Here's what I like... A simple computer, boots quick and battery lasts. I will probably only put music and pictures on it, but not an absurd amount. I will use Microsoft word here and there. It will mostly be used for browsing the internet and downloading and watching shows/movies. I don't care about saving those after I watch. Screen size no smaller then 14in. I can't seem to find a simple quick computer like this. The only ones I can find have all kinds of amenities that are useless to me. Do you think a chromebook or netbook would be useful to me?? I just don't know if I could get over how small they are. Edit: Id prefer to keep it under 800, but can stretch that if need be.
Tried using a netbook for work, they were shit. OK for light duty stuff, inadequate for daily work. Have gotten lightly acquainted with tablets in the past few months, no interest in them for anything other than a play device. No good for work. Brand wise, I'm a fanatically loyal Toshiba man. The Satellite I'm on right now has going on two years continuous uptime and has been pounded to death, still works. Same with the last one. They have no "brand cachet", they're the Honda Civic of laptops, but I don't view computers as social plumage, I view them as tools. Toshiba's are durable as hell, they work perfectly, they take a beating, they're very reasonably priced, seeing as you can spend a lot more and get a profoundly more fragile, shittier laptop.
I use a HP. Lots of people say they're shit and unreliable and stuff, (as I've seen in other threads) but I've had mine for nearly 2 years now and I haven't had a problem with it at all. It's worked perfect for me. Got it for like $300, brand-new, online.
Either dell or HP are cheap and will last a number of years if you take care of it. Don't drop it, don't download snake oil programs, don't set it on your bed if the fan duct is on the bottom.
Amend to above post: I did have to take my Toshiba apart earlier this year and pull a fucking gerbil sized furball that had completely seized up the fan, thus causing it to overheat. Now running perfectly again. Otherwise, have dropped it, literally fell on top of it while walking up stairs, bashed it, traversed the subway and El train in Chicago with it, used it as a table and it's survived. And it was like $400 as one of those supersales at Newegg.
Under 800? LOL.. for basically browsing the internet and movies? You can choose basically any 300 dollar laptop for that.
I've had three full-sized laptops, none of which I got new, all of which were quite servicable for 4-5 years. First was an IBM (was my first, and my favourite, much prefer the little red nub over a trackpad), second was an Acer, third (and current) is an HP (which I'm typing on now). The "worst" of the bunch was the Acer, but even then, I would still consider buying one in the future. I know HP gets a lot of hate, but this one is 3-3.5 years old and the only issue I've had was a fubar'd hard drive that was still under warranty (and since hasn't been an issue). IBM would still be my first choice, but they're not selling them anymore. I know that Lenovo was manufacturing the Thinkpad lines for IBM, but still, I don't know if the quality is still high like they were when IBM owned them. My sister paid, about $350 for this one, the HP, and it was more than capable of gaming (not top of the line, but it could handle Portal and WoW). It runs a little hot, so, make sure you can prop it up on something to leave enough ventilation, or get one of those cooling/fan pads, but aside from that, I've had no real issues.
I like the Acer 4830t, it's fairly light, decent screen, powerful enough to last you years and it's got decent battery too, especially if you find one configured with the 9 cell. I have the 4820tg (last gen intel core cpu, the g means it has discrete graphics) with the 9 cell battery and I get 9 hours or so on the intel HD graphics with the brightness turned down a bit. But yeah, basically any newer i3 or i5 laptop with 4gb ram and hd3000 or hd4000 graphics will do you just fine. Personally I'd either pay more for a 15.6" with higher screen resolution if you're going to use the laptop display primarily, or get a 13 or 12 incher and hook it up to an external monitor. Unless you really need a dvd drive I tend to think 13" is just about perfect for mobility while still being big enough to have a full sized keyboard and a screen that's readable, but it's not something I'd want to work at for hours on end.
Yeah 800 is a pretty big budget if you don't really wanna do anything that's really demanding. I probably wouldn't buy something for 300$ regardless though. Probably closer to 400$.
Based on what you said, I think the most important feature for you to look for in a laptop is an SSD hard drive. You will get less storage capacity but the performance increase is substantial, especially when booting up. Instead of a hard drive that spins, it's sort of like having a hard drive built out of flash memory. My 2 cents.
Ya, Ive been increasingly thinking this as I search. Got any recommendations of laptops that use a ssd??
Most retail laptops won't come with an SSD, so you will almost surely have order one online and customize it. No big deal though. You can get a nice Dell Inspiron 14z with a 128 gb SSD hard drive for $750 which is pretty good. If you have some time to make your decision, I recommend monitoring www.fatwallet.com as well as www.techbargains.com as both of them are pretty good sources of online deals. Getting a refurbished machine with an extended warranty is often times a good deal if you can find one. Finally, www.tomshardware.com is a great source of information about the various technologies out today and has some great reviews as well. Good luck!
