<p>I’ve been researching laptops, and I’m wondering which one I should get. Any suggestions and retailers would be appreciated!</p>
<p>PS: I’m leaning towards a mac, but only cause its trendy.</p>
<p>Get whatever laptop you think is the best deal for you. I don’t recommend you take notes on your lap top, only a minority of people do it and it gets tiring. Kill some trees, don’t IM during class!</p>
<p>I was really tempted to make a smarmy suggestion such as, “The cheapest one you can find, you’ll never be able to pay for one that handles more than email access” just because you specified your major, but that’s the English major in me.</p>
<p><em>puts it back into its straight-jacket and locks it in its room</em></p>
<p>Consider what you’ll need in your laptop in terms of performance. Given that your major will likely focus primarily on word processing – both reading and producing – you’re going to want one that has great support for Office-type program suites. Do I know of any computers that don’t? No. So there’s that.</p>
<p>Consider your entertainment options, then, or perhaps side jobs. If you do videos (either professionally or because you like goofing off on YouTube), a lot of desktop publishing, or website production, the typical suggestion will be for a MacBook with enough tech specs to handle programs like Premier, Photoshop, InDesign and Dreamweaver.</p>
<p>If you game a lot, you’re going to want a PC with pretty heavy tech upgrades.</p>
<p>Personally, I hate my HP laptop after both its harddrive and its battery failed 7 months after purchasing it new, and I really love my boss’s new MacBook Pro, so I’m really tempted to recommend one of those (especially like hers – 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, bluetooth capability, 100+GB harddrive, etc.). Still, despite my sour experience with HP, I’m a PC fan because of compatibility and cost issues. Don’t do HP, though; try Dell, which is still a remarkably good value for the price. Some of the other threads around can give good recommendations on the particular model you might want.</p>
<p>^^ from what I’ve found, people are often dissatisfied with HP and Dell laptops, in college.</p>
<p>I’d recommend a Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad or a Macbook.</p>
<p>Post this in the college computers forum; you’d probably get more responses.</p>
<p>for a history major…i think any kind of laptop will work. So it’s just personal preference.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, HP isn’t bad until something goes wrong (my first laptop was an HP Compaq, and it lasted 4.5 years without a problem), and ditto for Dell.</p>
<p>My boyfriend has and has always had Dells, and he’s never had a single problem with them. They’re good, sturdy computers, have decent functionality for the price, and have great battery life.</p>
<p>Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad and MacBook are great, but you definitely PAY for it.</p>
<p>Um it’s not like you’ll be needing some heavy duty CPU requirements, so the cheapest will do the trick. If all you need it for is to take notes, etc, any laptop will do. I recommend Acer.</p>
<p>“In my personal experience, HP isn’t bad until something goes wrong (my first laptop was an HP Compaq, and it lasted 4.5 years without a problem), and ditto for Dell.”</p>
<p>Um, that’s usually how it goes. =p</p>
<p>“Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad and MacBook are great, but you definitely PAY for it.”</p>
<p>Lenovo has a nice sale going right now. The T61, with 2.2 Ghz 4MBL2, 2 GB ram, 100 gb 7200 RPM, DVD RW 8x, 7-cell battery – ~$1300 (even less if you choose to downgrade it a little), compared with ~$1500 for the equivalent Macbook. But yeah, you definitely pay for what you get.</p>
<p>And for Lenovo make sure to use the Shareholder’s Purchase Plan Discount (5% off) plus the American Express discount if you use AmEx… don’t know about it? Google search it!</p>
<p>Macbook or Lenovo’s T61.</p>
<p>I just got a Dell with the following specs:</p>
<p>2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 800 MHz FSB
2 GB 667 MHz Memory
8400M GS 128 MB Graphics Card
120 GB Hard Disk
8x DVD-RW
14.1" TFT WXGA+ (1440x900) with Webcam
2 9-cell batteries (for a total life of 9-10 hrs)</p>
<p>For about $992 without tax.</p>
<p>To get a good GPU, and a nice, high resolution screen like this one has from Apple you’d have to get a MacBook Pro, which is literally double the cost, not counting the student discount of $100. A comparable Lenovo would be $300-400 more at least, judging from the searching I did before buying.</p>
<p>The disadvantage is that it’s going to take at least 2 weeks to arrive. I don’t know if Lenovo/Apple has such a long wait. I’ll get it before school starts, however, so I guess it doesn’t really matter for me.</p>
<p>I got my Acer with these specs:
pentium dual-core processor 1.6ghz
128mb graphics card
120gb harddrive
dvd-rw
1gb ram
wireless network</p>
<p>all for around $650. it runs great.</p>
<p>cppdev: while the ThinkPads and Macbooks are going to be more expensive than Dell, they’re generally known to be more durable and high-quality.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah great for all those games you play. ;)</p>
