laptops, any guru's here ?
 

i'm looking to buy a laptop, never had one before, always have had desktops.

I travel a lot and need something mobile, so i've decided to break down and buy myself a laptop.

whats a decent laptop for under the $1,000 price range ?

I'll be using it for wifi, war driving, and basic travel needs.

thanx

Gateway® M325X $999: this is the one i recently purchased http://www.gateway.com/products/GCon...=m325x&clv=Img

its really thin and light weight, and packed with features. my setup has 60gig HD, 1.5gig ram, and DVDRW.

Dude, get a Dell www.dell.com

They are the best for under $1k and you get like 2 year on site warantees with them.

I'd only buy Dell and Sony laptops.

I would go with a sony but not cheap under 1000 paid 2500 for mine :)

yup been looking at a dell 9300

but the one I want is 1500 :\

ed holler at me later tonight when i get home, i just got a laptop tonight for cheap as fuck from a business liquidation

averatec or sager

:)

gateway is good and inexpensive too.

Wonders if I know you..

I have a 2 dell's and a gateway luv all of them, My wife uses the gateway for her music editing and some word processing and its great I paid it $1200 CAD as for the dell's cant complain so far I'm happy with them..

Dell are really a little behind with things at the moment - like most of them have really outdated graphic chips! And they're heavy!

I recently bought an ASUS W3N which would match your requirements and price bracket if you shop around - nice and light (a little over 2 kgs), small power supply (light!), good 14 inch widescreen, wifi, 512 RAM (enough for most applications except Photoshop - but then I'm using Paintshop Pro), sturdy case, good reputation backed up by a global 2-year warranty! Only thing I don't like: shitty speakers and sound card - not good enough to use the DVD player for movies.

Toshiba M45 is another one with similar specs and good Harman-Kordan speakers, but I didn't like their warranty terms (and dubious reputation re. harddisk failures).

A good place to check is http://www.notebookreview.com/

Working on my 6th year in IT, 1st post to GFY btw.

Laptops are an interesting investment for anyone looking to use it on the road for business. The main idea behind this purchase is you HAVE to define your needs. Do you want a laptop which has a huge footprint (amount of room it takes up on your lap/tray on the plane) that gives you a lot of desktop realestate, or are you going to go towards light weight? Typically speaking in your price range you can get a larger screen with extra lbs or your going get a light weight with a small screen.

Most people will say, i want a huge screeen! Hold on, you appear to want to travel with this thing.. Do you want a 13lb laptop just to have 17" wide screen? Doubtfully. Also graphics on a laptop, i would throw out the window. UNLESS your doing presentations with out a projection unit, then go with a nicer screen. Most applications your going to run likly are going to be word/IE/Firefox. So you can save your coin here.

After you decide the screen size/weight your looking for, you can shop a little bit. Now once you have decided on the style/brand, bump up the ram to 512mb. (unless your doing video editing, then spend as much as you can)

Likly the smallest hdd your going be able to get is 80gigs, This should be plently unless your going to do some sort of video editing, in which case go as high as you can spend.

Now all the comments in this thread sound fine... Except no one is brining up warranty. The AVERAGE life span for a laptop is 3 years or less. Get the 3 year warrenty it is well worth it. If you have to sacrafice on your system specs do it for the warranty. If business is your life, get the higher packages which guarentee onsite. If you can, do it through a business, even if its a buddies place.

My first job was an internship doing support on laptops. #1 failure was hdd, #2 dropping #3 water/coffee etc spilled. Almost all of these are covered by most vendors except for apple.

1 year ago, i had a client whos daughter dropped a G4 powerbook (a mac laptop) and created a crack on the casing. It was under warranty however they wanted over $1,000 for the repair.

Anyways i hope this helps, if you need some more help feel free to hit me on ICQ 3420164

huh?


....

Thought you might be a member on the pctorque forums.

ive owned a million laptops.. Dont get worked up about large laptops cause the screen looks cool.. you will regret it. Also dont settle for less than centrino technology. I traded my last 17" for a sony vaio with a 14.1 screen.. but widescreen.. I love this thing.. Small but still got a usable display and very portable. You wont find shit under 1K unless you like cheap crap.

welcome to gfy and thanx for the post :)

keep checking out www.techbargains.com . They have deals that sometimes only last for a day. Dell sometimes has online coupons that can drop the price on items (including laptops) by up to $500 depending on the system.
Got some amazing deals through this so far.

Also, when you look at laptop hard drives, remember that a lot of the manufacturers will advertise say a 100 gig harddrive but it runs only at 5400 rpm, which they often won't tell you until you read the fine print. That's pretty slow, especially if you're doing anything with video.
Be SURE you get your harddrive at 7200 rpm unless all you do is web surfing, emails or other light work.
Good luck with your search, I know it can be frustrating but I'm sure you'll find exactly what you're looking for.

Dude I have owned many laptops in my short life and let me be honest with you, Toshiba by far is the best brand of laptops I have ever used. Great Customer Care, great warrintys and good prices.

Get a tablet PC :)

I am not a laptop guru but I want to suggest you buy an IBM laptop or a Dell.