Looking for a Laptop for College

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michaelfrog

New Member
Hello, I'm looking for a laptop to buy.

My budget is up to $1500 but I would like to only spend $600- $800 on the laptop or even less if it can do everything I need.

I am buying this laptop for college. I would like it to last at least 4 years. My major is Business Administration so I think the most computing power I'll be doing with it is probably presentations. I don't have an art class or a media class or anything else I can think of that would need a very powerful laptop.

The games I'll be playing on it will be pretty outdated (baldur's gate and Morrowwind for reference) and I never watch movies on a laptop. I'm getting a desktop for the more cutting edge gaming after I see how much I spend on the laptop so this laptop is basically school orientated.

I had a laptop in highschool for 4 years (we were randomly selected to test it out and I got to say laptops even as early as high school are a big plus when in the right hands) and I was one of the people to take good enough care of it without needing a replacement or parts so I don't neccesarily need a more durable laptop if it costs more.

Oh and I know how to insert RAM, harddrive, etc into a normal computer but not laptops if anyone suggests I switch parts for the laptop. I think depending on the laptop, certain parts cannot be switched out though.

Just trying to get as much information into this as I could to be helpful after reading the forum guidlines.

I've also did some looking around myself and I'm thinking about this laptop for $550: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DNDOM01&s=dhs Changes I made are: RAM: 3GB, Harddrive: 350GB

I'm not extremely laptop/ computer savvy so I definitly need some help, thanks.
 
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filisili50

New Member
If you are looking a Laptop for College than you must buy a good laptop which is also useful in future. But If you want to buy a laptop only for college use. Select Compaq or Toshiba laptop, it is easy to handle and no chance to damage for rough use.
 
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iGeekOFComedy

New Member
Macs tend to last ages because a PowerBook from 2002 could have the OS updated constantly all the way to to 2009 until snow leopard unsupported PPC and just kept intel so a MacBook Pro is sturdy and have features like SMS sensors if it needs to be tough:

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTAyNTQzMzk

$1199 for the 13" Line it comes with:

Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory
250GB hard drive1
SD card slot
Built-in battery (10 hours)
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics

It's not Core i3 but Apple decided either crap integrated graphics from intel + core i3 or Core 2 duo + good graphics and the 320M is best in the integrated graphics class. And it's dead sexy. The battery for 10 hours is Browsing the web and text editing over 50 percent brightness, wifi on and bluetooth off. Also the battery will have upto 80% of it's original life over 1000 charges before it degrades to like 4 hours etc.

I'd pimp the model out with a 500GB Drive and some nice software. If you need windows

Buy a copy of 7 Home premium and VMWARE fusion 3 = around 250 bucks total.

You first install windows in a 2nd partition so you can reboot into either and since your playing old games install vmware fusion. And choose bootcamp partition and run windows inside of mac and get your gaming on XD
 
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zeefah

New Member
Asus came out with the new bamboo series, if you want something not only stylish but that also stands out. Both a 13.3" and 14" model.
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tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
what are your highest concerns for your laptop?

Mobility?
battery life?
what features?
size/weight and dimensions?
 
DMGrier

DMGrier

VIP Member
Go with a Dell latitude 13 for 699. I would post the site but Im on my cell. Dell business computers are high quality. www.dell.com
 
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michaelfrog

New Member
tlarkin said:
what are your highest concerns for your laptop?

Mobility?
battery life?
what features?
size/weight and dimensions?
Click to expand...

In order of importance:

#1 - I want a laptop that can handle most tasks with little to no lag. In the long run, all that time wasted on lag will add up and I don't mind spending extra money to stop that.

#2 - I need a laptop mobile enough to handle being moved around up to 4-7 days a week to/from home and school/library.

#3 - A laptop that can handle old games such as everquest, baldur's gate and morrowwind with little or no lag

#4 - A battery life of at least 3 hours. My old laptop had a battery life of 2 and a half hours and I only ran out of power on a few occassions ( at which point I just switched out a battery) and I'll be around places to charge.

#5 - I don't have much emphasis on the cosmetics. If it looks like a brick but it works well and its a great deal I don't mind.

#6 - Weight doesn't matter as long as I can find a laptop sleeve for it. Is it bad to carry laptops in a slave with a shoulder strap by the way?

