Need laptop recommendations from our tech savvy

Bronco

Bronco

Moderator
Joined
Feb 25, 2000
Messages
7,580
I'm trying to assist an older family member make her first ever computer purchase. The house is not huge, high speed wireless access is available and she'd like to be able to use her setup in different areas of the house, so a laptop/notebook is the obvious solution as far as that goes. Uses will be nothing exotic; web surfing, emailing, maybe some multimedia applications (storing songs, viewing DVDs, etc.) and some occasional word processing are likely the order of the day. There's no advantage to this machine being ultra light weight or having super long run times on the batteries. It would be nice, however, to do whatever we can from a hardware perspective to try and minimize the frustrations that will likely be encountered by an older person learning to use their first ever Windows based computer. She would also like to be able to plug in a standard keyboard to use. Could that be a problem? Price target would be somewhere between $750 and $900. I had considered recommending an iBook as they would be perfect from a user experience/lack of frustration standpoint, but you need about $1200 for a halfway decent machine and that's before spending the extra $200 or so for the necessary Apple Care.

Anyway, I was considering recommending a purchase from Costco as their prices are generally competitive, they offer free tech support and they extend the manufacturer's warranty to two years. A couple caught my eye and was wondering if anyone felt strongly about endorsing one over the other:

Toshiba A135-S4467:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11192959&whse=BC&topnav=&browse=

SONY VGN-N230E/B:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11207454&whse=BC&topnav=&browse=

Thanks in advance for any feedback.
 
I am no expert, but my wife is very computer savvy and works in an IT department for a major insurance carrier. I would definitely check out Del. They often have deals going, customer service is top notch, you can order everything right on line. And yes, you can use regular keypads (at least on some models?) and a regular mouse as well. Hope this helps. Good luck.
 
Defiantly check out dell. There Inspiron series can be had in the 500-700 range, and be more then enough notebook for the casual user.

I personally have a 630M, I use it when I travel or on the boat. Very stable, easy to use, and the price was right.

Dells service is excellent.
IMO stay away from the SONY. They are notorious for hardware/motherboard issues, as well as not being the most user friendly when it comes to peripherals.

Good Luck!
 
We bought our oldest daughter a Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook last spring, and have had zero issues with it.

I highly recomend Dell. I ordered it online, made some upgrades, and kept within my budget.
 
Dell's are pretty good. I've had some screen/video card problems develop in some Dell's after a few years though.

Sager makes good notebooks, www.sagercomputer.com I've had a couple of those over the years too with fewer problems than Dell, but that was a few years back. They've been around a long time.

I've never seen a Compaq notebook last and I'm not impressed with the screen quality. As Compaq and HP are merged now, I'm leery of HP. But I haven't seen much of them in the last few years so my experience here could be out of date.
 
Thanks, guys. Excellent advice all the way around. As it happens, the predecessor to my current Mac G5 was a Dell laptop which I used for almost 7 years if you can believe that- the first 5 of which were remarkably trouble free. It's encouraging to hear that they're evidently still doing a good job.
 
The only laptop that I've ever liked after using was a Dell Inspiron 9100. Heavy and bulky. But unlike most laptops it had a 'real' Pentium 4 instead of a mobile-oriented processor, and it had a real graphics card instead of the onboard junk.

I'm pretty sure you'll be able to connect a full-size keyboard to your laptop, as long as the keyboard has a USB connector. Ditto with adding a mouse. Also, many laptops have video connectors for attaching to a real monitor.

Also, you might look into a "docking station." Connect all of the extra accessories to the docking station where the laptop will be used the most, and it'll be set up like a desktop.

-Bob
 
These days I only buy used reconditioned lap top computers from USAnotebook.com and don't have any issues to date with the three I've had from them.

Last one I got for my wireless was the bare minimum computer I'd need for checking the forums and my emails in my shop. $200 for an IBM Think Pad.

