Dames and Sirs of the Round Table! I am working right now to help our brother, Romi, who does awesome things for us, kay? His laptop computer is in the process of going to the great beyond. As it nears the end of life, we reserve its final moments for the transfer of important files. Our hero needs a cheap laptop. Not necessarily one for an awesome gaming experience. Rather, the requirements are storing music and pictures, productivity applications (i.e. word processing), and most importantly, multitasking capability, like the ability to have multiple browser windows open, play music or perhaps a movie, and not have the quality of the experience completely degenerate. If possible, we would like to satisfy these requirements by spending $500 or less. He was looking at one for $600, but I insisted he could do better, perhaps at $450. Therefore, I request of the techies here that you submit a recommendation for him or critique mine. lenovo IdeaPad G580
Lenovo is good, that's the only laptop I'll buy these days if I'm buying something new (thing is, I almost never buy new, so I've got a Lenovo and a few HP's hanging around - yes, I have 3 laptops that I routinely use, and my primary desktop at home - I'm a geek!). Looking solely from price/performance, this looks like a good deal (it's got a slightly bigger HD than the Lenovo, and I've had a Toshiba before and it didn't fall apart
Hmm... So I mentioned it to my aunt and she said I might have to just use my savings account. Apparently my cousin doesn't want to be nice and let me use his laptop for a bit, even though he never uses the damn thing anyway. Soo....I have a small budget to work with. I would love to do something $450 and under. But remember.... This has to be durable, hardy, I want and need a good processor, lots of memory, yadda yadda. I run multiple heavy memory programs at once, play music, watch movies. Yeh... Thanks guys for all your help, in advance. And thank you Pret for making this for me. And thanks to you, RainbowMan for your input.
I like the Presario A900 by Compaq. It's a pretty fucking sturdy ass machine. Plays some good games too.
I don't think I can provide any input to best what has already been provided. Just wanna say GOOD LUCK ROMI, hope you get the best laptop to suit your needs!
Another thing you could do is go with a refurb or scratch and dent from someplace like the Dell outlet store. Now before you scoff at that idea. My last laptop was a scratch and dent Dell XPS m1530 from the Dell Outlet that I bought in 2008. It was $1700 configuration that I got for $708 shipped. Came with a full warrenty and original packaging. The damage? It was a small paint chip under the battery cover. Still have it today. Just something to consider.
That's actually pretty cool. I didn't even know they did that. My only qualm with this suggestion is that it's Dell. I know Dell was always supposed to be one of those super savvy brands, but..it seems likes every Dell I've ever dealt with, mine or not, has been a hassle in some way or another. I don't know...maybe I just have bad luck with things. Speaking of luck, THANK YOU, VERVE.
Annnd, something with a good battery life! I like to use my computer outdoors a lot and in the car on trips. There aren't outlets in the yard or car. :|
I don't have a clue what prices are like over there so I can't exactly tell you what model laptop you should be getting but I think its very reasonable to find a 15" 8GB second gen i5 for under $450 which would suit your needs perfectly. Battery life really depends on what you are using it for as most laptops a supplied with similar batteries. It mainly depends on how much processing power you require when your outdoors. Wireless internet also tends to drain the battery pretty quickly.
Hmmm.... For battery life, I like my old Kohjinsha SC-3. Not a modern machine, but word processing and web access don't take much. And the smaller display makes the battery last much longer. With WIFI turned on and the extended battery, I get about 8h of life, and the machine is about 4 years old, and that's with Vista. I also get decent battery life out of my Asus EEE901 netbooks, with linux distributions on them. One has Slax, the other has VectorLinux. Both get about 4-5h with wifi turned on using the standard battery. I have no problem with multiple browser windows, OO, and having a project open in Eagle.
I dont think you can get a computer with a decent hard drive, lots of RAM, good battery, durable, fast processor, nice screen for movies and good speakers for music. All that stuff would amount to well over a grand. So unless you go pre owned or refurbished or something like that like Stridenttube said I doubt you will find one.
I gotta agree, grizzley. The machines I listed above all were smaller displays. Smaller displays definitely help with battery life. And, careful selection of operating system can do wonders to make a system more responsive on identical hardware. I've seen moderately spec'd systems that were more responsive, and even outperform more highly spec'd systems, by tweaking settings. Changing operating systems to ones where you install from source instead of binaries can also make the system more efficient, as the binaries that are run are optimized for the machine. (BSD or some Linux distributions)