Is the laptop I linked in my first post pretty bad?
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
No that laptop is not horrid, but I am biased against Dell computers. I would check with your college too, to make sure that you don't need to the ability to bind to a domain controller. I assume you want to use Windows?

If you college gives you credentials to log in, to their services or RADIUS or something similar, it may require the ability to be bound to a domain controller, only two versions of Windows allow for this, Windows 7 Business and Windows 7 Ultimate.

Also what screen resolution do you want? As for basic tasks, basic tasks hardly take up too many resources, even the most basic of netbooks should do basic things like web surfing, media play back, office productivity applications and so forth with pretty overall decent performance. Now if there are specific apps you are going to use, like Photoshop, video editing, media encoding, high end video games, and so forth you may want to look into something different.
 
DMGrier

DMGrier

VIP Member
tlarkin said:
No that laptop is not horrid, but I am biased against Dell computers. I would check with your college too, to make sure that you don't need to the ability to bind to a domain controller. I assume you want to use Windows?

If you college gives you credentials to log in, to their services or RADIUS or something similar, it may require the ability to be bound to a domain controller, only two versions of Windows allow for this, Windows 7 Business and Windows 7 Ultimate.

Also what screen resolution do you want? As for basic tasks, basic tasks hardly take up too many resources, even the most basic of netbooks should do basic things like web surfing, media play back, office productivity applications and so forth with pretty overall decent performance. Now if there are specific apps you are going to use, like Photoshop, video editing, media encoding, high end video games, and so forth you may want to look into something different.
Click to expand...

Here is the site for that Dell
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=blcw13b&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&kc=latitude-13

You may not like Dell and have had a bad experience with them but that isn't all cases. I have owned several Dell computers from laptop to desktop over the last 5 years and they are still running like the day I bought them. I have been in the navy for 3 1/2 years a dozen countries and my Dell laptops have taken a beating I'm sure most people on this forum laptops have never seen.
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
DMGrier said:
Here is the site for that Dell
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=blcw13b&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&kc=latitude-13

You may not like Dell and have had a bad experience with them but that isn't all cases. I have owned several Dell computers from laptop to desktop over the last 5 years and they are still running like the day I bought them. I have been in the navy for 3 1/2 years a dozen countries and my Dell laptops have taken a beating I'm sure most people on this forum laptops have never seen.
Click to expand...

I used to have 100s if not thousands of dells at my work, worked with them every day for years, and I think they suck because of that experience.
 
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iGeekOFComedy

New Member
michaelfrog said:
In order of importance:

#1 - I want a laptop that can handle most tasks with little to no lag. In the long run, all that time wasted on lag will add up and I don't mind spending extra money to stop that.

#2 - I need a laptop mobile enough to handle being moved around up to 4-7 days a week to/from home and school/library.

#3 - A laptop that can handle old games such as everquest, baldur's gate and morrowwind with little or no lag

#4 - A battery life of at least 3 hours. My old laptop had a battery life of 2 and a half hours and I only ran out of power on a few occassions ( at which point I just switched out a battery) and I'll be around places to charge.

#5 - I don't have much emphasis on the cosmetics. If it looks like a brick but it works well and its a great deal I don't mind.

#6 - Weight doesn't matter as long as I can find a laptop sleeve for it. Is it bad to carry laptops in a slave with a shoulder strap by the way?

Is the laptop I linked in my first post pretty bad?
Click to expand...
If you need good battery life the MacBook Pro is a no brainer. I mean 10 hours of wireless use without anything sticking out on the back like a 9 cell battery.
 
DMGrier

DMGrier

VIP Member
iGeekOFComedy said:
If you need good battery life the MacBook Pro is a no brainer. I mean 10 hours of wireless use without anything sticking out on the back like a 9 cell battery.
Click to expand...


That is only if he wants osx, he might prefer windows. Plus that doesn't hit his preferred budget.

tlarkin, at one time I told you that I hated apple due to having to use them in public school's and you brought up the point that you can't compare a public work/school computers to a personal computer. If you want to compare work computer's in the navy Dell has been the better brand for us, all the acer and IBM computers crashed and broke all the time. Work computers don't count (I don't blame you I hate acer from work), we are talking about a persons personal computer and I have owned many Dell laptop and with my travels they have been put to the test. This Dell I currently own that is listed in my signature I guarantee you will last many years and it is about to go through a 9 month deployment (which after this deployment I will have been just about everywhere in the world).
 
