[CONSUMER ADVICE] Laptop Buying

if you're actually manipulating music and not just playing back MP3s, the higher processor speed means you will be able to do more stuff without slowdown. I guess it depends what you mean by "play" music. Isn't that one £10 cheaper, not £40 more expensive?

yeah id be putting fx on the tracks and such, so a better processor would probly be best. (i wasnt sure which i should be looking for - ram or processor).

i mean the dell vostro one can have a better processor for £40, from a T7250 to a T7300 (with 4mb L2 cache rather than 2mb L2 cache, though im not sure what that means) is this improvement worth £40? theres also an upgrade to a T7500 Processor 2.2GHz but that's £90 and a bit out of my budget, unless its necessary.

question! in the UK, can you get a laptop that's 10-13" across in the new under-£400 bottom end of the market? i really want something that is both SMALL and CHEAP but i don't know if such a thing exists yet, plz advise

Asus too small?

http://www.morecomputers.com/extra.asp?pn=EEE%20PC%204G-BK

That seems incredibly lo-spec. Hm.

I see a lot of 'refurbished' second-hand laptops being advertised - what does 'refurbished' mean, in real terms? Is there a reason to be particularly wary of them?

( F'rinstance I just found this online:

Dell D400, Intel Centrino 1.4G, 512Mb, 40G, DVD, Wireless, 12.1monitor, Win XP

for £225, 'refurbished'. If I wasn't waiting til the end of the month that'd seem a pretty good deal.)

i dunno about uk but if over here dell pushes their 'certified refurb' program and you get to keep whatever the original warranty was. i bought two desktops for the office cheep with almost 3 years onsite svc. i would give used laptops a bit more scrutiny though.

i've noticed dell laptop monitors fuck up too much for my comfort, at least the low end ones

those are pretty shabby specs even for used anyway these days

Check out:

Dell Vostro
HP Micronote 2133
Asus Eee
Acer Wind

I rather like the HP micronote.

Sorry, MSI wind.

It hadn't occurred to me to check the 'small business' computers rather than the 'home' ones. gosh.

I remember looking at the Asus Eee back when I was disappointed that one laptop per child laptops were only showing up in north america, I didn't realise that kind of semi-laptop had so much competition yet. I'm in two minds whether one of these things — or a cheap business laptop — will do me, or whether I want a DVD/CD player and to be able to run a bit more than just word processing/internet.

Dell Vostro then

http://blog.laptopmag.com/getting-windy-full-specs-of-the-msi-wind

msi wind looking good right now...but is 10" too big?

pc world are doing a nice samsung that's tempting me even though the last thing i need is another computer

it's time

i've actually never owned a computer lol

do you want a mac or an el cheapo

ive never really used macs much, but i'm not against them. i think its time to make up my mind on this issue. i am getting an iphone on thurs, maybe a mac makes sense now.

macs never make sense

macbooks for $999 - can't beat for price/performance imo

i think you can pay it off w/ $24 a month or somethin?

i've got scrill right now, it ain't a thing

yeah get macbook. i have had to fix stuff on mine but now when i go back on a pc like at work i get angry

i always have to do work on PCs

oh shit and all my sims are for PC!!!!!!!

well the new new macbooks are nice but they're $1300 -- 2nd gen macbook for $999 is tight

had my macbook almost a year now, totally addicted to it. granted it replaced a shitty, low-memory dell, so anything would have seemed like a big improvement. still. it's nice.

Definitely MacBook. You can run Windows on it when you need to Sims it.

nice!

If you like rebooting to XP when you feel like playing the Sims and then rebooting to Mac OS to check yr email/ILX etc

you can get the sims for mac without all the windows crap :D

I guess roxymuzak has already bought the sims on PC

i can sell them, it aint a thing

actually i just realized it really aint a thing, cause i only play sims at work, where i have a pc. so whatever. mac it is!

You could save a few bucks on a refurb and use the money to max out the RAM, always my preferred move.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=MTMzNTY

Apple store refurb = dope. You can get Applecare too, which is advisable with a notebook.

not a mac but cheapo

I have a very nice 15" MacBook Pro for sale. People on Craigslist keep trying to get me to ship it to Africa. That's never going to happen.

how much!

http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/100/210490100.jpg

"latitude"

tht thing looks 1˚ of latitude thick

I bought a $500 old shitty Toshiba from Wal-Mart 2 years ago and it's still doing OK... of course I only use Winamp, MS Word, and Firefox, so ymmv.

http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/857/delldudetn4.jpg

you can buy my macbook in august, roxy. It has a "£" key and a battery that doesn't work!

sounds like a real good deaPPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!

A new battery is about $100, so if caek takes of 1/2 street price for lappy for bad battery then you are to get a deal rox.

you will have to come to the winner of Liveblogging caek's job applications — "Wisconsin? i hear that's a real party state." to collect

u gettin new compu for post doc caek???

I hope so. This one is lame.

Actually, it's fine. I just need a new battery. I should save the money and go to more conferences.

"how much!"

Make me an offer? But first I would ask if you really need the firepower of the Macbook Pro? Like, do you do more than surf the web or word process? The pro has additional firepower that's best for people who are doing video, music, animation, etc.

This is one of the ones you can install Windows on if you want to. If you're really curious, shoot me an email offline. It's such a great computer, but I ended up with a newer 17" through a job I did earlier this year and it's silly to have two laptops.