time.
 
With a $1K budget, the sky's the limit. I personally wouldn't spend more than $500-600 for a laptop. I'm loving our new Acer Aspire I got shipped to the door for under $600. That's with a 17" screen, 2gigs of RAM, huge HD, DVD burner, Vista, etc.. You could have problems with any make/model. It depends on what you load on it, how it's used and luck of the draw!

Joel
 
Bill....I like that price and the guts in it. What model is that particular one?
 
It is the Inspiron 1525. Price is $993 and discounts of $349 with free shipping.

$644 total. We got it in blue (the other colors were the same with the exception of Black being $25 cheaper and the ones with patterns being $25 more)

Google Dell laptop deals and there are web sites with deals like that and better.

Also, MAKE SURE you do not get a 4 cell battery. Other brands give you a 4 cell and Dell is doing the same on some models and charging $$ for 6 or 9 cells. When I ordered the above, I asked about a 9 cell and the salesperson said that the price on all batteries have shot up in the last 4 months due to the energy crises.

The 6 cell should be good for 3-4 hours for web surfing / wi-fi.

Take care, Bill
 
Check out the site in the link below. This site does not sell anything and simply posts links to some of the best computer hardware deals that I have found on a daily basis. About 99% of the time Dell notebook computer deals are listed, which you order directly from Dell using the provided code or rebate. All in all, it is an excellent site.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/deals/
 
I've had a Thinkpad T40 for 5 years now. Still a great little machine and I love it a lot more than the [censored] Dell's we use at work. The screen hinge is still solid after 5 years of use and countless trips to everywhere, something I can't say about my work PC that never leaves my desk and has a broken hinge...

Granted, it did set me back nearly $2400 5 years ago, but IMO, it is money well spent.
 
Also if anyone is getting a 6 cell battery with their laptop, make sure it's 4400AH instead of the 2400. The larger one lasts much longer. Some companies as a way of cost cutting are giving the lower battery.
 
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