MindoverMaster
Golden Master
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Oh, OK, I gotcha. Still, I stand by ASUS
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.