I need a laptop? What to buy?

[LouSiffer]

You way want to look for a used Dell XPS M1710. I have one...17" display, 4GB of Ram ( OEM was 2 GB ), Intel Core 2 T7600 at @ 2.33 GHZ, 320 GB of hard drive ( added by me ) , bluetooth, built in wifi and a dedicated 512MB video card.

Also has 6 USB ports, SD memory card reader, micro Firewire 1394 port, DVI and VGA out, DVD burner, PCI Express slot. Above that is Alien. These can be found used for about the price of most worthy base level laptops with half the goodies.....they are battery pigs though due to the bigger screen and the video card.

Will run Windows 7 just fine.-Lou

[Musician78]

(I don't like those in-build pads)

I hate those stupid built in mouse pads as well. I have always run an external mouse with laptops.

[Spivonious]

All laptops nowadays have built-in wifi. As far as processing power just stay away from anything Sempron (AMD) or Celeron (Intel). You can get by with 1GB of RAM in Windows 7 but 2-4GB seems to be the sweet spot.

[Drake S.]

I went with an Alienware Area 51 M951 it does EVERYTHING! it is a bit on the expensive side though.

[Jayster]

I recently bought the wife a satellite a500(toshiba) and it seems to be pretty good, I'd rather have a desktop myself.

They claim a 7 1/2 hour battery life, it's not seemed to live up to that but much better than other laptops I've used.

[WarPig]

May as well add my $.02...

+100 on what Inazone says. Determine what you need, then overshoot that for as much as you can afford.

My "day job" has always been in large companies. HP has always died an early death. IBM/Lenovo and Dell are workhorses.

Lenovo has some pretty good online deals; last year I picked up a T61 (widescreen, 3GB RAM, 180GB drive, DVD recorder) with docking station for around $1100. I actually paid a bit more for it so I could have Windows XP Professional instead of Vista. My main "complaint" is only 3 USB ports, and that they are configured horizontal rather than vertical. I added a 7-port powered hub, and that cured the lack of ports. External drives (1 TB drives are going for $100 these days!) solves any lack of storage.

In any case, look at the add-on hardware you want to use, if you plan to actually use it on battery (mine is always plugged in; battery life is poor at best), etc. etc. (go back and read Inazone's post again!). Stick with a "name" brand (IBM/Lenovo, Alienware, Dell, etc.).

Or, like Newc said - buy the kids a budget computer.

And do your research online. It's fine to go to a store to get a hands-on look, but who needs the pressure of a sales person? Last - if you *do* decide to buy from a retail place, be very careful about their "recommended add-ons". Some places will try and sell you a set of system back-up disks for $50 or more - the same disks you can make yourself! Extended warranties are usually bogus too: just a way for the store to make more money.

Good luck! I'm sure your head is spinning like Regan's in the Exorcist by now!

[BenoA]

Thanks for the very valuable info WarPig! As said in one of my other post, the more I see this, the more I'm leaning to built my kids a desktop from what I have collecting dust. At the same time, I'll be saving money which equals: more to spend on music gear!

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

I really like the Thinkpads.

I avoid Alps touchpads (Synaptics are better).

It's really hard to recommend a specific model of laptop because they change so often and by the time you have some knowledge of which ones are problematic, they've been replaced by something else (or at least revised).

I've bought nice laptops ($2400 or so) and I've bought cheap ones ($599 on sale at Best Buy) and the nicer ones IMO are not worth it; the more expensive ones do become dated and often will still have issues (i.e. HDD failure) at some point, and you effectively could have bought a $599 laptop with a 1-year warranty every year for 4 years and come out the same money-wise vs. spending $2400 and expecting it to last 4 years with no issues.