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tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
DMGrier said:
That is only if he wants osx, he might prefer windows. Plus that doesn't hit his preferred budget.

tlarkin, at one time I told you that I hated apple due to having to use them in public school's and you brought up the point that you can't compare a public work/school computers to a personal computer. If you want to compare work computer's in the navy Dell has been the better brand for us, all the acer and IBM computers crashed and broke all the time. Work computers don't count (I don't blame you I hate acer from work), we are talking about a persons personal computer and I have owned many Dell laptop and with my travels they have been put to the test. This Dell I currently own that is listed in my signature I guarantee you will last many years and it is about to go through a 9 month deployment (which after this deployment I will have been just about everywhere in the world).
Click to expand...

You in the military? I know what you are getting at, but I am on the opposite end of the end user. I am on the maintenance and system admin side. I have had issues with Dell support, their products, their sales staff, and so forth. It wasn't just one model of computer. To be honest the best companies I have ever dealt with are Cisco, Apple, IBM, and HP. HP did outsource their tech support though, which made it really hard to understand the guy over the phone and they weren't the fastest at emails either.

Sony, Gateway, and Antec are probably the worst when it comes to support, good god I could write books on how bad they are.

Which is why I said my opinion is heavily biased, because I have dealt with all sorts of things with companies that normal end users probably never have or never will.
 
DMGrier

DMGrier

VIP Member
Yes I am in the military. I personally hate all company tech support and if I ever did have problems with my computer I would just take them on my ship and I got guys who can fix anything even a hardware failure. But the reason why I stick with dell is cause I have never had a problem with there computers. With there laptop to aviod problems I buy there higher end models (just like with any company) but if I needed to buy cheaper model I would go with there business class computers cause I have heard great things about the latitude models.
 
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bigcomp

New Member
You can go for Compaq Presario CQ40-406AU, I am using it right now and its pretty nice. Plus, I love how it tolerates my rough use.
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
DMGrier said:
Yes I am in the military. I personally hate all company tech support and if I ever did have problems with my computer I would just take them on my ship and I got guys who can fix anything even a hardware failure. But the reason why I stick with dell is cause I have never had a problem with there computers. With there laptop to aviod problems I buy there higher end models (just like with any company) but if I needed to buy cheaper model I would go with there business class computers cause I have heard great things about the latitude models.
Click to expand...

See my point of view is that, everything breaks eventually. So you may have to possibly deal with customer support and their warranty. I have been purchasing Antec power supplies for over 10 years and I won't buy another now after my last experience. I had never had one fail me ever, until this year. When it did and I tried to RMA it, I had a dead machine in my home for over 3 weeks straight for a $200 dead PSU which has a 5 year warranty on it. Then for me to expedite it, I had to outright buy a new one, and pay for all shipping costs and it still took over 3 weeks. Then it took over a month to get my damn money back.

Out of all the major brands I look at warranty and customer service as I know that all of them hold similar percentages of failure rates.
 
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iGeekOFComedy

New Member
DMGrier said:
That is only if he wants osx, he might prefer windows. Plus that doesn't hit his preferred budget.

tlarkin, at one time I told you that I hated apple due to having to use them in public school's and you brought up the point that you can't compare a public work/school computers to a personal computer. If you want to compare work computer's in the navy Dell has been the better brand for us, all the acer and IBM computers crashed and broke all the time. Work computers don't count (I don't blame you I hate acer from work), we are talking about a persons personal computer and I have owned many Dell laptop and with my travels they have been put to the test. This Dell I currently own that is listed in my signature I guarantee you will last many years and it is about to go through a 9 month deployment (which after this deployment I will have been just about everywhere in the world).
Click to expand...

He could take mac off and just run windows. I haven't found a sexier laptop with as good battery as that macbook pro.
 
DMGrier

DMGrier

VIP Member
iGeekOFComedy said:
He could take mac off and just run windows. I haven't found a sexier laptop with as good battery as that macbook pro.
Click to expand...


still out of his range, and macs may be nice but you can't reccomend that for everyone going to school. You could offer a better price windows based machine with equal hardware quality and killer looks from Asus and Dell and save the guy some money.

tlarkin, I understand your point about tech support but you cannot hate on dell just from bad experience at your work, my point is in there laptop department I have had great experience with them. I would say with tech support the best I have seen has been from asus.
 
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