For $360 to $700 you can get a better grade up to date notebook computer with windows XP like my wife's Toshiba that has a 6 month warranty or pay a few bucks more for a 1 year warranty and not do better in my opinion if you bought a brand new one. After my last new lap top purchase of a Sony Vaio that was like $3200 only lasted 14 months I gave up. The last straw was when I got a quote from Sony to recondition it for me for $800 with a 1 MONTH warranty. I decided then and there to never buy another new one again. Every new lap top has been bad news for me and didn't last any longer than any of the reconditioned ones I bought.

If you are just wanting it for browsing the web and checking emails look over what they have and save.


STR
 
Apple, Apple, or Apple.........or if you can't decide, Apple. Unless you HAVE to use Windows, then it is no contest. I am not a lifelong disciple of St. Steven, but I finally got fed up with Windows and switched to Mac about 6 months ago after using nothing but PC's since the late 80's and my blood pressure has dropped by about 20 points and my hair stopped falling out:D I will be buying an IPhone in June, which I hope will cure the ulcers that I have gotten from going through a Kyocera PDA phone, 3 Palm Treo's and 2 Razrs in the last 5 years or so.:D
 
I went through the "build your own" drill tonight on the Dell, HP and Sanger websites. As promised, they all have minimalist solutions that start off in the $600 to $700 range. I did discover, however, that once you've upgraded to the minimum amount of SDRAM recommended to run Vista, purchased a bare bones two year warranty, and added MS Office (Student and Teacher ed.) you're pretty much into $1200+ territory. The Sanger, in fairness, was a bit lower. This all got me to thinking about the base level MacBook again, but as with the others, when you really get down to it and add the MS Office and Apple Care warranty, you're pushing $1500.

I also noticed something kinda funny on the Sanger site. They were the only ones I saw tonight who are still offering the old Windows XP operating system on their new machines, but IIRC, they were charging like a hundred bucks more for that than the premium edition of Vista. :D Perhaps STR's suggestion of a refurbished laptop makes sense for more reasons that just the economic ones. ;)
 
Bronco: do buy alot of RAM (as much as needed to run Vista - I wouldn't settle for anything less than 1 GB, the computer I got in January has 2 GB) but run WinXP on it instead of Vista.

There's just no point in running Vista ... hardware support (drivers) is worse, it runs slower, consumes more system resources and adds nothing of value (stability, responsiveness, etc.). Besides, the laptop is likely to come with a choice of operating system (XP Home, XP Pro, perhaps even Linux). I'd go for XP Pro again if I needed Windows environment.
 
Dell makes outstanding laptops. :thumbup:

HOWEVER -- to cut costs, all of their Customer Service and Tech Support has been outsourced to India.

Indians don't speakee goo Engwish, can be rather rude, and read from scripts.

Do not throw away your money (several hundred dollars worth) purchasing years of pre-paid "tech support" -- find someone local who is better qualified.

Good computers, lousy service.
 
The XP OEM is going away this year. Microsoft will not offer any OEM XP in 2008. I don't think Vista is ready for prime time yet so it will be interesting how this plays out.

Phil
 
First off, you really do not need the newest and best to just get started. Both my highschool age kids use Mac Ibooks that I paid less than 500 each for used. Both have combo drives, so they will burn CD's and read DVDs. Both came with air port cards so wireless is built in. Both were 14'' 700 Mhz machines and came with 40 gig HD's and 512 mem. Both kids surf the web and do homework, and make music, movies, photo stuff all the time on the machines.

look here, http://lowendmac.com/ibook/ig3deals.html

Really why pay for a new machine when these are out there. Macs run forever and most will take upgrades in software and hardware easily.

My main lap top is a G3 powerbook Pismo that is a 12/2000 model. It works fine as long as I keep the number of windows open down to a reasonable number, (over 20 and it just does not have the memory to manage it) These run for ever and are very very good at user friendly service. as long as she is not doing the road warrior routine and carting it all over, inside the house, the Mac would work great.

My kid's computers came with 90days from the reseller. Baucom out of NC, they were both as advertised and both were well worth what i paid.

They have had them for about a year, they love them and they still work way better than my work PC laptop which just sits there gathering dust.
(only reason I keep it is that I have some programs that are PC only, although my new laptop will be a intel based mac and that will cure that.)


Go used Mac, she really does not need more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top