<p>“cppdev: while the ThinkPads and Macbooks are going to be more expensive than Dell, they’re generally known to be more durable and high-quality.”</p>
<p>Are you a Lenovo advertiser? Jesus Christ. Not everyone needs a $1,500 laptop that runs the same as a $750 one.</p>
<p>“theterminatior: Are you a Lenovo advertiser? Jesus Christ. Not everyone needs a $1,500 laptop that runs the same as a $750 one.”</p>
<p>He’s merely arguing that the reason for the high price is due to the better protection. =/</p>
<p>theterminator: why would I be an advertiser for Lenovo when I said the same about Macbooks?</p>
<p>But it doesn’t run the same and it isn’t as durable. Why else would you pay more money? I believe IBM has much more business than, say, Dell or HP, so they would in theory charge less. But they don’t. For example, you can get a 100 gb 7200 RPM hdd with IBM; you can get a 1 GB hdd cache, too, not to mention a top-cover roll cage for more durability, a roll cage for the hard drive, a DVD RW, an integrated fingerprint reader and camera, a 7-cell battery, all in a laptop that’s 1" thin, only 5 lbs, practically noiseless and that doesn’t emit lots of heat. Seems like a pretty awesome deal. But for the lay person who doesn’t know much / care about computers, the $750 one will suffice. But you definitely get what you pay for with the $1500 one.</p>
<p>Oops, sorry Castel, hadn’t seen your post.</p>
<p>Actually, Lenovo has been falling behind in sales, and HP reported record sales last quarter, plus I believe Asus has surpassed the sales of the Thinkpad a while ago. Just because BMW’s and Mercedes Benz’s are better cars than Honda’s and Toyota’s doesn’t mean they sell better or are a better value, cause they’re not. I think IBM Thinkpads are great machines, however they are not worth the price, not by a long shot. And I actually know a thing or two about computers, I built my desktop by hand, and it is triple booting Windows Vista Enterprise (pirated), Windows XP MCE (pirated), and Linux Ubuntu 7.04. I also have Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Blue Edition also pirated. I know computers well enough, yet I am content buying a 690$ dell with a core 2 duo 1.6, 120gb hdd, geforce 8400m gs, and 2gb of ram. Would I rather have a thinkpad? sure. Would i rather pay $1500 to get the same machine (which it is, its mostly gimmicky features), not really. And this is coming from someone who owns a Mercedes. People have different budgets, dont recommend overly expensive Thinkpads and Macbooks, because to the non computer savvy, they might think its worth it.</p>
<p>Here’s something your computer MUST have:</p>
<p>-2 GB of ram. Trust me; you’ll never go back to any less RAM.</p>
<p>-Core 2 duo. They are cooler than other processors and use less energy(= more battery life)</p>
<p>-built-in 802.11g wireless lan. Almost every laptop has this built-in.</p>
<p>-since you’re not playing games, I suggest you get a laptop with shared video memory or a cheap dedicated video card.</p>
<p>-since you’re doing a lot of typing, make sure the laptop you get has a nice tactile response on the keyboard and the mouse touchpad isn’t too small.</p>
<p>-do not get a macbook. They’re overpriced and frankly you won’t be making big $ out of college so you’ll want to keep your debt low.</p>
<p>I recommend you check out laptops in-store at retailers, but buy online for the best deals. newegg.com, amazon, and dell.com have good deals all the time. </p>
<p>Here’s newegg’s offerings for a core 2 duo with 2 GB RAM:
<a href=“http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2030260032+1041010741+1039323203&Configurator=&Subcategory=32&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=[/url]”>http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2030260032+1041010741+1039323203&Configurator=&Subcategory=32&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=</a></p>
<p>You can probably find better deals.</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>Forgot to mention my personal faves based on quality (not value or price):</p>
<p>IBM, Lenovo, ASUS</p>
<p>Average:</p>
<p>HP, Toshiba, Compaq, Sony, Dell</p>
<p>DO not buy:</p>
<p>Acer, Futjitsu</p>
<p>theterminatior:</p>
<p>“Actually, Lenovo has been falling behind in sales, and HP reported record sales last quarter, plus I believe Acer has surpassed the sales of the Thinkpad a while ago.”</p>
<p>Source? I haven’t seen that, though you very well may be right.</p>
<p>“I think IBM Thinkpads are great machines, however they are not worth the price, not by a long shot.”</p>
<p>I think they are, and I myself know a thing or two about computers. =)</p>
<p>“Would i rather pay $1500 to get the same machine (which it is, its mostly gimmicky features)”</p>
<p>Um, no, it’s not the same machine. Far from it.</p>
<p>“dont recommend overly expensive Thinkpads and Macbooks, because to the non computer savvy, they might think its worth it.”</p>
<p>I recommend it because I think it’s worth it; you don’t recommend it because you don’t recommend it. We’ll agree to disagree.</p>