My friend bought a 599.00 laptop from Best Buy that cost 1125.00, with no software...

[Santilli]

Hi
A friend who bought my 3000 Athlon 939, called me up, and asked me if I'd install software on his new 1.6 Ghz AMD processor, Gateway laptop. It came with a gig of ram, 15.4 inch screen, and, a 4200 rpm harddrive. When I looked at the bill, it was amazing. They charged him 120 dollars to install two AV programs, and windows, and make an installer disk. I'm still in shock, but, they managed to tack 425 dollars onto a 600 dollar laptop, with no software, except Vista.
They 'gave' him a POS all in one printer for a 129 dollars. WHAT A DEAL. It was his lucky day, since he hadn't picked it up, or opened it, so, it's returned.

His needs are a basic printer. A laptop that he can take to work, connect via Cat5 to the internet, and surf. Down the road, he MIGHT actually buy a digital camera.

Anyone have any suggestions for an inexpensive laptop, with basic software, for a good price?

Thanks

Greg

 

[CougTek]

All cheap laptops have bling-bling coasted screens nowadays. I hate bling-bling.

Acer packs a lot of features for a similar price to other brands according to what I see on my price lists. With them, you have 30 days to register after your purchase and they provide support instead of the store where you buy the laptop.

Merc said last year that Gateway laptops were among his favorite brands for affordable laptops. I don't know if they are still above average these days. But a quick visit to their web site showed be this : Gateway® NX570X. Not bad for 600U$.

Above 1000$, there's of course the Lenovo Thinkpad (not their N100 series).

Dell : don't. Neither S*ny or Toshiba Satelite.

 

[sechs]

Lenovo seems to have been running a boatload of deals recently. It may be possible to get a low-end Thinkpad for pretty cheap.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm happy with my Gateway, and I am neutral WRT Dell Latitudes - they are "normal". Acer and Gateway are better, Lenovo is the best. Compaq, HP, eMachines, etc. are all much worse IMHO.

 

[Santilli]

Gateway® NX570X.

That's scary. Thats a way better machine, with Works at least, for WAY cheaper then this guy was getting.

Thanks

At least I know Gateway isn't as bad as their desktops..

I thought Acer wasn't bad, but, I haven't shopped for a laptop for a long time, and, I'm not likely too.

CF-51 is going to last me a LONG time. 7200 rpm Seagate drives REALLY put the Panasonic in a different class.

Anybody have a way around getting Vista? On a laptop, XP or even 2000 would be fine for this guys use.

 

[CougTek]

Don't want Vista? There's a way, but it will cost you.

Go to Lenovo.com. Bottom left : Products - Notebooks. Right column, click "View Thinkpad notebooks". Select the R series. Click "View models" for the R60e. Then, "Customize & buy".

Selecting Windows XP Home (he won't need Professional) will shave 49$ to the price. I advise to choose either a Core 2 Duo T5500 or a more powerful T7200. The rest is fine, although you could opt for the Intel Wifi card instead of the default Lenovo brand (+5$). 512MB of RAM isn't enough, but buy additional RAM elsewhere : it will be cheaper. With the T5500 CPU and the Intel 3945 wireless card, it all sums up to 805$. That's dearer than the Gateway for comparable specifications, but it's a higher quality laptop...with Windowz XP.

 

[Deadwood]

HP

I bought a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop 18 months ago. An HP 2500us, 1.8GHz Sempron with ATI IGP. The graphics card is the worst thing on it, but since I don't need 3d capabilities, it's fine. I swapped out the 4200 rpm hard drive for a 5400 rpm one I already had. I eventually upgraded to 768 MiB RAM from 512. I also purchased a non-OEM double-life (8000+ mAh) battery that still gives me about four hours runtime when not playing DVD's.

The thing I dislike most is the reflective screen.

On the whole, though, it's worked very well. Windows XP Home, Ubuntu linux, Gentoo linux. I've carried it in a pannier/saddle bag on my commuter bicycle to and from work for more than half of it's life, 8 miles each way. If it died tomorrow, I would still consider it a good buy. I was a sucker and paid an extra $150 or so for a 3 year warranty at Fry's. It came with installation media at no extra charge.

Another nitpick: put the caps lock indicator back where it belongs, above the top row of the keyboard. I have to move my fat fingers to see its status adjacent to the actual caps lock key. Same goes for the hard disk activity light placed on the front right under where the hands rest. What can I expect for a ~$700 laptop, though? (before warranty and taxes)

It may also be worth noting that I can't be trusted to gauge performance. It's the fastest computer I own, the next fastest being a celeron 1.3 GHz desktop.

For comparison, my previous laptops: Dell D400, D610, D800, D600 (through work).

 

[Bozo]

As much I hate Dells, I must give them credit for making decent laptops. We use their laptops at worK. These laptops are used by 10-15 different people, are thrown on the back of work carts (think heavy duty golf carts), left laying in an industrial envirnment, and in general man-handled every day. All this and they usually last 3-4 years.
Of course, the hard drives are imediately formated and XP is installed clean.
Dell now makes a 'ruggedtised' laptop. We got our first last month. It was designed for the millitary so it should last at least 3 years. It's pricey though.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Santilli]

A finish to this is the ungrateful prick went back, and, they gave him a normal deal, for 800 or so bucks, on a decent setup laptop.

After that, he's been blaming me for MSFT's having to use IE 7 to do downloads, his inability to buy tickets from Ticketmaster due to using IE 6, and feels ripped off, even though he paid 1100 dollars for 2500 dollars worth of hardware and software.

He's also installed McAfee on the machine, and, is now complaining that the machine is slow, and it's my fault.

"Have you installed any new programs?"

"Only McAfee. It came with the cable service."


S

 

[paugie]

It's a good thing I don't have any money to speak of. Or else I'd be a violent man.

If I had the money, I'd break the laptop (not over his head, but that's a thought) and count him a few pieces from my thick wad of $100 bills and tell him to buy a new one and never bother me again.

My most usual fantasy is repeatedly bashing the cars of traffic violators to a pulp with my bullet-proof SUV and paying them off out of my thick wad of $1000 dollar bills.

How's that for a Sunday morning?

 

[ddrueding]

$1000 bills are very rare. $100s are all the bank will give you.

 

[mubs]

My most usual fantasy is repeatedly bashing the cars of traffic violators to a pulp with my bullet-proof SUV and paying them off out of my thick wad of $1000 dollar bills.

Paugie: mine is a bit different. I don't pay them (why should I? they deserve the bashing) after bashing them with my indestructible SUV; they grovel in front of me in remorse. :-D

 

[Santilli]

Well, I've been sending stuff like the article "What slows Windows down" to his work place. Tomorrow I'll leave on the desk, notes that pretty much just show he's an incompetent idiot.

I did spend about an hour, something not easy to find in my current 7 day a week schedule, to go over how to get tickets from ticketmaster. He can't use IE 6 apparently, so, I finally, after trying to get MSFT to download *IE 7, the irony being MSFT updates doesn't work now, pretty much, with IE 6, just had him use Firefox, which prior hadn't worked with Ticketmaster, and, now it works.

Moron...