College Laptop Hunt

[MindoverMaster]

Oh, OK, I gotcha. Still, I stand by ASUS

 

[zmatt]

Coming from a current college student, Puddle is right. I see people carrying around desktop replacement laptops all the time and hating themselves. trust me, books, notebooks, binders etc will keep your backpack full as it is.

I went my first year with the two pc strategy. I have my gaming pc and a small laptop for the day, everything worked out until the laptop kicked the bucket. Turns out Apple can't make hardware that can stand up to every day use. Go fig right. I also work IT at a local hospital and let me tell you Dell makes solid laptops. As for their performance it varies by model, but they are reliable and easy to work on. We exclusively deploy Dell latitudes in our department and we have D610s from 2004 still working just fine.


Also, whoever said most laptops get 5 hours of battery life yeah right. If you turn off the wifi, turn the screen brightness to nothing and remove the cd drive you may get 3 hours in most. Simply put, most 15 and 17inch laptops just have wimpy batteries.

 

[MindoverMaster]

You could easily get a netbook for ~$300, and a beefy laptop for ~$1200. Then you'll be within your budget.

My 2007 Dell Vostro 1500 still works. I just don't like their schemes of having you pay $100 for an extra Gig of ram. At the business level, sure, they buy it in stock, and save money.

This is on my ASUS Eee 1005HA netbook I'm talking about battery life. 10.1" LCD, Atom cpu, 2GB DDR2, Wireless N, intel graphics, etc. Out of those, you DO save power.

I've seen Lenovo Thinkpads last all day on one charge.

 

[zmatt]

You could easily get a netbook for ~$300, and a beefy laptop for ~$1200. Then you'll be within your budget.

My 2007 Dell Vostro 1500 still works. I just don't like their schemes of having you pay $100 for an extra Gig of ram. At the business level, sure, they buy it in stock, and save money.

This is on my ASUS Eee 1005HA netbook I'm talking about battery life. 10.1" LCD, Atom cpu, 2GB DDR2, Wireless N, intel graphics, etc. Out of those, you DO save power.

I've seen Lenovo Thinkpads last all day on one charge.

Thinkpads are an exception to the rule, they tend to come with large batteries since they are dedicated business machines. we actually have all of our business machines equipped with the 9 cells form the factory. Point is, you normal consumer level laptops, IE: idepads, inspirons etc will have 6 cell or smaller standard and will get about 2.5hours of battery life.

As far as memory goes the smart thing to do is to spend money on the things you cant change, cpu, video card, wifi, screen, case etc. And then upgrade the things you can later, such as SSD, and memory. It's no secret that they get you on memory prices, buy it yourself at newegg.

 

[MindoverMaster]

On my Dell, I bought 2GBs or ram from newegg and installed it myself. Saved me $50. Recently I had to buy a new battery and wireless card for it, as both was failing. Dell wanted nearly $400 for the two. I bought these off eBay, maybe $40?

(Previously, when I bought the dell, I got a 9-cell battery. It stuck out the back a few inches and was quite heavy on its own)

 

[zmatt]

On my Dell, I bought 2GBs or ram from newegg and installed it myself. Saved me $50. Recently I had to buy a new battery and wireless card for it, as both was failing. Dell wanted nearly $400 for the two. I bought these off eBay, maybe $40?

Sounds like a good idea to me, that's what I would do.

(Previously, when I bought the dell, I got a 9-cell battery. It stuck out the back a few inches and was quite heavy on its own)

I'm not going to tell you dells are perfect, but they as a whole are reliable, also there was a major battery issue a while back where a major supplied to everyone was sending out bad batteries. The useful life of a battery also depends a lot on how you treat it. A dry place that is close to room temperature and doesn't fluctuate much is ideal. Since most of these rarely leave a climate controlled office we can get years out of a battery pack. However it is very humid in the summer months in Kentucky so if you aren't smart and leave you pc in the car a lot, or just outside in general you can shorten it's life. Also, big batteries are going to be heavy, whats your point? If you buy a small laptop in the 11inch or so range a 6 cell is a big battery and is more than ample, you don't have to sacrifice space or weight.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Well for the OP, for mobility, he will not want a big battery. If he wants one for his TV also, battery life will not be a factor, as you will probably have it plugged in anyway.

 

[zmatt]

Well for the OP, for mobility, he will not want a big battery. If he wants one for his TV also, battery life will not be a factor, as you will probably have it plugged in anyway.

11inch laptops don't need 9 cells, so it is a moot point. And battery life does matter as long as he takes his laptop with him during the day, which is reasonable to assume, as people don't buy laptops if they don't intend for the computer to ever move.

 

[Druid]

I went my first year with the two pc strategy. I have my gaming pc and a small laptop for the day, everything worked out until the laptop kicked the bucket. Turns out Apple can't make hardware that can stand up to every day use. Go fig right. I also work IT at a local hospital and let me tell you Dell makes solid laptops. As for their performance it varies by model, but they are reliable and easy to work on. We exclusively deploy Dell latitudes in our department and we have D610s from 2004 still working just fine.


Also, whoever said most laptops get 5 hours of battery life yeah right. If you turn off the wifi, turn the screen brightness to nothing and remove the cd drive you may get 3 hours in most. Simply put, most 15 and 17inch laptops just have wimpy batteries.

Yeah, same here, I got my nice desktop here, and then I got an $800 laptop for mobility. I really don't use it that much; it just sits under my bed most of the time, but it is there for when I need it. Plus it has an HD mobility 4650, so I can game on it if I need to .

And yeah, 5 hour battery life is a rofl. It has to have integrated graphics and one of those supped up battery packs to get that.

11inch laptops don't need 9 cells, so it is a moot point. And battery life does matter as long as he takes his laptop with him during the day, which is reasonable to assume, as people don't buy laptops if they don't intend for the computer to ever move.

Most people don't walk around with their laptops everyday. There is a decent handful of people who do, but most don't, me included. I might consider carrying on a netbook around. Those things take up like no space in your backpack and then they have like a 10 hour battery life. That's what you want when it comes to portability.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Now It's my turn to laugh. Netbooks do not have a 10-hour battery life. The most I hve seen is ~5 hours.