Good Laptop Deal?

[willthatsall]

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Anyone have ideas for a good laptop with a reasonable price? Something around $1500 or so. Is Dell service as bad as I've heard?

 

[Megalofyia]

My sister has a Dell laptop and LOVES it. Sometime last year she had some issue with it and the dell people came to her house to fix it. I was very impressed because I figured since it was a laptop she'd have to bring it in to get fixed and that it'd take at least a few days.

Now that being said... I need a new laptop but I'm looking into gateway because they are cheaper although if cost were not a concern I'd go with Dell.

 

[NYCDawg81]

www.averatec.com

if your looking for something suited for medical school.

If your looking for something with nice graphics cards, top of the line stuff, then something else. 😉

 

[slackerjock]

12" Powerbook 1600 (-$200 educational discount)+260 20gb ipod. rebate $200. Sell ipod for 250 on ebay.
Total price: 1600-200+260-200-250= $1210 for a $1600 dollar computer.

you can resell this on ebay for about 1000$ in one year. dells, etc lose value a lot quicker because they suck.

regards,
former bill gates *****

 

[Twitch]

I've had my DELL laptop for the last 4 years and it's time for an upgrade. I decided to got with a Toshiba Tablet PC. It's a few hundred more than your target price but well worth it.

The Toshiba M200 is a convertible tablet/laptop. You get a stylus to draw / write directly on the screen. The latest version of Win XP (Tablet PC 2005) just came out this Saturday and it is amazing in handwriting recognition. The Tablet has got noise cancellation audio recording feature along with a bunch of others. BTW toshiba has 10% of customized Tablets. I got mine with Bluetooth and a large+fast hard drive. I'll get the RAM and external CD/DVD drive elsewhere cuz Tosh is charging me a lot for it.

I've got mine on order and I can't wait. If you want more info you can look at one of the tablet sites like tabletpcbuzz.com.

Good Luck,
-Y_Marker

 

[Twitch]

www.averatec.com

if your looking for something suited for medical school.

If your looking for something with nice graphics cards, top of the line stuff, then something else. 😉

I bought this from Costco last week and hate it. It's got an AMD chip on it and runs very hot. I'm a big fan of the desktop version of their chip though (AMD64, however). I installed SP2 and it crashed - won't even boot. I've tried re-installing the OS 3 freaking times. The digitizer is low quality and sux big time. The TIP doesn't work now matter how much I pound on the damn thing - unless it's docked in which case it comes right up. The Service sux. I'm returning it and buying the Tosh as I said in my previous post.

 

[gizmoduck]

http://www.powernotebooks.com/

 

[Amy B]

Anyone have ideas for a good laptop with a reasonable price? Something around $1500 or so. Is Dell service as bad as I've heard?

We have both laptops and desktops from Dell and have loved having them. There was only twice we needed to call Dell and they were extremely helpful. We had a question and spyware and they didn't have to help us since it wasn't about their machine, but they walked us through removing spyware and checking our hard drive. We have nothing but praise for their service folks.

 

[willthatsall]

Ok, say $2k then, those Toshiba's are good? I've seen them, there are like 10 different models. How good are those Mac's? I can't tell much from the specs how it would perform because I have no experience with Mac hardware.

 

[xanthines]

Dell service is good if you buy the Lattitude models. The Inspiron models have some of their tech support farmed out to India. Not that Indians aren't capable, but I imagine they're just handed this notebook full of canned answers.

Buy your laptop through the academic route or small business route. This will get you the best support. This is based on a vague sense of statistics (so NO, I can't quote anything), so your individual experience may be fine.

DON'T buy the Gold Tech support option but DO buy the CompleteCare option.

Just my $00.02USD. Exchange rates may vary.

-X

Anyone have ideas for a good laptop with a reasonable price? Something around $1500 or so. Is Dell service as bad as I've heard?

 

[MzzMisty]

I have a Laptop from Dell and I love it .. haven't had any problems (knock on wood) And unless your looking for something really fancy then i think a Dell or something like it would be fine... 🙂 Just giving you my opinion on them

 

[Twitch]

Ok, say $2k then, those Toshiba's are good?

On the tablet they actually just have one model - several configurations though. For me as a student, the tablet/convertible offers several benefits that are not available on a laptop.

If you're sure you wouldn't need tablet features, then I wouldn't spend the price premium for buying tablet features. Personally though the ability to quickly draw diagrams and such with a pen like device directly on the screen during class then continue to take notes using the keyboard is great. You can find student postings (including some residents) on using a tablet here

 

[ShyRem]

After months of playing with every demo laptop I could get my grubby little hands on, two years ago I bought a Toshiba. I ADORE this thing. Never had a problem with it until this summer when my system board finally went down. It has been the main computer in use in my house and has been appropriated by my husband for his presentations at work (his work uses Dell and Gateway, but the Toshiba had FAR fewer problems and was MUCH easier to work with he said). My brother, who is a computer technician, also did a bunch of research and also bought a Toshiba. I don't think I would buy anything else.

Check out all the websites individually - the academic discounts vary drastically from site to site - I ended up saving about $250 on mine when I bought it. Also, check out a site called Computers.com - they have reviews on the different types for value and good/bad feature comparisons.

 

[fancymylotus]

I have a vaio Z1 something or the other notebook.I know people have said they hated sony,but i love mine.It might be over 1500,actually, I know its over 1500,but not by a whole lot.

 

[IndyZX]

if you are willing to spend $2k, get a thinkpad. it was a little expensive, but my t41 rocks the barn, hard.

 

[willthatsall]

What about HP? Any opinions?

 

[slackerjock]

12" Powerbook 1600 (-$200 educational discount)+260 20gb ipod. rebate $200. Sell ipod for 250 on ebay.
Total price: 1600-200+260-200-250= $1210 for a $1600 dollar computer.

you can resell this on ebay for about 1000$ in one year. dells, etc lose value a lot quicker because they suck.

regards,
former bill gates *****

???

 

[Amy B]

I also had an HP for 5 years and nothing ever went wrong with it. Well until my son left it on the floor and I stood on it in the middle of the night 😡

Here is a site that you may find to be quite helpful.
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/Notebooks/2001-3121_16-0.html?tag=glnav

You can read the reviews for every computer out there. Dell scores quite high in almost every one.

 

[YML]

you can get a dell for under 1G and it is has everything you will need. The service is perfect. Why spend 2G when you can spend under 700 for a dell inspiron???

 

[dogbyte]

if anybody goes to harvard or ohsu, you get really good discounts on ibms. 40-50% discount.

california also has an educational discount for its students. i bought a t42 for 2k including tax and shipping. it was discounted from retail price of 2649. not as good as the discounts for harvard or ohsu students, but better than nothing.

i heard a lot of good things about the thinkpads. you might want to check it out if you're willing to spend a little extra. you can get the same configuration with other companies for a cheaper price than ibms, but the higher price of the ibms is supposed to be worth it for the quality you're getting. i'm still waiting for my laptop to ship. so i dont really have firsthand experience.

 

[DrSwede]

http://www.powernotebooks.com/

Yup, this guy has it right. This company knows their stuff and their reputation is incredible.