| This is the 2nd time around for us on the laptop for college. Actually, ordered laptop today.
As we are to some degree limited financially, so the graduation present is a laptop. As the the kids did quite well with financial aid and scholarship money there was no holding back (at least to my financial standards). The nonexistant downside to giving as a graduation present is not being able to shop the college IT selections. In looking afterwards 2 years ago (at Penn's It shop) and at what is currently posted at JHU shop, I think I got a slightly better deal. I work IT and am very comfortable with the selections made as I did shop very, very hard both times.
This year's shopping went like this. I shopped IBM/Lenovo, HP, Dell, Toshiba. Apple and Sony though very nice products, I believe are overpriced and do not at all offer "good value".
Lenovo recently cut way back on its actual Lenovo offerings, making the IBM the models to look at. The T61 models are a decent value and were the second choice this time (bought Lenovo 2 years ago).
Dell, though a value in their low end servers, do make it difficult (just like 2 years ago) to comparison shop. More difficult to pin down specs. Also, price seems to jump around a bit. If you like them and the price jumps up, wait a week and it will probably come back down.
Toshiba, the young gamers I work with, seem to favor them, but my price to feature benefit analysis couldn't get them above 3rd place as a student PC.
This year, it will be a HP 6710b (RM406UT). But not bought directly from HP. Put RM406UT into a pricegrabber.com search and you will find the exact same product from a reseller at a discounted price with free shipping and no sales tax (probably possible with other models and some mfr's). Now the HP come w/ wide screens which they didn't 2 years ago. Also, in conferring with my current student, other young people that travel, and the gamers, the 15 - 15.4 screen is good for those who use a laptop as their main computer though certainly subject to debate. The HP business class laptops (which this is one) comes standard with a 3 year warranty), the others all have one year standard. My students are not gamers, so the models selected have the shared graphics card rather than a discrete graphics card. It comes with Vista business downgraded to XP business which means it does have vista disks (actually the HP restore disks) but loaded with xp (I think, will know for sure at the end of the month). Also, purchased the Office 2007 (pro, academic) from viosoftware.com. Weird but you get a better price through pricegrabber.com than searching their own website. Will install AVG free antivirus software, unsure of what anti-spyware software will be used.
The company ordered through was a first time purchase so until the unit is received and opened (after graduation) I don't feel comfortable recommending them. |