Hello All,
I am new to the site and while researching what to do about an upcoming laptop purchase, I stumbled upon this site. Hopefully someone here can help me out a little bit.
About 4 years ago I bought a Compaq Presario Laptop and it was great because it had everything I needed including a 15" wide screen, a DVD player, a 1.3GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of RAM and a 60GB Hard Drive. Other than being a little heavy at times, it was perfect for my needs so at the time I bought it for $1,600.
It has served me well for the last 4 years until earlier this year when it seems as though the hard drive has started to fail. When I found out it would cost around $300 to $400 to replace the Hard Drive and upgrade the RAM, I wanted to see what other options were available.
That's when I started to think about a netbook. My computing needs are simple in that I only use it for Internet, iTunes and occassionally Microsoft Office and maybe some video conversion & photo editing. I have a laptop for work so I really only use my laptop at home for recreational uses so I was wondering if a netbook would be able to adequately handle my needs. Especially considering most seem to have better specifications than my current dying laptop.
The second alternative I came up with was to just get a refurbished laptop since most I have seen would have the same if not better specs than my current laptop, which would almost guarantee the performance I was used to. The screen would probably be smaller than my old laptop and the form factor would probably be thicker and heavier so I wasn't sold on this idea either.
Hopefully you guys could help me out with what to do. I am probably going to get a new computer for the house (an iMac probably) later on in the year but right now I just want a temporary solution for my computing needs. With the lower prices of laptops and netbooks these days, I was hoping I could get a temporary solution to my unexpected laptop failure.
Any help you guys could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
I am new to the site and while researching what to do about an upcoming laptop purchase, I stumbled upon this site. Hopefully someone here can help me out a little bit.
About 4 years ago I bought a Compaq Presario Laptop and it was great because it had everything I needed including a 15" wide screen, a DVD player, a 1.3GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of RAM and a 60GB Hard Drive. Other than being a little heavy at times, it was perfect for my needs so at the time I bought it for $1,600.
It has served me well for the last 4 years until earlier this year when it seems as though the hard drive has started to fail. When I found out it would cost around $300 to $400 to replace the Hard Drive and upgrade the RAM, I wanted to see what other options were available.
That's when I started to think about a netbook. My computing needs are simple in that I only use it for Internet, iTunes and occassionally Microsoft Office and maybe some video conversion & photo editing. I have a laptop for work so I really only use my laptop at home for recreational uses so I was wondering if a netbook would be able to adequately handle my needs. Especially considering most seem to have better specifications than my current dying laptop.
The second alternative I came up with was to just get a refurbished laptop since most I have seen would have the same if not better specs than my current laptop, which would almost guarantee the performance I was used to. The screen would probably be smaller than my old laptop and the form factor would probably be thicker and heavier so I wasn't sold on this idea either.
Hopefully you guys could help me out with what to do. I am probably going to get a new computer for the house (an iMac probably) later on in the year but right now I just want a temporary solution for my computing needs. With the lower prices of laptops and netbooks these days, I was hoping I could get a temporary solution to my unexpected laptop failure.
Any help you guys could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!